Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: There's more at stake here than Tamihere’s guilt or innocence

So David Tamihere has finally got what he’s been fighting for for decades. The Supreme Court has quashed his convictions for murdering the two Swedish backpackers all those years ago.

Now this doesn’t mean a retrial will necessarily happen. That’s up to the Crown, which must decide whether it wants to pursue the charges again.

In a nutshell, this all comes down to the jailhouse snitch - Conchie Harris - who claimed Tamihere confessed the murders to him. Two years ago, the Court of Appeal ruled Harris’ evidence could not be relied upon and that it was therefore a miscarriage of justice to find Tamihere guilty.

However, the Court of Appeal still found Tamihere was guilty, based on what it described as new evidence.

The Supreme Court has now ruled that this was not the Court of Appeal’s role. Determining guilt is a matter for a jury, which is why today’s decision has been made.

So we will see what happens next.

But there is more at stake here than just Tamihere’s guilt or innocence. Serious questions now have to be asked about why so many convictions from the 1980s and 1990s are being overturned or quashed in this country.

David Bain. Alan Hall, who spent 19 years in jail for a murder he didn’t commit. Gail Maney. Stephen Stone, whose conviction was overturned a couple of years ago. Teina Pora, who spent 21 years in the slammer for a murder he didn’t commit. Peter Ellis, whose convictions were quashed four years ago. And the list goes on.

In total - and get a load of this - 893 convictions have been overturned in just the past 10 years. Now, obviously not all of those relate to the 1980s and 1990s but given the timing, many of them will.

It’s starting to look like a period in our justice system that demands some tough questions because a clear pattern is emerging. Back then, we relied on false confessions, questionable witnesses like jailhouse snitches, shoddy police work and some deeply troubling conduct from lawyers - some of whom were clearly prepared to bend the rules to get people behind bars.

That may have seemed acceptable at the time, and the public may not have cared, but it’s certainly not acceptable now. The consequences are catching up with us - not least because the country is now facing a growing compensation bill for these miscarriages of justice.

And watch this case closely, because compensation may well be the next chapter.

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