Police have been partly exonerated for their handling of the 1988 case in which Ivan Curry, who is profoundly deaf, was charged with murder and later acquitted.
However, the Police Complaints Authority said in its report yesterday that there were deficiencies in police work on the case.
It recommended that the two officers involved in interviewing in the case be given “such counselling as the police commissioner believes appropriate.”
The authority found police and the Crown “acted properly” in charging Mr Curry with the murder of 15-month-old Sandy Wirihana-Tawake.
Mr Curry was at home alone in Wanganui with the child when the death apparently happened.
An autopsy showed the child had broken ribs and injuries to his heart and liver. He died from internal bleeding. The pathologist said his injuries were consistent with blows to the chest.
Police arrested and charged Mr Curry in October 1988 and he spent nearly two years in prison before being acquitted. The case involved two High Court hearings and a Court of Appeal ruling.
The authority said no valid criticism could be made of the police or the justice system for the delay in acquitting Mr Curry.
The report’s author, High Court judge Mr Justice Jeffries, described the case as most unusual and said it raised “difficult and complex issues in fact and law”.
A complaint listing 11 areas of concern about the case was lodged with the authority in July in the wake of a dramatised television programme about Mr Curry’s arrest and remand.
Mr Justice Jeffries said six of the complaints lodged by the programme’s producer, Keith Hunter, were not relevant to his inquiry.
His report concentrated on five complaints, including the interviewing of Mr Curry, the failure of police to investigate evidence and the delay in resolving the case.
Mr Justice Jeffries said police misjudged the case by assigning a junior officer to interview Mr Curry. It was an extraordinarily difficult task to interview a profoundly deaf person who was initially regarded as a suspect and a witness.
However, Mr Justice Jeffries said: “Any homicide inquiry is always attended by tension, especially at the beginning, when the issues are usually anything but clear.”
He found that police failed to properly investigate a report that the boy’s mother, Whetu Curry, had applied cardiopulmonary resuscitation to her son’s chest about the time of death.
If police had uncovered Mrs Curry’s evidence, as presented in court, the charges against Mr Curry would have been dropped, Mr Justice Jeffries said.
Police were not responsible for a delay of 22 months between arrest and trial. The regrettable delay was the result of unusually determined efforts by Mr Curry’s lawyers to exclude evidence from the trial.
“Apart from the fact that Ivan Curry was in custody, the delay was in his interest,” the judge said.
He could not find any justified criticism of police for turning down bail applications made by Mr Curry’s lawyers.
Mr Hunter said the authority’s report was disappointing because it did not acknowledge that Mr Curry was entitled to compensation for his 22 months in prison.
In view of the report’s finding that police work was deficient, Mr Hunter said he could not accept that police and the Crown acted properly in charging Mr Curry with murder.
“If the arrest of Ivan Curry was proper police performance, then it makes a sad commentary on normal police practice in New Zealand,” he said.
Mr Hunter was concerned that so many issues raised in his complaint had not been resolved.
The report had accepted, without any evaluation, conflicting statements made by police officers, he said.
“The purpose of my complaint was to discover the truth. The authority has not done that,” Mr Hunter said. — NZPA
