Pora still battling for more compo

Teina Pora is ‘‘struggling to find his place in the world’’ as he heads back to court to fight for inflationadjusted compensation for his 21 years of wrongful imprisonment.

Pora’s judicial review has been set down for the High Court in Wellington on July 3 and private investigator Tim Mckinnel, who worked to free Pora, said the 41-year-old was disappointed to have to be going through the courts again.

Pora, who was 17 when he went to jail, was offered $2.5 million in compensation by the Government in June last year.

His conviction was quashed in 2015 by the Privy Council for the 1992 rape and murder of Susan Burdett, an accounts clerk who was bludgeoned to death with a baseball bat in her South Auckland home.

‘‘In the time he’s spent out he’s socialised and spoken to people – it’s become clearer to him as the months have gone by that this payment was less than what other people have been paid and he doesn’t understand why that is given the 21 years he spent in prison,’’ Mckinnel said.

It’s been revealed since the compensation was offered by Justice Minister Amy Adams that she rejected advice that Pora’s compensation package be adjusted for inflation.

That was despite Justice Rodney Hansen’s recommendation to the Cabinet that they take into account inflation over the course of his sentence, which would have substantially increased the figure.

Mckinnel said a conservative estimate of the additional compensation Pora’s legal team believe he’s entitled to is between $400,000 and $800,000.

‘‘I don’t think anybody in New Zealand criminal justice history has suffered in the way that Teina has.

‘‘The extent to which he has suffered over more than two decades is incomparable and for him him to be paid at a rate on an annual basis that’s so substantially less than the others, I think, is another injustice he’s having to deal with now.’’

Mckinnel says Pora has ‘‘good weeks and bad weeks but at times he’s struggling to find his place in the world’’.

‘‘It’s almost like the longer he did the more he was punished and that’s continued with this reluctance to pay inflation-adjusted compensation.’’ – Fairfax NZ