Ex-prisoner wins case over his first book

Jailhouse lawyer Arthur Taylor has won a court’s permission to include some contentious evidence in his soon-to-be published ‘‘warts-and-all’’ book.

Taylor, who now lives in Dunedin, has a civil case pending against the Department of Corrections and has gathered evidence based on Corrections CCTV footage disclosed to him as part of the case.

Corrections and Taylor had an agreement to keep the CCTV footage confidential.

With his first book, Prison Break , due to be released on August 3, Taylor was concerned Corrections might try to interfere with its release because of a few sentences from a doctor’s evidence about how he was injured in 2017.

He asked the court to approve using quotes in the book about how he might have become unconscious while being transferred between prisons.

The incident forms part of his claim seeking orders including for more than $1 million damages and aggravated damages. The claim is due to be heard over about six weeks starting February 2022.

In a short judgment from the High Court in Wellington yesterday, Associate Judge Kenneth Johnston said Taylor had the court’s permission to use seven quotes from the doctor’s evidence.

His judgment only gave the result because an answer was wanted urgently. He would give his reasons later, he said.

Yesterday, Taylor said it was a victory for freedom of expression.

Taylor had spent about 38 years in prison for various offences. He studied law and took many cases against Corrections and others, fighting for his own and other prisoners’ rights.

He tackled issues including voting rights for prisoners, and the Crown’s use of evidence from ‘‘jailhouse informants’’ in criminal cases.

He told Stuff the book contained a lot of history about the New Zealand prison system.

Taylor said he done it without a news director, Kelly Dennett, who wrote the book with him. could not have