Did Police wine and dine Thomas jury?
Arthur Allen Thomas
According to the New Zealand Herald, the cops and the Justice Department played their role in the Thomas verdict. The paper states that “Mr Williams said the second jury drank alcohol with the police, attended a boxing match and went to cabarets on Friday nights.
The QC said the Justice Department picked up the liquor bill and it is the only time he has heard of a jury being supplied with alcohol.”
Mr. Williams is Peter Williams, QC, who represented the pardoned Mr Thomas at the 1980 royal commission of inquiry. He thinks that a judge from overseas, preferably Britain, should be brought to New Zealand to review the handling of both murder trials. Williams also hints in the article to possible judicial misconduct.
The Crewes disappeared from their blood-spattered Waikato New Zealand home in June 1970. Their daughter Rochelle, 2, was found crying in her cot five days after the Crewes were last seen. Farmer Arthur Allan Thomas was convicted of murder, but was pardoned in 1979 after mounting public protest and the personal intervention of Prime Minister Rob Muldoon. A Royal Commission set up to investigate the case found inquiry head Detective Inspector Bruce Hutton and Johnston had planted a rifle shell casing at the Crewe house to implicate Thomas.
Rochelle Crewe got a partly positive answer to her prayers. Her parents’ murder case will be reviewed but not re-opened. New Zealand Deputy Commissioner Rob Pope said today that police have appointed a senior investigator, Northern Region Senior Investigator Detective Superintendent Andy Lovelock, to conduct a thorough analysis and assessment of the homicide file in an endeavour to answer questions raised by Rochelle Crewe.
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To be continued…
Categories: Cold Case News, Forensics, Miscarriages of Justice, Unsolved
Tags: Actual Innocence, arthur allen thomas, Autopsy, Ballistics, Crime Labs, Crime Scene, Evidence, Expert Testimony, Faulty Evidence, Finger Printing, Forensics, Gun Fire, Identification, Investigations Division, Jeanette and Harvey Crewe, Miscarriage of Justice, New Zealand, Police, Prisons, Prosecutorial Misconduct, Unsolved Homicide, Victim, Witnesses, Wrongful Convictions