Arthur Easton case: Former police officer on trial takes stand for first time

A contradictory, unreliable, fleeting glimpse.

That's how a former police detective described evidence of a key Crown witness who says he saw a tall Māori man running across the road near to where Arthur Easton was murdered by a bayonet-wielding intruder.

Alan Hall spent 17 years in jail after being found guilty of Easton's murder in his Papakura home in 1985. His conviction was quashed in 2022 after the Supreme Court found a miscarriage of justice had occurred.

Two former police officers, who have name suppression, are on trial in the High Court at Auckland where it's alleged they withheld key witness evidence that could have helped with Hall's defence.

Key to the Crown case is the evidence of witness Ronald Turner, who said he saw a tall Māori man running across the road near to where Easton was murdered.

That evidence was never presented to the jury at the trial of Hall, who is a 5 foot 7 Pākehā.

One of the former police officers entered the witness box on Wednesday and was asked by his lawyer, David Jones KC, about his understanding of the police's disclosure obligations at the time of the investigation.

"Well if issues were serious crime and we had the Crown advising and going to prosecute, the responsibility for any disclosure rested with the Crown," the man said.

Disclosure is where relevant documents about a case are handed to the defence.

Likewise, the former officer felt those responsibilities lay with the Crown when Hall appealed his sentence, which he ultimately did five times.

"Our role was basically to extract from the file the documents that they were seeking to place before the Court of Appeal."

Turner was driving through Papakura on the night of Easton's murder when he saw a person he described as a tall Māori man acting suspiciously and running across Clevedon Road.

The former officer explained to the court how police tested this evidence by carrying out a so-called "sighting experiment", in which officers recreated Turner's account of that night. It concluded that Turner could not have determined the man's ethnicity.

The former officer was asked directly about the allegations he is facing.

"Did you ever do anything, as far as you are concerned, which would have interfered with the proper course of justice?" Jones asked.

"No I did not," the man replied.

"Did you ever have an intent to interfere with the proper course of justice?"

"No I did not," he said.

Questioned by Crown prosecutor John Billington KC, the former officer was asked why Turner's statement to police was different to the version presented at Hall's trial.

"We have some detail around his age, his height, his clothing and his mannerisms. They seem to be the same, don't they?" Billington asked. "Can you identify a difference between the two statements?"

"Well they're obviously couched in a slightly different manner," the man replied.

"The omission of the word Māori would be a difference, wouldn't it?" Billington added.

The defendant reiterated it was for the Crown to decide what evidence to include.

Billington said that as an experienced police officer, the man should have known how important Turner's evidence was.

"If Mr Turner had told the jury that the person he saw was a Māori, the prosecution case failed, didn't it?"

"Not necessarily," the man replied.

The trial before Justice Gault is expected to continue into next week.