KEY POINTS:
Nothing in the acquittal of three men today on sex charges suggested rules governing the suppression of evidence must be changed, a Queen's Counsel says.
Assistant police commissioner Clint Rickards walked out of the High Court in Auckland today a free man.
A jury found him not guilty of kidnapping and indecently assaulting a then 16-year-old girl in Rotorua more than 20 years ago.
While former policemen Brad Shipton and Bob Schollum were also found not guilty, they returned to jail to resume prison terms imposed for raping a 20-year-old Mt Maunganui woman in 1989.
In 2005, Schollum was sentenced to eight years and Shipton 8-1/2 years.
The fact they were in jail for a similar offence to that they were facing was kept from the jury, as it might have prejudiced their chances of a fair trial.
But the jury would have been well aware the pair -- and Mr Rickards -- were last year found not guilty of 20 historic sex charges against Rotorua woman Louise Nicholas.
High profile Auckland barrister Kit Toogood, QC, said there was nothing wrong with a jury being allowed to know defendants had previously been proved innocent, but not that they had been previously found guilty.
"In the great majority of cases the fact that somebody has been convicted or acquitted on an earlier occasion is completely irrelevant," he said.
"It happens more often that you'd think, but (other cases) just don't get the publicity.
"Each case must be judged on its own merits according to the interests of justice, but particularly the interests of justice so far as the accused are concerned.
"There's nothing about this that suggests the rules need to be reviewed."
Nor were similarities in the evidence given in the three cases involving Shipton and Schollum so compelling that a jury needed to know of the parallels, Mr Toogood said
"If they were so similar that the similarities amounted to compelling and cogent evidence of guilt, then the court could have admitted them.
"There's a strict test for admitting that sort of evidence.
"You can be sure that if the Crown thought there was a strong enough connection between the three cases to justify running an argument that the similarities went to prove an element of the charges, they would have run it.
"They could have asked to be able to do it, if they had thought 'there is a case here'."
- NZPA
