That was a terrible enough story — how through the machinations of the clogged justice system and a few case difficulties such a delay could occur — but when the documentary maker, Keith Hunter, began his research he uncovered a far more frightening story.
It was that of a man arrested for a murder he did not commit who was kept in jail through lack of police investigations then turned back to the streets with nothing, not even an apology.
Ivan Curry, who has been profoundly deaf since before he could speak, was arrested for the murder of his 15-month-old nephew in Wanganui in August 1988.
For over a year, while on remand in prison, Curry believed he was in jail for a drink-driving offence or some drunken activity. He had not understood throughout police interviews and their “investigation” that he was being charged for murder.
Yet the police said they had two written confessions to the murder from Curry. One was ended in his own handwriting, that his statement was true and had been recorded correctly.
The only problem was, as his defence counsel in the trial discovered, Curry could not read or write.
As Hunter read the court transcripts he came to realise the full extent of Curry’s vulnerability.
Through defence counsel questions prosecution witnesses revealed gaps in the police evidence and the errors they were making in their own evidence.
Curry had little interpretation skills made available to him. The constable who interviewed him believed he could lip-read and was convinced he had understood the questions relating to the murder.
The jury, in the 1990 trial, took just two hours to find Curry not guilty and some of them explain their feelings about the case in The Remand of Ivan Curry.
Because the story is unravelled through the court proceedings, Hunter, an experienced drama as well as documentary director, has chosen to recreate the courtroom. Actors play the defence counsel and police and Ivan Curry appears as himself.
Added to it are interviews with family and neighbours of Curry, the one policeman who would agree to be interviewed and with Curry’s defence counsel.
Intertwining interviews with the real people with the re-creation brings alive the court proceedings, says Hunter, as well as providing the most straightforward way of telling the story.
So important is the story that TVNZ told Hunter to make it to the length he felt it deserved. Usually a documentary would be 46 minutes, but The Remand of Ivan Curry is 64 minutes.
It ends with Curry free to go — but with two years of his life gone and seemingly no course open to him to find financial compensation.
His arrest was not wrongful, Hunter says, in the sense that the police believed they had his confession to the crime.
Hunter has written to the Minister of Justice, Mr Graham, requesting that an ex gratia payment be considered for Curry, who now lives in an undisclosed small North Island town with his wife, Whetu.
Hunter hopes his call for the wrongful treatment of Curry to be at least partially put right will be joined by many others after tomorrow night’s screening.
The story, he says, should worry people. Ivan Curry is not the only vulnerable person to have come before the New Zealand courts, nor will he be the last.
Plea for sign aid
The National Foundation for the Deaf, in a statement released to coincide with the screening of The Remand of Ivan Curry, says it believes the case to be “only the tip of the iceberg,” with deaf people often going through dealings with the Justice, Education and Health Departments without the assistance of interpreters.
The foundation wants official recognition of sign language as a legitimate language which requires interpreters.
This is essential, it says, for the basic right of communication for deaf people to be met.
The foundation stipulates that this means New Zealand sign language, as opposed to signed English, which is only a recent invention.
At the moment there are only four trained interpreters in New Zealand to meet the needs of 25,000 deaf people.
