New Zealand & The Nightmare Of A Trial By Jury

Over the Christmas New Year break New Zealand’s now infamous Whale Oil blog published a very good investigative expose penned by award-winning veteran Kiwi journo Stephen Cook.

With his investigation Cook exposes just some of the goings on in the jury room of one of the High Court trials of Cheng Qi “Chris” Wang who back in 2012 stood accused of double murder. Of course Cooks work is largely the result of a concerned juror who had been selected to deliberate on the 2nd trial, who, some two years later, now seems prepared to have come forward to blow the whistle on the extremely bad behaviour of ten of his fellow jurors

Whilst Cook does a fine job, shedding light on a problem which has remained concealed for decades, the jurors account of events also raises a few additional questions which Cook seems to have unintentionally overlooked. Of course as is our practice we will set those questions out a little later in this post.

The story was presented by the Whale Oil blog in three parts, Stephen Cook opined;

The right to trial by jury is a cornerstone of our criminal justice system.

But is this just quaint nostalgia? Is it time to seriously examine our jury system and whether it is actually serving the interests of justice?

Today we take you inside the jury room to expose the dark truth about what can happen when crime and prejudice clash in a high-profile high-stakes murder trial.

THREE-QUARTERS of the jury in a high-profile double-murder case were convinced the accused was guilty after hearing barely three hours of evidence in the month-long trial.

The explosive claims have raised serious concerns about the integrity of the jury system and what potentially can happen when jurors allow personal prejudice to taint their objectivity.

What make these claims even more compelling – and controversial – is the fact that on this occasion they’ve come from inside the jury room.

A juror in the retrial of double murder accused Cheng Qi ‘Chris’ Wang has spoken out this week about what he claims are serious failings with the whole jury system .

The man – who we will refer to as “Juror X” – was on the jury in Wang’s second trial – and played a crucial role in what eventually would be his acquittal on the two murder counts.

In August 2013 Wang, then 52, was found not guilty of the murder iin January 2011 of Zhuo ‘Michael’ Wu, 44, but guilty of the manslaughter of Yishan “Tom” Zhong, 53. 

The first trial in 2012 was aborted late in the piece after a juror admitted to knowing one of the witnesses for the prosecution.

Six months later a jury of eight women and four men were empaneled for the second trial, which ran the full five weeks – but not without disagreement, controversy and at one stage a near revolt.

But had it not been for “Juror X” and his insistence there was insufficient evidence to support a guilty finding against Wang, the Chinese national would today be serving life behind bars.

Ten of the 12 jurors, 8 of those women, believed Wang was guilty on both counts, but “Juror X” and another male juror disagreed strongly – and wouldn’t be persuaded, or bullied, into thinking otherwise.

For more than two days of deliberations the two jurors refused to cave in to ‘unrelenting pressure” to find Wang guilty on both murder counts.

At the third trial, the jury agreed with Juror X, acquitting Wang on one of the murder counts and finding him guilty of manslaughter on the other.

Wang was sentenced to four years behind bars.

Justice Geoffrey Venning said the truth probably lay somewhere between the defence and prosecution versions of events but accepted Wang acted in self defence after being confronted by a knife-wielding man in his home.

The court had heard the deaths were the “final, tragic” act in a long-running dispute between Wang and his former wife, Michelle Chen, over residential properties they owned together.

In 2010, two years after they had separated, Chen moved back to China.

To help gain some control over the residential properties, she enlisted the help of Wu, private investigator Phil Jones and property lawyer David Snedden.

She had claimed she was not receiving income from the properties and wanted Wang out of one of the houses she believed he was living in.

Wu and Zhong had known Wang for some time. Both had gone into business with him, disputes had arisen and the relationships had soured.

Wang had borrowed $125,000 from Wu, but had failed to pay any of the money back.

Wu and Zhong were advised not to attempt to evict Wang but on the morning of January 14 2011 both men ignored this advice and went to Wang’s $2 million property in Mt Albert.

Upon arrival, Wu grabbed a knife from the kitchen and he and Zhong made their way upstairs where they confronted Wang who’d armed himself with a hunting knife from his bedside table.

A melee ensued and Zhong was stabbed in the back – the impact of the blow puncturing a lung and killing him.

Wu, meanwhile, was found with 23 knife wounds at the foot of a bloody set of stairs.

Although justice eventually prevailed, Juror X says had it not been for his strong will and determination to see justice was served things could quite easily have gone the other way for Wang.

Juror X says three quarters of the jury, including the female foreman, were convinced Wang was guilty after hearing less than three hours of evidence.

He said they’d come to this conclusion based on some strange negative perception of anyone associated with martial arts.

The jury had also learned Wang was under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office.

“They’d reached this conclusion after being told by the prosecution in the opening address Wang was a kung fu expert who owed money around town. Unbelievable. They hadn’t even stopped to consider the whole argument of self-defence. That was the central plank of the entire case – but did they care? Not for a minute,” Juror X said.

“They immediately formed a view based on the whole kung fu thing. When I disagreed things got heated and extremely personal in the jury room

“We were told by the judge on the opening day of the trial to keep an open mind and consider all the evidence. There was none of that here. I remember going back to the jury room at the end of the first day and one of my fellow jurors saying ‘lock em’ up and throw away the key.

“A man’s life was on the line here. We had an obligation to see he got a fair trial. Our job was to analyse all the evidence, not just parts of it. At that stage we had heard barely three hours of evidence.”

Juror X said he believed his fellow jurors had let themselves down badly.

He accepted if it were not for him, Wang would probably be spending the next decade and a half behind bars.

“The evidence did not support a finding of guilty on both charges. Chris Wang was not guilty of murder. The jury in the third trial got it right, but had I buckled under the pressure there would never have been a third trial,” he said.

Source: http://www.whaleoil.co.nz/2015/12/trial-by-jury-can-be-a-lottery-on-the-rest-of-your-life/

 

THE NIGHTMARE OF A TRIAL BY JURY – Continued

A JUROR in a high-profile double murder case threatened to quit the jury after his fellow jurors tried to bully him into finding the accused guilty.

In 2013 Cheng Qi “Chris” Wang, 54 was found not guilty of the murder of Zhuo “Michael” Wu, 44, but guilty of the manslaughter of Yishan “Tom” Zhong, 53.

The fatalities occurred at Wang’s $2 million Mt Albert home in January 2011.

It took three jury trials for a verdict to be reached.

The first trial in 2012 was aborted late in the piece after a juror admitted to knowing one of the witnesses for the prosecution.

The second trial ended in a hung jury after two jurors refused to accept the Crown position that Wang was guilty on both murder counts.

At the third trial, Wang was eventually found guilty on the lesser charge of manslaughter and sentenced to four years imprisonment.

But had it not been for the man who we will call “Juror X” in the second trial, Wang could have been looking at life behind bars.

He has revealed that three-quarters of his fellow jurors had made their minds up about the case after hearing barely three hours of evidence from the four-week trial.

He said they believed Wang must have been guilty because he was a kung fu expert and owed money about town.

This was despite compelling evidence supporting the argument that Wang was acting in self defence when he was confronted by Zhong and Wu, who was armed with a knife.

He said when it came time for the jury to deliberate most of the jurors had already decided Wang was guilty and wouldn’t be swayed in their thinking.

They refused to entertain the self defence argument or properly consider the scientific evidence which pointed to an acquittal on both murder counts.

Juror X said for the next two days his fellow jurors applied enormous pressure on him and another male juror to change their minds and find Wang guilty.

At one stage, he said he threatened to quit the jury after the foreman refused to ask the judge to clarify a key piece of evidence.

“The foreman kept saying to me the evidence I was referring to was irrelevant and there was no need to ask the judge a question about it. In the end, I said to her if she didn’t ask the judge the question I was going to quit the jury,” he said.

“It was astonishing. All they wanted was to find the accused guilty so they could go home. They weren’t concerned whether or not he received a fair trial. Because he was a kung fu expert, they thought he must have known how to handle himself – so therefore must have been guilty.

“All 10 of them had their heads in the sand the whole time. Eight of the jury were women. They were clearly ruled by their emotions and the fact that one of the deceased was a father to a young child.”

The deaths were the “final, tragic act“ in a long-running dispute between Wang and his former wife, Michelle Chen, over residential properties they owned together.

In 2010, two years after they had separated, Chen moved back to China.

To help gain some control over the residential properties, she enlisted the help of Wu, private investigator Phil Jones and property lawyer David Snedden.

She had claimed she was not receiving income from the properties and wanted Wang out of one of the houses she believed he was living in.

Wu and Zhong had known Wang for some time. Both had gone into business with him, disputes had arisen and the relationships had soured.

Wang had borrowed $125,000 from Wu, but had failed to pay any of the money back.

Wu and Zhong were advised not to attempt to evict Wang but on the morning of January 14 2011 both men ignored this advice and went to Wang’s $2 million property in Mt Albert.

Upon arrival, Wu grabbed a knife from the kitchen and he and Zhong made their way upstairs where they confronted Wang who’d armed himself with a hunting knife from his bedside table.

A melee ensued and Zhong was stabbed in the back – the impact of the blow puncturing a lung and killing him.

Wu, meanwhile, was found with 23 knife wounds at the foot of a bloody set of stairs.

Juror X said he had been relieved jurors in the third trial had reached not guilty verdicts on the murder counts.

The guilty verdict in relation to the alternative count of manslaughter against Zhong was fair enough, he said, in the circumstances – and reflected a view he consistently held during the deliberation phase in the second trial.

“My fellow jurors let Chris Wang and the justice system down badly. He deserved much better from them.”

Source: http://www.whaleoil.co.nz/2015/12/trial-by-jury-ctd/

 

THE NIGHTMARE OF A TRIAL BY JURY – Continued

HIGHLY PREJUDICIAL evidence was used by the Crown to try and persuade a jury to convict a double murder accused – and the ploy nearly worked.

A member of the jury who sat in judgment on Auckland man Cheng Qi ‘Chris’ Wang during his four week retrial back in 2013 has this week decided to voice concerns he has long held about the jury system in New Zealand.

The juror wanted the dust to settle around the highly-charged Wang case before speaking out so he could reflect properly on the conduct of his fellow jurors – and whether the decisions they took were symptomatic of a much wider problem with juries.

In the meantime, he has brought to public attention issues that go to the heart of every defendant’s right to a fair trial.

The juror says that in Wang’s second trial, which ended in a hung jury, the Crown revealed how the accused was facing money laundering and fraud charges brought by the Serious Fraud Office.

The juror claimed that information, which he argued was highly prejudicial, changed the whole complexion of the trial.

He said 10 of the 12 people on the jury immediately thought Wang was guilty on both murder counts upon hearing news of the SFO case.

“I was shocked when we were told about the SFO stuff. It had nothing to do with the deaths. It was just a ploy by the Crown to build up a picture of a man who was obviously up to no good and capable of anything,

“Really when you look at it, it is the Crown that got away with murder in this case.”

In addition to charges of murdering Zhuo “Michael” Wu, 44 and Yishan “Tom” Zhong, 53 in the Auckland suburb of Mt Albert, Wang was also charged by the SFO in relation to an entirely separate matter.

The SFO charges related to an alleged $2.3 million mortgage ramping scheme. Such frauds take advantage of property boom and lax mortgage lending by banks.

Wang is alleged to have bought homes in the Kaukapakapa area, north of Auckland, then arranged for the values of the properties to be falsely inflated.

Buyers were then found for the properties, who would agree to sign mortgage applications with fake income details, leaving out any mention of debt.

Wang was eventually found guilty on the SFO charges and sentenced to an additional two-years and nine months imprisonment on top of the four years he received on the criminal matters.

The juror says with the whole case tainted by the SFO charges, Wang was lucky in the end to be acquitted on one murder count and a manslaughter verdict in relation to the other deceased.

He maintained the majority of the jurors in the jury he sat on had pretty much convicted him after hearing that evidence.

“It’s wrong. It shouldn’t happen but it does. It is like there is one set of rules for the Crown, another for the defence,” the juror said.

The Evidence Act clearly states that in any proceeding, the judge must exclude evidence if its probative value is outweighed by the risk that the evidence will have an unfairly prejudicial effect on the hearing.

“The law couldn’t be any clearer. How the Crown got away with that, I will never know,” the juror said.

He added that he was also shocked that the lead police officer in the case was allowed to sit through all of the Crown evidence and then take the stand and give his own evidence.

“There’s a law against this sort of thing and for good reason, but again here it was ignored by the Crown. How the hell did Chris Wang expect to get a fair trial with all this going on?”

But Wang did – and he has this juror to thank.

Had it not been for his insistence there was insufficient evidence to support a guilty finding against Wang, the Chinese national would today be serving life behind bars.

Ten of the 12 jurors, 8 of those women, believed Wang was guilty on both counts, but the rogue juror and another male juror believed it was a clear cut case of self defence – and wouldn’t be persuaded, or bullied, into thinking otherwise.

For more than two days of deliberations the two jurors refused to cave in to ‘unrelenting pressure” to find Wang guilty on both murder counts.

At one stage the rogue juror threatened to quit the jury after the jury foreman refused to put a question he wanted clarified to the judge.

At the third trial, the jury agreed with the rogue juror, acquitting Wang on one of the murder counts and finding him guilty of manslaughter on the other.

“This whole case really opened my eyes to the jury system in this country. If what went on in Chris Wang’s second trial is any indication we have major issues with this whole system of justice,” he said.

“You have jurors who don’t care, don’t listen and don’t give a stuff about the fate of the accused. What if it were one of their family members? Would they think differently? Would they do better? I bet they would.”

Source: http://www.whaleoil.co.nz/2016/01/the-nightmare-of-a-trial-by-jury-ctd/

Firstly, importantly we feel Cook and Slater are to be congratulated for the article, a job well done; as should be the nameless juror known as “juror X” who has seemingly been prepared to come forward, albeit belatedly, to expose an extremely sick behind closed doors perversion of the justice system in New Zealand. Not enough has been done in New Zealand to protect and ensure that juries do the job they are required to in law, whilst abiding by the rules they are additionally sworn to adhere to and uphold.

As aforesaid Cooks article raised a number of questions which are not given voice; for which the answers are obviously also not provided. This unnamed jurors account in our view raises the spectre of police and prosecutorial interference that goes well beyond the mere introduction of highly prejudicial unrelated material through which they had sought to influence the jury; to have jurors draw negative inferences from a set of unrelated accusations, allegations that had not yet even been tested at trial.

Of course whilst this type of “prosecutorial misconduct” is now very much par for the course in New Zealand’s courts Cooks article and more particularly the jurors account of the prosecutions courtroom antics and his fellow jurors outrageous behaviour behind the closed doors of the deliberation room raise an additional set of questions.

The first and perhaps most obvious relates not to the prosecutions behaviour in seeking to introduce highly damaging and completely irrelevant prejudicial material but rather the defences failure to immediately appeal the Judges decision to grant the prosecutions clearly out-of-order application.

What was the judge thinking when he allowed untested evidence, the completely unrelated SFO case, to be introduced? Without doubt that question needs to be put to the lawyers responsible for defending Cheng Qi “Chris” Wang.

Whats more the whistleblower’s account, that ten of his fellow jurors fell for the evidence, combined with the alleged behaviour of the jury foreperson, in refusing to put the whistle-blowing jurors questions or concerns to the judge, further raises the possibility that the jury Foreperson, and or other members of the jury, might have been suborned by the prosecution, be it by the lawyers prosecuting or as is more commonly the case in New Zealand trials, the police officers who had conducted the investigation.

Of course those same police officers had in this case undoubtedly already seen to it that New Zealand’s mainstream media had the SFO story and was running it.

Double-murder accused already facing fraud charges

5:30 AM Saturday Jan 22, 2011

The man charged with two murders in a $3 million mansion is also facing a separate multimillion-dollar Serious Fraud Office case.

Name suppression was lifted yesterday for 51-year-old Cheng Qi Wang, who is charged with the murders of Zhuo “Michael” Wu, 44, and Yishan “Tom” Zhong, 53, in the Auckland suburb of Mt Albert.

Wang – also known as Chris Wang – lives in the Stilwell Rd property where the two men were found stabbed to death on Friday last week.

He appeared in Auckland District Court this week and was remanded in custody until February 7.

The Weekend Herald can reveal Wang will reappear in court next week on money laundering and fraud charges laid by the SFO in August.

Wang faces two charges of money laundering between May and July 2008, and two charges of obtaining a pecuniary advantage using a document in the same period.

The SFO charges relate to an alleged $2.3 million mortgage ramping scheme. Such frauds take advantage of property boom and lax mortgage lending by banks.

Wang is alleged to have bought homes in the Kaukapakapa area, north of Auckland, then arranged for the values of the properties to be falsely inflated.

Buyers were then found for the properties, who would agree to sign mortgage applications with fake income details, leaving out any mention of debt. SFO chief executive Adam Feeley said the fraud prosecution would go ahead despite the two murder charges.

He said staff were cooperating fully with the police investigation and provided full access to the SFO files.

“It is, to say the least, an unusual set of circumstances,” said Mr Feeley.

Detective Inspector Bruce Shadbolt, head of the murder inquiry, declined to comment on specifics of the case but said the inquiry was progressing.

Wang’s defence lawyer David Jones, QC, declined to comment.

Court documents list Wang as unemployed.

But he has a background as a builder and is a director of two companies that have been struck off.

He is believed to have made money from buying houses cheaply, renovating them, then selling for a profit.

A number of civil court claims have been filed against Wang and his wife in recent years, including a High Court summary judgment ordering them to pay more than $200,000 last year.

A debt collector who served the papers said there was a court case related to a failed property deal.

Wang did not seek bail on the murder charges this week, but may make an application at his next court appearance.

A post mortem has confirmed Mr Wu and Mr Zhong died from stab wounds. One of the dead men was found lying in the driveway, the other on the floor just inside the house.

Two weapons were found inside the house and a Toyota Rav 4 SUV – registered to Mr Wu in Remuera – parked outside was sealed with police tape as officers examined the scene.

Another car parked at the house, a yellow Volkswagen Beetle, is registered to a Mt Roskill address. It is owned by a woman who was at the Mt Albert mansion during the attack and called 111.

The SPCA visited the home on Thursday to rescue chickens which had been left unattended since the attacks.

The property has a colourful history.

The four-storey house is built on two titles and is worth more than $3 million. Built in 1929, it has four bedrooms, an indoor spa pool with mirrors, and 180-degree harbour views from the top balcony.

It is owned by the Michelle Trustee Company Limited, which is owned by Wang’s estranged wife Zhixue Chen. She is believed to live in China after separating from Wang last year.

The mansion was once owned by colourful property investor Barrie Cardon who bought it from New Zealand Forestry Products founder Sir David Henry.

Source: New Zealand Herald

Whats more the New Zealand Herald, in particular, once the murder trial had commenced, true to form, ran articles that can only be described as highly prejudicial, a complete anathema to the conditions required for a fair trial to be conducted:

Accused ‘saw red’ before double murder, court told

6:41 PM Monday Jun 17, 2013

A man “saw red” before violently stabbing to death two former business associates in a bitter marital property dispute, a court has been told.

Cheng Qi ‘Chris’ Wang has denied murdering Zhuo ‘Michael’ Wu, 44, and Yishan ‘Tom’ Zhong, 53, at his home in Mt Albert, Auckland, two-and-a-half years ago.

On the opening day of his trial in the High Court at Auckland today, Crown prosecutor Kevin Glubb said Wang showed “wanton, senseless and unnecessary violence” when the two men visited his home in January, 2011.

Mr Wu and Mr Zhong had been attempting to enforce trespass notices on Wang in order to evict him from the property owned by his estranged wife.

Mr Glubb said Wang “saw red” when he found the men entering the home and grabbed a hunting knife.

“In the course of that struggle he deliberately and, in an excessive case of force, he stabbed them both,” said Mr Glubb.

“In so doing the force he used, in particular the deliberate and repeated use of that hunting knife, was not even remotely reasonable.”

He said Mr Wu “simply did not have a chance” and Mr Zhong was “dead within minutes”.

The defence argued that Wang acted in self-defence after the two men arrived at his home armed with a kitchen knife. Fearing the men had come to kill him, he armed himself with a hunting knife and a struggle ensued.

It was during this struggle that Wang unwittingly stabbed Mr Wu as they fought for possession of the knives. In the confusion, Mr Wu accidentally inflicted the fatal wounds on Mr Zhong.

“His [Mr Wu’s] use of that knife triggered a desperate struggle that left two men dead and one man exhausted, confused, but incredibly, fortunately, alive,” said defence counsel, Thomas Sutcliffe.

In police interviews, Wang said Mr Wu “tried repeatedly to stab him but missed as he was dodging”, and that Mr Zhong was shouting for Mr Wu to “f***ing kill him” while grabbing at his throat.

Mr Wu sustained 23 stab wounds in the fight, including several to his torso and back, hands, face and legs. Mr Zhong received three stab wounds, including one between the shoulder blades which cut through his ribs and punctured his left lung.

Both men bled to death, with Mr Zhong making it out of the house and part way down the long driveway before collapsing to the ground. He also had bite marks to his left arm.

“The accused appears to have emerged from this struggle almost unscathed,” said Mr Glubb. “This contrast is striking, I suggest, and it appears to show that most of the aggression was in fact coming from the accused at the time.”

Mr Sutcliffe said Wang has used “every ounce of physical and mental will to survive”.

Throughout today’s hearing, Wang sat intently watching and listening. Dressed in a navy blue Chinese-style striped suit jacket, he entered not guilty pleas in both cases, through a Mandarin interpreter.

The court was told Wang was embroiled in an increasingly bitter dispute with his estranged wife over a number of properties they jointly owned.

His wife had returned to China, while Wang continued to live in the house in Mt Albert. He had been issued with trespass notices for four properties in December 2010 but refused to leave.

The trial is expected to last four weeks.

Source: NZHerald

The fact that in the second trial ten of the jurors decided to depart from common sense and the required approach, going so far as to attempt to cajole two fellow jurors, with the foreperson seemingly believing that she was running a dictatorship, and had the right to refuse the two dissenting voices in the jury their right to have valid questions and concerns heard by the judge indicates to us that one or more of the ten jurors may have been suborned by the prosecution, aka the New Zealand police.

Arguably further evidence of this likelihood is to be found in a number of undisclosed events surrounding the collapse of the first trial.

Even New Zealand’s Metro magazine got in on the act following the conclusion of the third trial, publishing a piece penned by halfwit wannabe standup and hack journo Steve Brunias, using material largely gathered by associate Jeremy Olds.

Amongst the crap that Brunias is responsible for is the declaration that the third juries verdict was “curious”. What we however find more curious is the fact that it took three criminal trials and hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayers hard earned cash to reach an acceptable verdict. Now that’s the sort of curiosity that New Zealand’s mainstream media for some inexplicable reason like to steer well clear of.

We also find the methods and lengths that New Zealand’s so-called Crown prosecutors and police engage in, many of the tactics bordering on the criminal, unlawful in every other similar jurisdiction, so as to obtain a conviction more than just a little curious.

More especially when the evidence police have relied on doesn’t even come close to supporting the charges they’ve brought, instead preferring time and time again to draft in a raft of their very old prosecutorial dirty tricks to save the day.

Fortunately, if Cooks whistleblower is anything to go by, some Kiwi’s have now wised up to the police and Crown law’s repertoire of dirty tricks.

Unfortunately however there is no guarantee that every Kiwi jury will have honest and smart citizens sitting in judgement of their peers. The police and prosecutorial rot is far to entrenched for such assumptions to be safely made. Not until corrupt prosecutors and bent cops are exposed, outed and most importantly prosecuted and punished for their egregious misconduct, as is the case in other jurisdictions, will the New Zealand publics faith in their justice system begin to be restored.

Bibliography/References

http://www.metromag.co.nz/metro-archive/the-killings-at-stillwell-road/

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10701291

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/9050707/Jailed-for-fatal-self-defence-stabbing

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10785618

https://www.sfo.govt.nz/n390,24.html

http://www.3news.co.nz/nznews/double-murder-accused-played-with-knife-2013061911#axzz3wResywE4

http://www.3news.co.nz/nznews/man-acquitted-of-auckland-mansion-murders-2013070520#axzz3wResywE4

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/AK1308/S00284/sentence-announced-in-cheng-qi-wang-fraud-case.htm