David Yallop is no Emile Zola

Press, 7 November 1978, Page 19

David Yallop is no Emile Zola

STEPHEN ERBER is a barrister and solicitor who has practised in common law in Christchurch for 14 years and has lectured in law at the University of Canterbury. “The Pi •ess” asked him to review David Yallop’s sensational book. "Beyond Reasonable Doubt?”, an inquiry into the Thomas case. He insists: “This claims to be no more than a review of the book, not a review of the case.”

It is inevitable that when an author has a barrow to push he pushes it for all that it is worth — and there is nothing wrong in that. But in doing so a certain lack of perspective and restraint becomes evident and, indeed, inevitable.

On the dust jacket of his book — “Beyond Reasonable Doubt?” an inquiry into the Arthur Thomas case — it is said that David Yallop was on holiday in New Zealand "when asked to write this book. At that time he had never heard of Arthur Thomas.”

By whom was he asked, and what was he told about the Thomas case? These are relevant questions when one comes to consider how dispassionate and steady was the author’s approach to the task he had been set. It seems that Mr Yallop took about a year to research and write the book, and without doubt he reveals matters and voices concerns which, if they are accepted, would cause any sensible person disquiet. The views Mr Yallop has extracted from Mr Paul Temm, Q.C., Thomas’s first counsel, are disconcerting to say the least. The way in which the case was handled by th? Crown seems to be open to more than just criticism.

If it be true that the jurv list in the second trial was "vetted’ by the Crown in the ways described. and if it be true Mat the Crown actively obsti’rted the defence in its legitimate inquiries and withheld from the defence evidence or knowledge prejudicial to the Crown

case, then one can only agree with Mr Yallop that that sort of conduct “was not proper.” If this sort of conduct did occur, not only was it “not proper,” it departed shamefully from the standards of fairness which the Crown is enjoined to observe in criminal prosecutions.

If Mr Yallop is right, the conduct of the Crown case, from the outset, exhibited a feverish desire for a conviction — a desire uninhibited by the injunction to fairly, firmly. completely, and without needless emotion place before the Court all the facts upon which it relies, favourable or otherwise — and which, in their totality, might beyond a reasonable doubt support a conviction.

The trouble with this book is that the good points to be made would

have been so much more persuasive had they been made in a balanced way without resort to unnecessary hyperbole. One cannot accuse Mr Yallop of being dispassionate; and, to be fair, he does not claim to be so. Some important conclusions depend upon the reader accepting that the author, while having his own firm views, has his feet firmly on the ground, and is a reliable and balanced reporter. One cannot be confident that this is the case with Mr Yallop and this book.

For example, if it is accepted that the Crewes’ baby, Rochelle, was fed during the five or so days between the murders and their discovery (a matter of.some dispute), then it is important to find out if possible who fed the child. II is a fearful enough thing to think of this child

alone for five days with only intermittent and fleeting visits when she was fed. But Mr Yallop goes' further. We are told that “an innocent defenceless baby girl of 18 months of age had been left in a Kafkaesque situation. Abandoned in a blood-spattered farm in Pukekawa. It shook the nation rigid.” Did it? “It was this aspect and this aspect alone that freaked a nation.” Did it really? Later, Mr Yallop says that the reaction of many people to the Thomas case “has shaken the Establishment of New Zealand to its roots.” With these sorts of hyperbole one really does begin to wonder how far One can trust Mr Yallop’s vehement judgments upon the facts. His judgment on legal institutions seems to have fared just as indifferently. In 1954, there was a family protection case over the will of Harvey Crewe’s father. Mrs Crewe and the children had been excluded by her late hus* band from his estate. The Court said that the exclusion of his wife and children was wrong, and the Chief Justice ordered that Mrs Crewe and the children be given financial relief out of the estate.

Of this sensible, re asoned. and reasonable ar>- | proach' by. the Court (and toe COUrt Oi Appeal; io correct the testator’s lack of attention to his duty, Mr Yallop says:— “The judgment was a clear and startling indication that in this world you cannot leave your money and assets as you please but only as the Court pleases.”

profound lack of know- I ledge on the part of the , author of the philosophy behind the Family Protection Act. Nor does Mr Yallop | seem adequately to appreciate the situation of the jury. His last chapter is entitled “Flow Could Two Juries Be Wrong?” He says that neither jury i heard all of the evidence j and that juries are not infallible. Certainly, it seems pretty likely that they did not hear all of the facts. That alone may have made the difference in the verdicts. It may not have done so. It is a smug man’s corm fort to say that there are other (quoted) examples where juries have been wrong. What Mr Yallop does not do is to make a real answer to the evident proposition that both juries heard Thomas and . did not believe him. That juries in other cases may have been fallible does not i establish that these juries were wrong.

There are many aspects of the Thomas case which are unsatisfactory. Painstakingly, and with attention to detail. Mr Yallop makes it clear what these are, and there is no denying that there is a deal of force in what he savs.

That observation is not only misleading and wrong, it is quite unbalanced and demonstrates a

But just as he warns people (in the words of a Judge m another case) not to "readily believe what they anxiously desire,” he himself gives that very impression. An assumption of truth is, as he points out, a dangerous thing for one seeks to gather arguments or facts to support the truth of the assumption.

What is so unfortunate in this book is the author’s lack of restraint resulting in a vulgar commercial style of writing which does not make the reader confident that his judgments and assessments are as sound as they could be. Just as the author reluctantly abandons a comparison between the Thomas case and the Dreyfus affair, so there is no comparison betwen David Yallop and Emile Zola.