Fallout from the Labour Party summer camp case continues as the lawyers involved in the trial are at odds over the details.
The prosecutor in the Labour Party summer camp trial says the Crown does not accept there was no sexual offending, despite taking a downgraded plea deal to resolve the case.
The partner at the law firm Meredith Connell, which holds the prosecution warrant for Auckland, added "the correct position" was that the Crown "did not consider it necessary in the public interest for the jury to resolve the point".
He said the defendant's plea offer came during the evidence of the second male complainant.
"It necessarily involved the defendant recognising that the touching of the two males did happen largely in the way the Crown alleged, but disputing that the defendant knew either that touching was indecent or of the circumstances that made it indecent," Johnstone said.
"And it necessarily involved the Crown accepting that if guilty pleas were entered to assaults on the two males, there was insufficient public interest in continuing the prosecution. No more than that."