Mark Lundy’s last chance

Mark Lundy’s final appeal against his convictions for murdering his wife and daughter will take place just days away from the 19th anniversary of the crimes he says he did not commit.

Lundy’s lawyers will file into the Supreme Court in Wellington today to try to convince the country’s top judges his convictions for the murders in 2000 of his wife Christine and 7-year-old daughter Amber were unjust. The Crown, represented by Philip Morgan, QC, will argue otherwise.

The murders took place on the night of August 29, 2000, in the Lundys’ Palmerston North home.

Christine and Amber Lundy were found dead, attacked with a weapon described by police as a tomahawk. Lundy was first tried and convicted of the murders in 2002, but won himself a retrial after the Privy Council quashed his convictions in 2013.

He was convicted again after a retrial in 2015, sent back to serve his life sentence with a minimum term of 20 years. The Court of Appeal accepted part of his appeal in 2018, but maintained his convictions were just.

The Supreme Court appeal will focus on one issue: Did Lundy get a fair trial despite issues with evidence?

At his 2015 retrial, scientists described various techniques used to analyse stains on one of Lundy’s business shirts.

The tests found brain or spinal cord tissue, and DNA from Christine Lundy. One test, MRNA testing, found the brain or spinal cord tissue more likely than not came from a human.

But the Court of Appeal ruled in 2018 that testing should not have been part of the 2015 retrial.

Lundy’s convictions were not quashed, though, because the Court of Appeal agreed with the Crown’s ‘‘proviso’’ argument – something of a second bite of the cherry.

The proviso argument was the brain or spinal cord tissue had to have come from Christine Lundy because her DNA was in the same stain, and the tissue got there while Mark Lundy committed the murders. The tissue and DNA is arguably the Crown’s strongest evidence, the only thing linking Mark Lundy to the crime.

Insurance fraud has been raised as a motive due to his and Christine Lundy’s life insurance policies being under review at the time of the murders.

But his insurance broker at the time, Bruce Parsons, told his 2015 retrial the new policy, which would move the payout on death from $200,000 to $500,000, had not gone live. Furthermore, Parsons said the new policy came about after a review he initiated, and the Lundys declined to take the policy payout to $1 million.