Officer’s self-defence claim again at issue in Wallace shooting
A police officer’s claim of selfdefence in the fatal shooting of Waitara man Steven Wallace in 2000 is now being looked at through a different legal lens.
Wallace’s family took a private prosecution alleging murder against senior constable Keith Abbott when police refused to charge Abbott with any offence after Wallace, 23, was killed.
Abbott said Wallace threatened to kill him with a softball bat, and he said he acted in self-defence.
A jury at the High Court in Wellington in 2002 found Abbott not guilty.
Wallace had been breaking windows in the Taranaki town. He also used a golf club to smash the windscreen of an occupied police car.
Twenty years after the killing, the Crown is being called on to defend Abbott’s actions and its own actions, with its lawyer, Peter Gunn, saying the evidence still establishes self-defence.
But this time it is in the context of a civil-type claim against the Crown that Wallace’s father, James, began in 2014, alleging that police had breached his son’s right not to be deprived of life, and claiming $200,000.
It is also alleged the death was not properly investigated.
James Wallace has since died and his widow, Raewyn, is continuing the fight again in the High Court at Wellington.
The case, the first of its kind, resumes on Monday.
Abbott is not a party or a witness but the case does look again at whether he acted in self-defence.
The Crown pointed to evidence that Steven Wallace was advancing on Abbott, softball bat raised and making threats, but Raewyn Wallace has maintained other evidence has him on the other side of the road and not advancing.
Gunn said it was difficult, if not impossible, for the judge to resolve the conflicts. He defended the decision of Abbott and another officer to take firearms. They had evidence of the danger Steven Wallace posed and it vindicated their decision to react immediately.
The Crown accepted several things could have been done better but there was nothing so serious that it breached Wallace’s right not to be deprived of life, Gunn said.
The Bill of Rights Act says: ‘‘Noone shall be deprived of life except on such grounds as are established by law and are consistent with the principles of fundamental justice.’’
The Crown says self-defence is included in the ‘‘grounds established by law’’ that are an exception to the right not to be deprived of life.
In the context of the Wallace claim, the criminal and civil standards of self-defence were different.
Part of Raewyn Wallace’s case alleges that her son’s death was not properly investigated.
She also says the Crown’s decision not to prosecute Abbott was wrong, and when the private prosecution was brought, the Crown should have taken it over.
Justice Ellis has questioned whether the coroner’s inquiry, and a two-part police complaints or conduct inquiry, were tainted if the initial police investigation was flawed, or the coroner’s and Independent Police Conduct Authority report both followed the jury’s acceptance of self-defence.
Wallace has criticised the police inquiry for not being independent since its first days were under the supervision of a close friend of Abbott. Even after an outside police supervisor was brought in, some local police officers who knew Abbott helped investigate.
Gunn said there were aspects that were less than ideal but did not necessarily preclude independence.