Crown to appeal fine

Press, 29 February 1984, Page 8

Crown to appeal fine

PA Wellington A court decision awarding $l5OO damages to a man for unlawful arrest and detention at the 1983 Waitangi Day celebrations will be appealed by the Crown Law Office. The Solicitor-General, Mr D. P. Neazor, authorised the appeal yesterday. Papers will be filed within the next few days. The Prime Minister, Sir Robert Muldoon, said in January that the decision should be appealed. He said

the judgment appeared to be “a thoroughly bad decision.” In a written judgment delivered in January on a civil case heard in the District Court at Kaikohe, Judge Taylor ruled in favour of Gerard Edmund Reid. The Judge said there was no evidence to support the contention that there was anything unlawful done by the plaintiff, or, for that matter, any member of a protest group from the time they assembled at the Wai-.

tangi bridge until they were arrested. He said the plaintiff on the balance of probability was subject to quite unnecessarily vigorous attention on his arrest and during his incarceration. The Judge said to be compelled to remain in a bus at times without sufficient seats for all the defendants and with the plaintiffs hands cuffed behind his back for more than four hours was totally unjustified. He said there had been

powers under the Police Offences Act for arrest for an anticipated breach of the peace but this was now specifically repealed by the Crimes Act, 1981. “We are left only with a power to arrest after a past or present breach of the peace has occurred or is occurring,” he said. The Minister of Police, Mr Couch, said after the decision had been given that if the police could not use their discretion “then there is something very horribly wrong with the law.”