Lawyer's bungling wrecks drug trial

A major drugs trial was aborted in the High Court at Auckland yesterday because of the incompetence of a defence lawyer.

In dismissing the jury, Justice John Laurenson said he was discharging them on the basis of the way defence counsel Peter Neutze had conducted the case.

The judge told them he had never seen anything like it in 40 years' involvement in the law.

Mr Neutze was one of three defence lawyers representing four people in a methamphetamine manufacturing trial.

The others were Stuart Grieve, QC, and James Faleauto.

Justice Laurenson's decision to end the trial just before the Crown closed its case after two weeks of evidence followed an application by Mr Grieve.

As Mr Neutze cross-examined the principal Crown witness on Thursday, there were many objections by the Crown and interruptions by the judge.

Mr Neutze was said to be rambling, disorganised and asking improper and irrelevant questions.

Yesterday, Mr Grieve asked for the trial to be aborted and the jury to be discharged on the basis of Mr Neutze's incompetence.

He argued that Mr Neutze's cross-examination of the Crown witness was so incompetent that it had had a prejudicial effect on his client'scase.

Legal comment on the decision to abort the trial for this reason last night varied from "fairly unusual" to "unique".

The officer in charge of the case said he was "disappointed."

The prosecution would have to reassemble more than 50 witnesses for the retrial.

Privately, the police are known to be furious.

The case involved four people, Greg Collings, Sarah Punnett, Amanda Carmody and Matthew Fountain.

The four were charged with a variety of offences including methamphetamine manufacturing.

When police searched Collings' address in Sunnynook, they found a large quantity of electronic equipment including 10 laptops, plasma TVs and stereos.

Police say people were committing burglaries and swapping stolen property for drugs manufactured at the premises.