Fulcher granted further stay against charges

Press, 13 July 1985, Page 8

Fulcher granted further stay against charges

By

CHRIS PETERS

NZPA staff correspondent Sydney Peter Fulcher will on Monday open his case in Sydney to the Court of Appeal against his extradition to New Zealand on bank robbery charges. The Court last evening granted him a stay until Mondaj' of the extradition ordered on Thursday in the New South Wales Supreme Court by Mr Justice Wood, but ordered he remain in custody in Long Bay Jail. Fulcher’s counsel, Mr Charles Goldberg, yesterday sought leave to appeal on five counts. He made two submissions: that Mr Justice Wood should have found the New Zealand allegations against Fulcher were not made in good faith as required by the Extradition Act; and submitted there was insufficient evidence to warrant Fulcher’s being returned to New Zea-

land, that there had been too great a passage of time between the 1980 abortive Auckland robbery Fulcher is charged with taking part in and now, and that his extradition was contrary to Australia’s Race Discrimination Act Mr David Bennett, Q.C., counsel for the Director of Public Prosecutions, who is representing the New Zealand police, asked the three Court of Appeal judges to deal with the appeal on the spot. “I submit that this appeal is so demonstrably hopeless that I could persuade your honours in five minutes of that,” he said. “If I can do so I would ask the Court to deal with it now.” But the Court’s president, Mr Justice Hope, told Mr Bennett that the Court would deal with the matter “expeditiously but not peremptorily.”