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From the Courts

Mr. Bradford S.M. remanded two youths in custody last week until June 19 after they entered a not guilty plea to a charge of assault as the police refused them bail. This seems an unjustly long period of time to be in jail awaiting trial and makes a travesty of the oft-quoted but somewhat ill-founded legal principle that a person is innocent until proven guilty. [unclear: Furthermore], it is necessary to obtain a person's consent if they are to be retained in custody before conviction for more than a week and I'd like to know how the consent of these two was obtained.

It's quite possible that they didn't know what they were consenting to as was obvious in a similar case heard before Mr. Hobbs S.M., in which three men were charged with escaping and the police wanted them remanded in custody for over one week. Only one consented for the three of them and he wasn't too sure but the police got what they wanted anyway.

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Last week Mr. Bradford S.M. convicted a man for being a Rogue and a Vagabond. This quaintly worded offence is another which comes under the vagrancy laws which extend the power of the police over the freedom of the individual and as such is a genuine social force. It has three legal requirements that must be fulfilled, you must be (i) a suspected person (ii) frequenting a public place (iii) with felonious intent. It turned out that this man had been apprehended outside the Kilburnie [sic] Men's toilets after having been in the area for half an hour, having entered the toilets twice during that time while other men were in there but had done nothing else. After being apprehended he admitted being a homosexual and said he was waiting for a 'pick-up'.

This was sufficient for him to be convicted which shows how little is needed to fulfil the legal requirements. It also shows how the law can be used to harass minority groups, because it is very easy to be a suspected person, you need only a policeman to think so, and how hard it must be to enjoy normal human rights that so many of us take for granted.

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A 60 year old man who appeared before Mr. Sullivan S.M. on a charge of fighting in a public place was discharged under S.42 Criminal Justice Act. This was a fair decision considering the man's age and the fact that it was his first offence. However, I wonder if he would have been treated the same if he hadn't been a University lecturer. Mr. Sullivan said that it must be an anathema for this man to appear before the court and the humiliation that he undoubtedly must have felt was punishment enough. Isn't it humiliating for anyone to appear before the court, especially on their first offence, yet Mr. Sullivan didn't sympathise with anyone else in the same way. It sounded a bit like Ford pardoning Nixon ...

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It's very good to see that there is an interpreter in the Magistrate's Court for Polynesians. This is a recognition that there is more than one culture in New Zealand on one level at least and an indication that the courts are aware of this and are prepared to go part way towards understanding what is one of the big problems that exist not only in the legal system but society as a whole.

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It is a fair enough comment that this column is unrepresentative of what goes on in the Magistrate's Court, simply because it doesn't attempt to be representative. It is written from a point of view which is critical, which is the role it should play, to point out anomalies, even 'injustices' in the court's working as well as any good features worth noting. Personally, I believe in the court system as a whole (which might well show my own conditioning) but I do not believe it is by any means perfect.

Further I would stress that the incidents recorded here are fortunately in the minority, yet they occur sufficiently often not to be ignored and publishing them is important to get a better overall understanding of our legal process. Other areas of the media tend to ignore these events and concentrate more on sensationalising court events like all the lurid details that 'Truth' prints which tend to reinforce the public attitude towards criminal stereotypes.