The father of convicted murderer Scott Watson believes his son is innocent.
Scott Watson’s lawyers are making submissions today in his appeal against convictions for the murder of Ben Smart and Olivia Hope in 1998
The hearing in the Court of Appeal started on Monday
Today’s arguments have centered on pressure put on key witness Guy Wallace to identify Watson as the mystery man, and on a photo of Watson shown to Wallace and other witnesses
Watson’s lawyer Nick Chisnall KC, who is leading Watson’s appeal against his murder convictions, said the interviewing detective “made it clear that he considered Mr Wallace was lying”.
A photo of Scott Watson, mid-blink, was shown to witnesses.
Smart, 21, and Hope 17, haven’t been seen since getting out of a water taxi and on to a boat moored in Endeavour Inlet in the early hours of New Year’s Day, 1998. Their bodies and possessions have never been found.
Wallace, who died in 2021, was the Crown’s key witness, with his evidence being central to the jury’s guilty verdicts.
Wallace had told police he took Smart and Hope and a mystery man to a ketch - not Watson’s yacht - making him one of the last people to see the victims alive. He also told police the mystery man was not the same person he had served drinks to at the bar at Furneaux Lodge earlier in the night.
Chisnall said the police interview was an attempt to break down Wallace’s statements on these two factors, and that the detective “urged Mr Wallace to tell the truth for the sake of the families of the missing”.
“I want to know the truth, there’s no more mucking around here today,” the detective told Wallace, according to the transcript.
He told him the person Wallace had served at the bar - who Wallace said was not Watson - didn’t exist.
“Oh f***, come on, what are you going to try to do, lay this on me?” Wallace responded.
He said there might have been two different men “sleazing around the bar” but he did not believe he had seen Watson, but the detective told him it was “not possible”.
He told Wallace he had spoken to everyone, and four other people had given a description of Watson.
“Perhaps you haven’t been telling the truth, Guy,” he said.
The officer “explicitly” told Wallace that Watson was the man at the bar, Chisnall said and asked why “you can’t remember a guy that everyone else remembers”.
Chisnall said Wallace’s eventual identification of Watson as the mystery man when seen in a photo montage “was irretrievably tainted earlier in the investigation”.
Nick Chisnall KC is representing Scott Watson in his appeal at the Court of Appeal. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Trial counsel and the jury at Watson’s trial had not known police already showed Wallace a photo of Watson earlier, he said. Wallace had also been shown a photo of Watson by the media.
Chisnall said Wallace had told police he didn’t recognise Watson on two, possibly three, occasions before he identified him.
Watson’s team are asking the court to allow the appeal, but not to order a retrial.
The latest appeal is the result of a royal prerogative of mercy, applied for in 2017 and granted in 2020. The grounds for the appeal are two-fold:
The reliability of DNA evidence, specifically hairs that were thought to belong to Hope and were recovered from Watson’s boat.
Mistakes by the police in using a photo montage as a means of identifying Watson. The montage contained a new photo that showed Watson caught halfway through a blink. This gave the appearance of hooded eyes, a characteristic of the mystery man’s description.
Watson is not attending the Court of Appeal hearing, which is before Justices Christine French, Patricia Courtney and Susan Thomas.
The hearing continues.
Melissa Nightingale is a Wellington-based reporter who covers crime, justice and news in the capital. She joined the Herald in 2016 and has worked as a journalist for 10 years.
