Pora asks for extra $500,000
Guidelines for miscarriage of justice payouts were inconsistent with inflation adjustments, the Crown says of Teina Pora’s claim for an inflation top-up to the $2.5 million he has already received.
Pora’s lawyers say he should get more than $500,000 extra to take account of the effect of inflation on the compensation he received for more than 19 years in jail on a wrongful conviction of rape and murder. .
At the High Court in Wellington yesterday, lawyer Gerard Mccoy, QC, said Pora received a ‘‘derisory’’ $11.14 for each hour in jail ‘‘such is the prescribed value of liberty’’, which he compared to the minimum wage rate of now close to $16 a hour.
The decision of the Cabinet not to take account of inflation was ungenerous and niggardly, he said.
The compensation was awarded under Cabinet guidelines made in 2000. But the Crown’s lawyer, Paul Rishworth, QC, said the guidelines were inconsistent with an adjustment for inflation. The Cabinet could have changed them at any time and had chosen not to.
Justice Rebecca Ellis asked if it was possible to apply the guidelines and do justice in the spirit of the guidelines but Rishworth said he ‘‘vigorously disagreed’’. He said there was limited scope for the court to review payments made under such a scheme.
But the judge asked why it would be just or rational that Pora’s compensation was not inflation-adjusted, when the recommendation was that it would be anomalous and unfair not to allow for inflation.
It was the worst case of injustice in New Zealand, based on his years in jail, but of those compensated under the guidelines he was the least compensated reckoned on annual figures, Mccoy said.
His lawyers say it would take $152,000 to equal the real value of $100,000 in 1994, when Pora was first wrongly convicted.
The effect of inflation aggravated the injustice, he said. It had eaten its way through the real value of the money.
Pora spent almost 23 years in custody, either awaiting trial or as a sentenced prisoner, Mccoy said.
The Government decided against inflation-adjusting his compensation, which was based on approximately $100,000 a year, despite a recommendation to do so from the retired High Court judge who assessed the claim.
But it said he could take the $2.5m and still challenge the inflation decision.
The compensation was broken down into $1.96m for loss of liberty, and $225,000 for factors such as loss of reputation and family and other relationships, and mental and emotional harm. Inflation adjustment was sought on those factors.
A third component, $334,000, was for legal and other professional expenses, lost income and loss of earnings potential, for which no adjustment was sought.
Pora was convicted in May 1994 of 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. A successful appeal and then a retrial in 2000 also resulted in a guilty verdict.
He was granted parole from prison in 2014 and in March 2015 the Privy Council quashed his conviction. New evidence presented to the Privy Council at the time showed Pora suffered from foetal alcohol syndrome. That, in combination with often implausible and frequently contradictory confessions, made the conviction unsafe. No retrial was ordered.
However, the solicitor-general has asked for the legal stop on the Burdett murder charge against serial rapist Malcolm Rewa to be lifted so he can be tried again.
Rewa has already been convicted of raping Burdett.