Titford trial a miscarriage of justice

The trial of a Northland farmer on 53 charges in Whangarei five years ago was a miscarriage of justice, according to 24 years – the trials of Allan Titford, to be published on July 2.

Author Mike Butler spent four years researching the case to find out why Titford was jailed for 24 years when nobody had been killed and there was no evidence of injury.

The 39 charges that Titford was jailed for included marital rape, arson, misleading justice, assaults on his children, a firearms offence, and threatening to kill.

The trial went off track once it was decided to try 53 complicated charges in a single trial, Mr Butler said.

“That meant gaps, inconsistencies, and contradictions remained hidden,” Mr Butler said.

“A closer look at the trial, laid bare in a detailed table in the book, shows that complainants for two charges were not examined or cross-examined at all yet he was found guilty of one of these charges,” Mr Butler said.

If a trial is a formal examination of evidence, and these two allegations were not formally examined, the process that these two allegations went through would fail to reach the threshold of being a trial, Mr Butler said.

A further 31 charges relied on accusations that were not corroborated by any other evidence.

Twelve of these charges relied on the uncorroborated accusations of his former wife who had admitted giving false evidence under oath in another trial.

The paper trail shows that his former wife laid criminal charges while demanding a substantial relationship property settlement.

“The 11 majority verdicts showed that jurors were unconvinced when they should have been convinced beyond reasonable doubt,” Mr Butler said.

A miscarriage of justice is a failure of a court to attain the ends of justice, especially one which results in the conviction of an innocent person.

Allan Titford has sustained a miscarriage of justice and has unwittingly become a victim of the New Zealand justice system along with Arthur Allan Thomas, David Bain, Teina Pora, and others, Mr Butler said.

Complaints about his trial, which were rebuffed by the Appeal Court, should be put before the Supreme Court, Mr Butler said.

An appeal court should reinforce justice by picking up errors in the trial and/or sentencing. This the Court of Appeal failed to do, and the judgement in Titford’s case appeared to function as a defence of a mismanaged trial, Mr Butler said.

24 Years analyses uncorroborated claims, witness reliability, evidence of orchestration, as well as the conduct of the trial.

Also included is the sequence of events that forced Titford to sell his Maunganui Bluff farm to the Government, with evidence to show that Titford was correct when he said that part of his farm was never a Maori reserve as claimants alleged.

Mike Butler, who was the chief sub-editor of the Hawke’s Bay Herald-Tribune, has written The First Colonist – Samuel Deighton 1821-1900, Tribes Treaty Money Power, and contributed to Twisting the Treaty – A tribal grab for wealth and power as well as to One Treaty, One Nation

24 years – the trials of Allan Titford, by Mike Butler, Limestone Bluff Publishing, 340 pages, illustrated, $39.50, is available in bookstores or fromwww.trosspublishing.co.nz.

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