Police botch-up costs drug case

A drug charge against a member of a prominent Dunedin family has been withdrawn after a police botch-up.

The 37-year-old woman faced a charge of supplying a class B drug, namely morphine, to a man who injected the drug and died on April 21, 2016.

It was later found the 39-year-old man, who has permanent name suppression, died due to a pre-existing medical condition, with morphine detected at therapeutic levels.

On Tuesday morning in the Dunedin District Court, Judge Michael Crosbie dismissed the charge and permanently suppressed her name, with police offering no further evidence.

In a July decision Judge Crosbie found police obtained a statement from the woman through ‘‘improper means’’, including not providing her the Bill of Rights caution at the start of her statement.

That failure was a ‘‘serious intrusion of the defendant’s rights’’, the judge said.

He said the ‘‘impropriety was more than reckless’’ and noted the defendant’s interview came after four interactions with Detective Senior Sergeant Kallum Croudis.

That was despite him not being the officer in charge of the case, or involved in the inquiry team.

It was noted Croudis, who was a friend of the dead man’s father, was ‘‘instrumental in her attending the police station’’.

Another person, Gary Lloyd Potter, 57, was sentenced to 10 months’ home detention in connection with the matter.

Judge Crosbie said aspects of the investigation was ‘‘haphazard and undocumented’’.

It was not until the 10th page of her 12-page statement that the interviewing officer, Sergeant Sheldon Kindley, provided her with a Bill of Rights’ caution.

‘‘The rights contained in the Bill of Rights caution are important and ought to have been provided at the outset,’’ he said.