Warren Hales pleaded guilty to abduction and a charge of rape was dropped.
A friend of a man convicted for a Mt Maunganui rape encouraged another man to make a false affidavit in order to help an appeal, the High Court at Auckland has heard.
Rene Gaustad Mangnus and Paul Grayden Turney are on trial for trying to pervert the course
of justice in a case involving the rape of a woman, who has name suppression, in Mt Maunganui in 1999.
Both men pleaded not guilty to providing a false affidavit in support of an appeal by Warren Hales.
Hales and Peter McNamara, who were both lifeguards, and Bob Schollum and Brad Shipton, serving policemen at the time of the rape, were in the High Court at Wellington in 2005 convicted of abducting and raping the woman.
Hales was granted a retrial, but changed his plea to guilty of abduction and police dropped the rape charge. He was sentenced to 18 months in jail.
The charges faced by Mangnus and Turney were alleged to have occurred between August 2005 and April last year.
Crown prosecutor Nick Williams said the affidavit was produced by Turney after Hales and McNamara mounted an appeal against the convictions based on new information that he knew the woman and she had approached him in a friendly manner at a Crowded House concert in 1989.
The woman, who is to give evidence, has denied she went to the concert.
Mr Williams said Mangnus and McNamara's partner had "drummed up" support.
Together they had contacted former lifeguards, including Turney, in an attempt to support Hales' evidence, Mr Williams said.
Hales had said the woman approached him at the concert and "ran her hand up my back and bum".
Mangnus contacted Turney and, over a series of emails, Turney produced an affidavit which supported Hales' evidence, Mr Williams said.
In the affidavit Turney said he had a clear recollection of the incident at the concert.
Mangnus was culpable because he had encouraged it, Mr Williams said.
"Mr Turney did not remember the events or believe the contents."
- NZPA
