Trial aborted for third time has cost taxpayer $2m

A major drugs trial has been aborted in the High Court at Auckland for the third time, at an estimated cost to the taxpayer of more than $2 million.

Operation Robot, involving 11 accused and about 19 lawyers, ended prematurely yesterday after two weeks of hearings.

The trial, which at one stage involved 13 accused, has been jinxed from the start - last year it had to be postponed because too few jurors were available for duty.

Combined, the Crown and defence could have exercised around 90 challenges to potential jury members.

The case was postponed until this year.

But in the sixth week of what was expected to be an eight to 11-week trial, the case was again aborted when two women jurors chatted to one of the accused on a train in Pukekohe.

Yesterday, Justice Paul Heath again stopped the trial after a challenge by defence lawyer Kelly-Ann Stoikoff and other counsel to the legitimacy of a police search warrant at an Avondale property.

Outside the court Ms Stoikoff said: "The warrant had to be challenged and for that reason all the others [warrants] must inevitably be investigated."

The trial involved charges of manufacturing methamphetamine and conspiracy to manufacture.

Another defence lawyer, Chris Comeskey, estimated that the three false starts had so far cost tax-payers more than $2 million in lawyers' fees, and police and court costs, with no result.

"There must be serious concerns at the cost incurred by the public for this trial and the various derailments, given that it is now four years down the track from when the police first launched this investigation. And if the trial does proceed beyond the anticipated further challenges by defence counsel to what is left of the case, it conceivably won't be resolved until late 2006," Mr Comeskey said.

He observed that World War II was over in less time.

Mr Comeskey questioned the wisdom of trying so many people together rather than having multiple trials with fewer accused.

"They are simply unmanageable in their present proportions," he said.

The case has been put back on the High Court list for a new trial date to be allocated.