Liz And Jonathan Appeared In Court - 17th Jan

NZ Police Still Unwilling To Release The Required Footage From The Airport

Excerpt below is by Counterspin Media:

Today [Wednesday the 17th of January], Liz Gunn and cameraman Jonathan Clark appeared in the Manukau District Court, facing a number of charges, including an alleged assault, at Auckland Airport early last year.

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The legal team, representing the pair, has requested police release the airport CCTV, that would exonerate their clients but they have not been forthcoming with the entire coverage, providing only an angle that is obscured by a column.

The presiding judge has ordered the police to provide the requested footage or risk the case being dismissed.

Could this be yet another example of police corruption, closing ranks, and protecting their own?

The pair are back in court on May 7th at 10am and maintain their position that the assault was conducted by the police not the other way around as police have alleged.

Transcript of Liz’s piece to camera outside court - filmed by Counterspin Media.

I'm standing here outside the Manukau District Court, our latest court appearance, and last time Jonathan and I went, we obviously appealed to the judge for the film footage from the airport and for Jonathan's camera to be released to us by the police.

Here we are nearly a year on since that assault on me, luckily I've had a whole series of ozone injections and that's really helped with my shoulder which was in terrible pain at the end of last year.

But today, rather unnervingly, we have a new judge and he absolutely was not going to dismiss the case, even though I feel strongly that Justice would have called for that.

And the reason I say that is the police are dragging their heels.

It's really wrong for the side with all the access to the footage, and in their documentation they refer to the footage, and then the defence don't have the same footage, so we can't prepare our case.

And yet the judge went ahead anyway and decided to set down a hearing in May, May the 7th, when in fact, to my way of thinking as somebody legally trained, I was really surprised that it wasn't dismissed given that we, the defence, have no access to the fundamental evidence - that is the camera angles used in the airport and of course to the cards that were in Jonathan's camera - they gave an undertaking last time and a judge in the last hearing was a different judge, was very angry, very annoyed at the police for not producing the evidence so that we could prepare. And yet here we have a hearing and we don't have the evidence.

The one concession he made today to his credit, I’ll always give credit where it is due, is that if the police don't produce that evidence within 21 days of today (17th January, 2023), then our lawyer can apply it to have the case dismissed because of what the police are doing.

But I worry as somebody legally trained, I worry for, yes, the cumbersome way our justice system works. The wheels of justice feel incredibly stuck and rusty at the moment.

But I worry too, could there be a sanctioning of any kind of injustice in setting down a hearing when we have not had access to the evidence, and its crucial evidence, and there are multiple camera angles in the airport.

The only camera angle made visible to us is one in which the officer who assaulted me as he’s leaning over me and assaulting me is obscured by a pillar in the airport.

It makes no sense.

I have, until the last few years, always believed that New Zealand was a fundamentally Just country and that our judiciary are committed to upholding justice.

This case is one of a number that will test that belief to the max.

I am very disappointed it wasn't thrown out today for the police dragging the chain and not coming through on the explicit and annoyed judges' instructions in the last hearing.

Instead, somebody, we don’t know who, has changed the judge, and he set it down for May the 7th and we have not had access to what the police have had access to.

You can't have justice that runs like that.

So to the police it's time to reveal the footage that shows a cop who heavily assaulted me to such an extent that there were tears and pulls all around my shoulder blade, underneath my arm, right up my back. And that pain that I was in, most mornings I’ve become used to waking between 3 and 5 in the morning in very bad nerve pain. But luckily those injections are helping to lessen it.

That is completely wrong. That is not the police force I want. That is a police force committed to force and NOT to reason.

So, please support us on May the 7th. Twenty one days from now, if the police have not produced the evidence, we will be applying to dismiss this case.

It does highlight some very grave problems in our justice and police system in New Zealand.