'An unforgivable miscarriage of justice' - police officers accused of withholding vital evidence in Alan Hall case

The behaviour of two police officers - who withheld vital evidence in an investigation which led to the wrongful conviction of Alan Hall in the 1980s - has been described as an "unforgivable miscarriage of justice".

The two men still cannot be named, but Justice Gault amended a suppression order on Monday, meaning it can be revealed for the first time that the two defendants were police officers involved in the investigation.

They have been charged with wilfully attempting to obstruct, prevent, pervert or defeat the course of justice.

Both men have pleaded not guilty.

A third man was also charged over Hall's wrongful conviction, but he has since died.

Aged 23 at the time of his conviction, Hall was sentenced to life in prison for the 1985 murder of Arthur Easton in his Papakura home. His sentence was quashed by the Supreme Court in 2022 after he had spent 17 years in prison.

It is alleged the officers deliberately excluded the crucial testimony of witness Ronald Turner, who said the person he had seen running across Clevedon Road on the night of 13 October 1985 was a large Māori man. Hall was a slight, Pākehā man.

Crown prosecutor John Billington KC said had this information been provided to Hall's defence teams, it would have destroyed the police case.

"He [Turner] was interviewed specifically on the issue again of what he had seen and he said 'I'm 100 percent certain the person I saw was a Māori'.

"Mr Hall is and was a 5' 7" Pākehā, so if this identification witness the police were putting forward was correct that that offender was a male Māori nearly six foot tall it, certainly wasn't Mr Hall."

Billington said this was either a case of "extreme incompetence or deliberate wrongful strategy". He argued it was a case of the latter.

"Mr Hall was convicted on the basis of that evidence, that is by the omission from the one identification witness, of the reference to the ethnicity of the alleged offender.

"Without these departures, which I have just identified to you, there was insufficient evidence either to either charge Mr Hall or to convict him.

"That, your Honour, is how simple this case is," he told Justice Gault.

"By the omission of the most crucial parts of the evidence repeated by Mr Turner on three occasions, the deliberate alteration of the evidence for trial and the failure to disclose Mr Turner's prior statements to the defence and ultimately therefore deprive the defence, the trial judge, the jury and the Court of Appeal led to this unforgivable miscarriage of justice."

One of the defendant's lawyer's, David Jones KC, accused the prosecution of making "hyperbolic statements" based on Turner's statements.

"We have of course the acknowledgement by Mr Hall that he was the owner of the bayonet, we have the acknowledgement that he had possession of the balaclava - the two items left by the intruder at the scene. We have the five different explanations he gave for no longer having in his possession," he said.

"With respect, the Turner statement needs to be looked at in context."

In a brief statement, the other defendant's lawyer Paul Wicks KC said he endorsed Jones' comments.

"I will just simply say that Mr *'s case is that he had no intention to and undertook no acts that were motivated by him seeking to wilfully attempt to prevent, or defeat the course of justice."

Hall was present in the public gallery, alongside his brothers Geoff and Greg.

The trial is expected to take about two weeks.