Barrister looks back on 44 years of murder and ‘the maelstrom’
Retiring barrister Roger Laybourn talks murder cases, the joy of helping the helpless and surviving “the maelstrom of emotion”. Mike Mather reports.
It’s a nigh impossible task for Hamilton barrister Roger Laybourn - who this week marks his retirement from 44 years of practising law - to pick a career highlight.
But one of the defining moments came early on.
“I started out my career with two years in Wellington, working for a guy called George Rosenberg, a prominent civil rights lawyer.
“While I was there, I was thrown into representing Pacific Islanders swept up in the dawn raids.
“Those cases still haunt me to this day. These were good people who trusted the system but were effectively, if I can put it bluntly, screwed over.”
It was while acting for those families that Laybourn said he came to realise the value of being a defence lawyer.
“I have always borne in mind some advice George gave me at the conclusion of that chapter. He told me: ‘You have two choices. You can either make rich people richer, or you can go and help people’.” Laybourn chose the latter.
It’s possible law was always going to be the career choice for the former Fairfield College student.
“While I was there, the principal of that school told me he thought I was wasting my time. But he did give me a good reference when I left.
“Or so I thought. Sometime afterwards, my father pointed out that my having ‘natural cunning’ was not necessarily a compliment.”
After leaving school, he spent a gap year “supporting myself mainly by playing pool, but also driving trucks and being the only pakeha guy in a shearing gang.”
It was during this time he met his future wife Bronwen, who was training to be a teacher.
“She helped me see the light that higher education was a better use of my time than playing snooker.”
Eternally affable and erudite, Laybourn went on to become the highest-profile lawyer in Hamilton. This was partially due to his willingness to talk to the media, and venture on-the-record opinions on all kind of justice-related issues whenever they arose.
Mostly it was because he happily waded into all kinds of cases. As he officially “hung up his wig” at a farewell gathering at Cucina Cafe yesterday, he closes the book on an estimated 350 trials, including 35 murder trials.
Some were forgettable. Others will stay with him for the rest of his life, ones like “the euthanasia cases”.
Laybourn represented Taumarunui plumber Ian Crutchley in 2009 and microbiologist Sean Davison in 2011, both of whom assisted their mothers to die.
Crutchley gave his mother an overdose of drugs in her final days when confronted with her agonising pain.
The jury convicted him of attempted murder but, in a rare move, received a lenient sentence of six-months' home detention.
“With the Crutchley case in particular the courts seemed to be not the right way to address those issues,” Laybourn said.
“He was a decent guy. A hardworking plumber devoted to his dying mum. She was in extreme pain, with a life expectancy of a day or so. He was seeking help for her, but could not find a doctor, so he adjusted her morphine drip himself and gave her what proved to be a fatal overdose.
“He was initially charged with murder. I managed to get that charge dismissed ... It was a great joy for me to ultimately keep him out of prison.”
Laybourn’s cases have included tragedies and horror stories. His clients range from the likes of Mongrel Mob boss Sonny Fatu - “a very laid back and undemanding character” - to Divesh Sharma, who burned his wife to death on a road near Huntly.
“There are some cases where your professionalism is really tested. But you have to put aside any personal repugnance over what happened and get on with it.
“That case was very clear cut, and I advised him to plead guilty ... I was quite happy to put that one behind me.”
Another prominent case that stayed with him was Andrew Mears, who shot and killed schoolteacher Rosemary Ives as she was brushing her teeth at a campground near Turangi, after he mistook her for a deer.
“That young man was deeply affected by what was an absolute tragedy.”
Mears ended up being jailed for three years, “but almost any sentence would have been irrelevant. He will undoubtedly be haunted forever by what he did.”
Becoming embroiled in the lives of the innocent and the guilty can take its toll, and the death by suicide of top defence lawyer Greg King in 2012 gave Laybourn pause for thought.
“The situation has improved since then. The Law Society has made available various avenues of support in recent years.
That’s in line with an awakening in society about such things.
“I have not met one lawyer so thickskinned they can’t feel the emotional maelstrom that surrounds them ... We have an ethical duty to be clinical and objective - but that does not mean we are bloody robots.”
The pressure on the justice sector was increasing in all kinds of ways, he said.
“I have huge admiration for the court staff, who I recognise are absolutely under-resourced.
Also, I have to praise the duty solicitors. They are like the emergency department at a hospital - the unsung heroes who save us in all kinds of ways.”
When dealing with such huge workloads, there was a temptation for lawyers to drop their standards, particularly when it came to filing submissions and reports, “which are not as vigilantly policed as they used to be”.
“There are all kinds of subtle and unsubtle pressures on defence lawyers, to get their clients to plead guilty or to do a deal.
A defence lawyer’s first instinct should always be ‘Can they prove their case?’“
Laybourn was also concerned technology could be undermining civil rights particularly when it came to sentencings, which should always be done in person rather than via a video link to a booth in a prison.
The law itself could be an ass at times. Laybourn said he had always detested the controversial “three strikes” law - “something that’s based on a softball game should have no place in a court of law” and he also sees the removal of funding for Section 27 “cultural reports” for offenders as another misstep.
“Political jingoism is the bane of the justice system.”
Laybourn will still be a name in law practice for the foreseeable future, with his daughter Rhianna overseeing the practice following his departure.
His other children Micaela and James are busy making headway into the worlds of teaching and medicine.
Laybourn’s last trial - the case of Hamilton man Richard Coburn, who beat his on-off partner to death - was concluded earlier this month, with the barrister successfully defending him from a murder charge.
“It was pleasing to go out with a win. I’m also pleased to be retiring while I still have my marbles,” Laybourn grins. “Seriously, I’m more than happy to hand it over to the younger generation.”
And he has a parting message for that generation:
“Don’t abandon your idealism. Idealism is your strength.”