Speaker: Not quite everything you ever wanted to know about bail
33 Responses
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Answers to several questions:
The delay in major trials of this kind is due to two main things - first, ESR analysis (the lab is very backlogged lately); secondly, transcribing intercepted conversations. The latter always takes ages. This is because of the importance of ensuring that the transcription is accurate (easier said then done when there's background noise) and because there can be hours of conversations involved - not long conversations but just lots of little ones. Code words add to the degree of difficulty and then there's foreign languages... One drug case I'm aware of came to trial around the middle of this year. I had a passing involvement in it (professionally of course) back in 2004 when it was in its early stages. The High Court at Auckland is actually quite good at setting reasonably early dates. The worst court by far is Manukau.
Where cases are heard depends on what type of case it is (murder, manslaughter, treason and class A drugs can only be heard in the High Court) as well as on other factors such as - degree of difficulty, public interest factors (e.g. Clint Rickards), and complexity.
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Thank you Graeme really appreciate it
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Graeme, you're doing the body politic sterling service. Thank you very much.
Agreed - and give that man his own PA column!
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Thanks for all the answers Graeme, very interesting.
Rich, on the issue of jury summons in NZ, my understanding is that a random pool of potential jurors is picked from the electoral role every three (?) years and then they use that pool to pick who to summon. As a result you can often get no summons for 20 years and then several in quick succession, especially if a lot of people in your pool are getting excused.
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There is absolutely no way on the planet that bail is a right. It is a privileged of living our modern first world justice system and if you breach it you can have that privilege taken away from you.
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I'm not sure if Graeme is still available to answer questions but I thought I'd try anyway. My son is on bail with a special condition that he remains at his place of residence between the hours of 8pm to 7am. Because he has not been sentenced as yet he does not have an electronic monitoring device fitted so the police have to visit his residence to check he is complying. I was wanting to know if there is any limit to the amount of times the police check on him? They go to his house every night, sometimes 5 times in one night, which seems excessive to me. I certainly wouldn't appreciate being woken up at 11, 1, 3, 5am!!
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Graeme Edgeler, in reply to
My son is on bail with a special condition that he remains at his place of residence between the hours of 8pm to 7am. Because he has not been sentenced as yet he does not have an electronic monitoring device fitted so the police have to visit his residence to check he is complying.
This is all too common. They certainly don't have check every few hours, but they can and do often do this. They'll usually slow down a little as time goes on, but not always. I will note that you can be electronically monitored before being sentenced (this is called e-bail), so that can be worth looking into, although it would be odd to ask. Depending on the nature of the charge(s) your son is facing, it may be possible to ask to have the curfew condition cancelled or modified after a few weeks of complying with it.
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Hey Graeme ,
I'm 26 years old and I'm currently going through a court case on bail with a curfew set in place. Im willing to explain my situation with what's happening with the case to justify why I am asking this . But is there any way I can get off a curfew or I heard something about some sort of curfew where you're not allowed in the public eye ? So happy I found this site and your explanations if things. Cheers
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