Police Minister John Banks expects the Police Complaints Authority to inquire into questions arising from the documentary The Remand of Ivan Curry, screened by Television New Zealand last night.
Ivan Curry is a profoundly deaf man who was held in custody for two years after being charged with a murder he did not commit.
In August 1988 he was arrested for the murder of his baby nephew at Waitotara, near Wanganui. The evidence against him was a four-page written confession.
The documentary said Mr Curry, who cannot read or write, found out a year after being remanded in prison that he had been charged with murder. It was another year before he was released.
Association of the Deaf president Jennifer Brain said neither police nor the courts gave Mr Curry “proper communication rights” through the use of a professional sign language interpreter.
“Deaf people often go through the education, health and justice systems without an interpreter,” Ms Brain said in a statement.
“No other New Zealanders have so little recognition of the basic right to communicate.”
But Wanganui police today criticised the documentary, saying it was meant to highlight the problems of deaf people in custody, “but it soon veered off that and became an attack on the credibility of the police.”
“It shows us, and goes out of its way to show us, in a very poor light. It almost mocks the interview which one of our officers took from the accused in saying that it was impossible that he could have conveyed what was produced to the court,” Wanganui police district commander John Thurston told Radio New Zealand today.
“We completely disagree with that and we also know that while Ivan Curry is pre-lingually deaf, he is not totally deaf.
“There are other aspects raised — that here’s this poor chap in Kaitoke Prison for all those months and he didn’t know why he was there, well we say that’s just a load of rubbish.
“Of course he knew why he was there. He was visited by relatives, he was visited by counsel and of course he was there with fellow inmates. There’s no way that he sat out there and didn’t know that he’d been charged with murder. We just totally reject that.”
Mr Banks said the documentary had shown just one side of the story.
“The police are absolutely adamant the prosecution was taken in good faith and they will strongly defend the substance and accuracy of many aspects of the documentary,” he told Radio New Zealand.
Mr Banks said he had a letter from the documentary’s producer and would take very seriously the complaints (against the police) raised in it.
“I will deliver it to the Commissioner of Police, John Jamieson, who will pass it on immediately to Mr Justice Jeffries, the chairman of the Statutory Independent Police Complaints Authority,” Mr Banks said. — NZPA
