September 15, 2012

Crown's selection of texts criticised at drugs trial

By David Clarkson

The Crown?s selective presentation of text messages to the jury has been attacked by the defence in a closing address at the Operation Granite drugs conspiracy trial in the High Court at Christchurch.

Defence closing addresses were completed yesterday, on the 21st day of the trial. Justice Christian Whata will sum up for the jury on Monday before the jury of 11 retires to consider 25 verdicts against five accused. The number of charges has grown during the trial as some counts were split into individual charges.

The attack on the text messages came from Paul McMenamin, defence counsel for Matthew Allen Newton, an unemployed 29-year-old who the Crown has described as the main player in the conspiracy to manufacture and distribute the class A drug methamphetamine in Christchurch. He faces nine charges relating to drugs and a firearm.

McMenamin said the Crown had selected 2000 texts out of about 57,000 which were intercepted during the six-week police surveillance operation from April to June 2010.

He told the jury that the crown?s selection did not give a proper of valid picture of what was happening. He pointed one exchange where the Crown?s schedule of selected texts gave a totally false impression of what was happening, until the ?missing? texts were included.

And yet, the Crown had an obligation to present evidence fairly and honestly, he said.

The evidence was not enough for the Crown to portray Newton as a ?kingpin? in a methamphetamine ring, he told the jury at the end of his hour-long address.

Another defence counsel, Margaret Sewell, said she had wondered if the Crown had produced so much evidence to convince the jury by a process of attrition that the accused must be guilty of something. ?I reproached myself for such a cynical view,? she said.

Her client, 36-year-old Michael Leslie Smith, a mechanic, now faced a large number of drugs and firearms charges ?though he didn?t feature in the evidence very much?.

She said the Crown evidence did not show any agreement between Smith and the alleged co-conspirators to make methamphetamine, and there was very little evidence for the jury to ?make the leap? that he had been involved in manufacture at an address specified by the prosecution.

She said the evidence showed he was a gun collector with a continuing interest in hunting, and had the guns for those reasons.