Kerre Woodham: Charging Ms Z would be a gross miscarriage of justice

How is it that the woman, who's at the centre of a cover-up by top brass within the Police, still has to go to court to defend two charges of causing harm by posting a digital communication? She's charged with harassing a police officer who was apparently investigating her accusations against that pervert McSkimming and with harassing the investigating police officer's wife.  

She was charged in May of last year with causing harm by posting digital communication in relation to over 300 emails she sent to McSkimming's work email address between December 23 and April 24. That charge against the woman was withdrawn in the Wellington District Court in September because McSkimming did not wish to give evidence. You bet your bippy he didn't. It would have been all shades of Oscar Wilde, bringing a court case against someone and having it spectacularly backfire, and then you are the one who ends up in strife.  

When Richard Chambers spoke to Mike Hosking yesterday, he said the charges against the young woman had been withdrawn.  

RC: The matters that resulted in her being charged in the middle of last year, no, that is now, that is no longer in the court.  

MH: So that has been taken out of the court and resolved in some way, shape or form. Is there a cheque being written? How does that being, or how is that being handled?  

RC: I reached out to her legal representative late yesterday to express an apology on behalf of New Zealand Police for what had occurred, and I did say to him that I had no doubt there would be further conversations at an appropriate time in the future.  

So no mention of further charges and that they were still before the court. If you were listening to that as I was, you would be left with the clear impression that any charges against the young woman had been wiped, that the Police were very sorry, and that they would be compensating her for what she'd been through. No mention of the further charges. We approached the Police Commissioner, and this is the written statement from the office:   

"The matter is before the court. Police has instructed a senior criminal barrister in this proceeding. It would be inappropriate for me to comment about the merits, including public interest of any case that is before the court. However, what I have done and what I can say is that I have assured myself that proper process has been followed in bringing this case."  

Reading between the lines, if he interfered now that it's before the court and asked for it to go away, it would be shades of a cover-up. Because it's underway, because the presumably policeman and his wife have not dropped the charges, it must go before the court and due process must be followed.  

This statement's attributable to Assistant Commissioner Mike Johnson: "Ms Z is the defendant in a prosecution in the District Court. In these circumstances, it's not appropriate to comment publicly on the merits of the prosecution, including the public interest."  

So I kind of vaguely, if I'm being generous, and I'm not particularly feeling all that generous, but as a as an intellectual exercise, I'll try and be generous, I can see that to interfere with a matter that's before the court, making something disappear and go away, is shades of exactly why the top brass have been cleared out.  

But come on. I'm sure it was very distressing for the police officer and his wife to be inundated with emails, and goodness knows what was said in it. They were, what was that lovely word that Jared Savage used about the emails that he received? Incoherent. So there was a lot of high drama and emotive language used in the emails. God only knows what was said but she'd been driven unhinged by what had happened to her in terms of not being spoken to, not being listened to, not being regarded.  

Surely there has to be an element of mercy in this. I mean, even if she has to go through the whole process of appearing before court any kind of conviction against her name would be a gross miscarriage of justice. 

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