Thomas backers to ask for new hearing

Press, 28 September 1976, Page 4

Thomas backers to ask for new hearing

PA Auckland Thomas case investigators plan a further approach to the Government seeking a judicial hearing of evidence which they say warrants quashing of the Crewe murder convictions. They will cite two recent British precedents, new and recently sworn evidence on crucial aspects of the Crown's case, plus the accumulation of facts which they have built up in a threei-year study of the conviction of Arthur Alan Thomas.

In Britain, the Court of Appeal quashed a conviction for murder against three boys after study of both new and old evidence, in a hearing which the Thomas investigators, Dr T. J. Sprott and Mr Pat Booth, say is a blueprint for the hearing they believe new Thomas evidence warrants. Now, the British Government has gone a stage further It has ordered a former High Court Judge, Sir Henry Fisher, to investigate the circumstances which caused the wrongful conviction and imprisonment of the three boys. The inquiry, which will cost perhaps $500,000 and which has five Queen’s Counsel appearing, is expected to last two months. In New Zealand, new affidavits contradict Crown testimony linking the axle found with Harvey Crewe’s body as having come from the Thomas farm at the time of the murders. Both the axle and the Thomas rifle, sole remaining key exhibits since others were destroyed by the police after the second; Thomas trial, are now in the hands of the two Thomas investigators for further forensic tests. Dr Sprott is also holding what is believed to be the last remnant of the wire found around Harvey Crewe’s body; wire which he says does not match other samples from the Thomas farm. Other investigations cover-

ing hundreds of miles have also produced new evidence on the lives of both Jeanette Crewe and Arthur Thomas before the murders. In a joint statement, Dr Sprott and Mr Booth have said: “The British Appeal Court decision and the Government inquiry which has followed show the action which should be taken here. “There is new evidence which in our view clearly faults the verdicts of the two Thomas trials and which should be heard in the context of the Crown’s case.

“The British developments in the most recent case is only one of several reversals of decisions — notably the release of George Davis after the police case against him was faulted, and the release after seven years of Patrick Meehan, after another man confessed to the murder he had been convicted of. “We have been painstaking and conscientious in our collection and assessment of facts, and we believe that the same approach by the Gov-

ernment — taking the British precedents as its pattern — should see these facts assessed by a new judicial hearing. “Such a hearing should be charged with discovery of the truth and not an analysis of the merits of two arguments mounted and fought out in the adversary pattern which has gone so far in preventing the facts emerging in previous hearings. “Truth, not judicial justification, should be the goal.’’ Because the research is being done outside their norma professional duties, and with out the resources available t< State departments, the tw< men could not put a time or completion of the case foconsideration by the Govern ment. (In November, ArthuThomas will have been ir custody for six years aftethe murder of the Crewes ai Pukekawa on June 17, 1970 He was permitted out of Hr gaol under escort for a fev hour? earlier this year to visi: his mother who was serious! ill.)