Court backs killer’s plan for meeting
Corrections told to reconsider ruling on Scott Watson, journalist and victim’s father
Ameeting between a father and the man who murdered his daughter is one step closer to happening. Corrections has been ordered to reconsider its decision not to allow journalist Mike White to report on the first-ever meeting between Gerard Hope and Scott Watson.
Watson was convicted of the 1998 murders of Hope’s daughter Olivia, 17, and 21-year-old Ben Smart. The pair were last seen boarding a yacht moored in Endeavour Inlet off Furneaux Lodge in the Marlborough Sounds on New Year’s Day 1998. Their bodies have never been found.
Both Watson and Hope have sought to have White present at a meeting between the pair, where Hope wants to question Watson about the murders.
But Corrections opposed White attending as a journalist three times, most recently in March when a letter advised White could only be present as a facilitator if he gave an undertaking not to use any information he received for professional purposes.
“There is no suggestion the proposed presence of White is necessary to discuss new information which has come to light or the discovery of new evidence,” it said.
In a High Court judgment released yesterday, Justice Jillian Mallon acknowledged the meeting was unusual and likely to be tense, with the potential for misunderstandings to arise and participants to inaccurately recall what was said.
“The right to freedom of speech has a high value in this particular instance,” Mallon said.
“Corrections’ reasons do not demonstrate that the interference with freedom of expression is justified.”
She said there was no reason Watson’s lawyers could not put for- ward to Corrections conditions under which the meeting would take place, and ordered costs be paid to Watson.
Watson, who has maintained his innocence saying he never met or even laid eyes on the pair, was sentenced to life with a minimum 17-year non-parole period. He was denied parole on his first application after being assessed as “a very high risk of future reoffending”.
He has exhausted all avenues of appeal and was denied a royal pardon by the Governor-General in 2013. Labour MP Phil Goff has nailed his colours to a house once owned by former National Cabinet minister John Banks.
The mayoral candidate yesterday erected a billboard outside the $4.5 million Remuera mansion in Victoria Ave owned by Banks when he was Mayor of Auckland City.
“There is an element of fun, no question about that,” said Goff, whose blue billboards have already led to a complaint they mislead voters who associate blue with National.
“I think it’s important the mayor has a broad level of support.”
Goff, like Banks in his mayoral days, is standing as an independent.
Banks, who sold the Spanish-style house in 2012, saw the irony: “It must be the only private property in Remuera where this could happen. The locals will be traumatised.”
Goff said the house’s owner, Jimmy Chen, a cardiologist who also runs a school for international students, had given permission. — Bernard Orsman
The right to freedom of speech has a high value in this particular instance. Corrections’ reasons do not demonstrate that the interference with freedom of expression is justified. Justice Jillian Mallon