Supreme Court to consider videotaped murder-confession

An attempt to stop TVNZ broadcasting a videotape which shows a man cleared of murder confessing to the crime is to go to the Supreme Court.

Noel Clement Rogers, who was accused and then cleared of the murder of Far North woman Katherine Sheffield, has won the right to take the case to the country's highest court.

TVNZ's Sunday programme wants to screen a videotape leaked to it by police in which Rogers confessed to and reconstructed the murder.

Ms Sheffield was murdered in 1994.

The videotape was intended to be used as evidence in Rogers' murder trial, but it was ruled inadmissible because it was obtained in breach of his rights.

TVNZ had previously won an appeal against a High Court ruling which prevented publication of the tape.

Today Clements was granted leave to appeal that decision in the Supreme Court.

The leave was granted to appeal on the grounds that the Court of Appeal was wrong to set aside the orders of the High Court permanently restraining TVNZ from broadcasting the whole or part of the video statement by Rogers.

The High Court said the broadcast of the videotape of Rogers would amount to a wrongful invasion of his privacy. It issued a permanent injunction restraining the broadcast by TVNZ.

The Court of Appeal acknowledged the privacy issue but decided the low-level privacy interest was outweighed by the high-level public interest in the videotape's contents.

One of the judges also said that Section 14 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights 1990, which guaranteed freedom of expression, was relevant in coming to the conclusion that the tape should not be suppressed.

Rogers' uncle, Lawrence Lloyd, was convicted in 1995 of Ms Sheffield's manslaughter and served seven years of an 11-year sentence before his conviction was overturned in the Court of Appeal in 2004.

- NZPA