UK judges quash New Zealand murder conviction

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/07/mark-lundy-new-zealand-murder-conviction-quashed

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A businessman who was given a life sentence after being found guilty of murdering his wife and seven-year-old daughter in New Zealand has won an appeal after challenging his conviction in a London court.

New Zealander Mark Lundy, who is in his mid-50s, asked the judicial committee of the privy council to analyse his case more than a decade after a jury in New Zealand concluded that he had attacked his wife, Christine, 38, and daughter Amber with a tomahawk-like weapon at the family home in Palmerston North.

Five judges – four from the UK supreme court and a senior New Zealand judge – heard Lundy's appeal at the supreme court building in central London in June, and on Monday they ruled in his favour.

They said the murder convictions should be quashed and a new trial should take place in New Zealand. Judges said Lundy should remain in custody until the New Zealand high court had considered whether he should be freed on bail pending a new trial.

Christine and Amber Lundy died in August 2000. Lundy was convicted of murder following a trial in March 2002, and he was given a mandatory life sentence and told he would not be considered for parole until he had served at least 20 years. New Zealand's court of appeal dismissed a challenge against the conviction in August 2002.

Lundy's lawyers wanted fresh evidence to be considered. On Monday the judges said that evidence was "clearly credible" and cast doubt on methods used by prosecutors to establish times of death.

The judicial committee of the privy council is the highest court of appeal for the British empire and can hear appeals from cases originating in Commonwealth or former Commonwealth countries.

Legal experts said the committee was in effect sitting as a New Zealand supreme court. They said New Zealand now had a supreme court, but had not when Lundy was convicted.

"The new evidence in this case clearly is credible," a committee spokesman said in a summary of the judges' ruling. "[Judges] then have to decide whether Mr Lundy's conviction was safe, given the evidence emerging after trial.

"The test in New Zealand, as in the United Kingdom, as to whether a conviction was safe in these circumstances is whether the new evidence might reasonably have led to an acquittal. On that basis, [judges] hold that, in light of the new evidence, Mr Lundy's conviction could not be considered safe. Since the trial, a 'welter of evidence' from reputable consultants has cast doubt on the methods the crown had relied on to establish the time of death based on the contents of the victims' stomachs."

He added: "Having concluded that the convictions should be quashed, [judges] consider that the best course is to remit the case to the [New Zealand] high court rather than to the [New Zealand] court of appeal because the divisions between the experts are so profound, they range over so many areas and they relate to matters which are so central to the guilt or innocence of the appellant that … they may only properly be resolved by the triers of fact in a trial where a suitable and searching inquiry into all these areas of dispute may take place."

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