Legal expert: Appellant got lucky

Professor Warren Brookbanks of the New Zealand Law Society Criminal Law Committee told the Herald that the facts of McIntyre’s case were made the more interesting because of Ford’s successful self-defence claim.

“Had the defence failed [Ford] would have been convicted of murder and McIntyre would have been guilty of being an accessory after the fact to murder,” the AUT Law School professor said.

He added that cases such as McIntyre’s do arise periodically.

Brookbanks also explained that an accessory after the fact is not a party to an offence.

“It refers to someone who assists an offender after the offence has been committed.”

There are four elements required to prove liability in a case of being an accessory, he said.

“The first element is that the accused must have offered comfort or assistance to someone who committed an offence and must have known of the facts that would have made that person’s act an offence.

“Here, because the defence of self-defence was successful and because self-defence is a ‘justification’ at law, that meant, in effect, that no offence was committed.

“Because accessory after the fact liability is dependent on the commission of an offence by the principal offender, in those circumstances there was no crime to which accessory liability could attach,”Brookbanks said.

“In reality the appellant got lucky because no crime was committed by the principal.”