New rape trial ordered

Press, 13 October 1983, Page 4

New rape trial ordered

PA Wellington A man defended by counsel who did not have a practising certificate as a barrister has had a rape conviction quashed and a

new trial ordered by the Court of Appeal. On February, 1982, Raymond Hilan Leith, aged 21, a landscaper, was found guilty in the High Court at

Wellington of raping a girl, aged 17, in Porirua on June 5, 1981, and was sentenced to five years jail. Yesterday the Court of Appeal, comprising Mr Justice Cooke, Mr Justice Somers and Mr Justice Bisson, ordered a new trial. Counsel who had defended Leith had not renewed his practising certifcate, the Judgment said. It was possible for a practitioner to overlook renewing his certificate. In some cases lack of a certificate would be mere technicality. But the present case was much less simple. There was an affidavit by Leith in which he claimed, among other things, that his counsel was suffering from alcoholism at the relevant time. “While that counsel and a solicitor have made affidavits to the effect that in February, 1982 he was not under the influence of that condition, a letter from the secretary of the district law society states that on August 18, 1982, the counsel of the society resolved that they were satisfied that, owing to physical and mental disability, he was unable to perform his professional duties.

“Accordingly the council then ordered that he should not practise as a barrister or a solicitor until he had satisfied them that he was no longer incapacitated. “Although that, was six months after the trial, it appears that the matters which culminated in the council’s resolution must have been occurring over a considerable period of time.”

Except possibly in one respect the barrister’s handling of the defence case at the trial appeared to have been entirely competent.