MEDIA
Two prisoners accused of taking part in a fatal assault inside the country’s only maximum security prison have been found not guilty of Blake Lee’s murder, while another has been found guilty of manslaughter.
Lopeti Telefoni was found not guilty of murder, but guilty of manslaughter, on Tuesday after a three-week trial at the High Court in Auckland.
In maximum-security prison, sometimes it's attack or be attacked.
That's what an inmate's lawyer told the Blake John Lee murder trial today in her closing address.
Paul Simon Tuliloa, Riki Wiremu Ngamoki and Lopeti Telefoni have all pleaded not guilty to murder.
A maximum security prisoner has confirmed stomping on an unconscious prisoner as he lay on the ground but says he had no intention to kill the fellow inmate.
Lopeti Telefoni is one of three prisoners charged with murdering inmate Blake Lee and began giving evidence in his own defence at the High Court in Auckland on Wednesday.
A former representative rugby player mailed methamphetamine around the country hidden inside face masks during a Covid-19 lockdown, a court has heard.
The defendant has pleaded guilty at the Dunedin District Court to six drug charges, stemming from a police sting last year.
Because of a suppression order, he cannot be named, nor can the team he previously played for be disclosed for fear of identifying the drug dealer.
According to court documents, police became aware of the defendant supplying the class-A drug in the Otago region in April last year.
Three-quarters of lawyers say their mental health has suffered because of their work, according to a new survey.
Nearly 250 members of the Aotearoa Lawyers Working Union responded to its 2020 Employment Information Survey, which was released in March.
Of the 181 members who said their mental health had suffered, 101 said they had suffered stress, anxiety and burnout.
The Corrections department has refused to allow Jared Savage's best-selling book Gangland inside prison on the grounds that it "promotes violence and drug use".
An inmate at Otago Corrections Facility in Dunedin was sent a copy of the book – but it was banned and confiscated. The prisoner is self-styled jailhouse lawyer Arthur Taylor. He's now battling the department, and has filed a complaint to Janis Adair in the Office of the Inspectorate at Corrections.
"There is nothing," Taylor argues in his complaint, "that justifies or authorises the banning of this book."
Gangland is a history of modern organised crime in New Zealand. The author, Jared Savage, is an investigative journalist with the New Zealand Herald. His book has consistently featured in the Nielsen best-seller chart since it was published in December.
The Labour Party has decided it would be "inappropriate" to allow the public see the full report reviewing its policies after the youth summer camp scandal.
This is despite Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern declaring the external report, conducted by Wellington lawyer Maria Austen, would be released when the criminal court proceedings concluded.
After a young man, who initially faced indecent assault allegations, was discharged without conviction on two common assault charges, the Court of Appeal suppressed his name permanently in September - ending the case.
On Thursday afternoon, the long, long court process in the Labour youth camp case came quietly to a close, with the Court of Appeal granting permanent name suppression to the young man accused (and discharged without conviction) of assault charges.
It was one of those moments that could change the practice of criminal law when it comes to name suppression. It was reported in the mainstream media but you may have missed it nonetheless. The 21-page document did not exactly light up Twitter or Facebook.
It’s deeply ironic that the people who will be most outraged by this decision (except perhaps for the complainants, more on that later) are the ones whose actions made sure this young man’s name will never be known. One might even laugh, if it were the least little bit funny.
