Struck-off lawyer Alwyn O’Connor refused appeal to fight ill-treatment of child conviction

Alwyn O'Connor has failed in his attempt to have an appeal heard to overturn his conviction for the ill-treatment of a young child. Photo / Supplied

A lawyer who was struck off for taking more than $150,000 from an imprisoned client has failed in his attempt to have an appeal heard to overturn his conviction for the ill-treatment of a young child.

Alwyn O’Connor was struck from the roll of barristers and solicitors last year after he was found to have used his client’s bank account as a “money go round” where he transferred thousands from the man’s account to pay his own debts.

A further $20,000 was withdrawn from his client’s account in cash using a bank card that O’Connor had been entrusted with while the man was behind bars.

Following his strike-off, several legal professionals questioned how he was allowed to practice law to begin with given his history of dishonesty offending as well as having spent time in prison for assaulting a 3-year-old.

In 2008, O’Connor, who was then known as Alwyn Kingsbeer, was found guilty by a jury of assault with a weapon and sexual violation after he became frustrated with the boy’s incontinence issues and inserted a ballpoint pen into his anus as well as a drawing pin into the head of the child’s penis.

He also twisted his ears, rubbed his head onto the carpet, causing burns, and flushed his head over a toilet.

O’Connor was sentenced to six years in prison but the pen and the pin incident were subsequently quashed on appeal and a retrial was ordered.

However, before that retrial could take place the Crown agreed to downgrade its initial charges of assault with a weapon and sexual violation on the basis that the offending was not sexually motivated but was rather a “warped form of discipline” arising from O’Connor’s frustration.

O’Connor then later pleaded guilty to an alternative charge of wilful ill-treatment of a child and served 11 months in prison.

Last year the Lawyers and Conveyancers Disciplinary Tribunal noted O’Connor had squandered a “golden opportunity” after being admitted to the bar despite those convictions as well as a raft of other dishonesty convictions to his name.

A month before being struck off, O’Connor made an application to the Court of Appeal to challenge the conviction, claiming the Crown Solicitor prosecuting the case had incited his guilty plea.

However, since filing the appeal, Crown Law stated O’Connor has barely engaged with the court by seeking multiple adjournments, failing to turn up to hearings and missing deadlines to submit evidence to the court

Alwyn O'Connor went before the Lawyers and Conveyancers Disciplinary Tribunal in May last year. Photo / Jeremy Wilkinson

In fact the only piece of evidence he did submit, on which his challenge hinged, was a police vetting report made by an unknown author in 2021 that stated the main witness - the boy O’Connor abused - was unable to give evidence at the retrial some 15-years-ago.

O’Connor claimed he was not aware of this when a deal was reached to downgrade his charges and therefore the Crown Solicitor had committed a “flagrant abuse of process”.

“The crown doesn’t necessarily accept it’s an authentic police document, particularly given his [O’Connor’s] history of dishonesty offending,” Crown Law’s counsel Charlotte Brooke said at an earlier Court of Appeal hearing, that O’Connor didn’t show up to, to consider his application.

“It may well be, but the fact there’s no name on it is curious.”

This week, the court dismissed O’Connor’s application noting that an affidavit had not accompanied the evidence he had provided to verify its authenticity.

“The document attached to the notice of appeal does not suffice to evidence the serious allegation of prosecutorial misconduct. It is hearsay and its provenance and accuracy are unknown,” Justice Ian Gault said in his ruling.

“…there is a lack of admissible evidence supporting the serious allegation that Mr O’Connor was misled in relation to the unavailability of a main witness.”

Justice Gault noted that only in “exceptional circumstances” could a guilty plea be overturned and in this case said the court was “far from satisfied” that a miscarriage of justice had occurred.

It’s not the first time O’Connor has turned to the higher courts in an attempt to overturn rulings by other judicial bodies.

Last year, immediately following his strike-off, he attempted to appeal the tribunal’s decision at the High Court.

However, he abandoned his appeal after he failed to obtain legal aid and was unable to pay security for costs.

Jeremy Wilkinson is an Open Justice reporter based in Manawatū covering courts and justice issues with an interest in tribunals. He has been a journalist for nearly a decade and has worked for NZME since 2022.