Law Society criticises information ban

Press, 24 April 1986, Page 19

Law Society criticises information ban

PA Auckland The public issues committee of the Auckland District Law Society has called for a liberalisation of the police attitude to disclosing information to defendants before trials. People charged with criminal offences are not permitted access to information held by the prosecution which might assist them in their defence. The committee, a group of Auckland lawyers appointed by the society, says this lack of access is from time to time the basis of a serious com-

plaint against New Zealand’s system of criminal justice. The committee’s report refers to such a complaint made by Arthur Allan Thomas which the Commission of Inquiry into the Thomas case held to be well founded. The report also mentions complaints of wrongful withholding of information by the prosecution in a murder case in Australia concerning Mrs Lindy Chamberlain. However, it is the case of Dean Wickcliffe that the report treats at length. Wickcliffe, convicted in May, 1972, of the murder

of a Wellington jeweller, was sentenced to life imprisonment He has since remained in prison, refusing opportunities of parole. The report says that the Wickcliffe case raised a number of “important and troubling” questions about the adequacy of disclosure by the prosecution of information. “The case raises both questions of the relevant law which governs the conduct of criminal proceedings and the question of the interrelationship between that law and the provisions of the Official Information Act, 1982.”