NRT: Muppets
Written By:
- Date published:
4:50 pm, September 30th, 2015 - 33 comments
Categories: law -
Tags: incompetence, kim dotcom, no right turn
I/S at No Right Turn on the Crown’s apparent bungling of the Dotcom extradition case – and the potential cost to NZ.
Kim Dotcom’s extradition hearing is currently underway, and it appears to have hit a hurdle: the government can’t find key documentation:
The Crown has been unable to produce the original notices asking for Kim Dotcom and his co-accused to be extradited to the United States.
[…]North Shore district court services manager Fiona Parkes – a witness for the Crown – today produced several documents she said appeared to be copies of the extradition requests.
Mr Dotcom’s lawyer Ron Mansfield pointed out the documents were not date-stamped and asked Ms Parkes if she knew whether any originals existed.
She said she did not.
Yesterday a Justice Ministry employee was unable to confirm if the former Justice Minister, Judith Collins, had seen the provisional arrest warrants and the supporting evidence before the 2012 raid on Mr Dotcom’s mansion went ahead.
Under the Extradition Act, the Justice Minister is meant to be given a copy of the warrants and supporting evidence, as part of a briefing.
This matters. A key question in extradition hearings is whether the supporting documents have been produced to the court. The fact that they can’t do that (and apparently failed to follow due process in briefing the Minister, creating instant grounds for judicial review) makes them look like a bunch of muppets. And when it comes to matters of law enforcement and people’s freedom (and millions of dollars in damages if they fuck up), you’d think they’d take a little more care…
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Someone correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t it a legal requirement for them to be dated? As in, they become invalid if they don’t have it as allowing undated legal forms opens the system up to abuse?
that’s why she said in court that they “appeared to be copies of the extradition requests.”
Not notarised as accurate copies.
So the contents of the documents might have all the required information, the court just doesn’t know they’re accurate copies of that information.
Think about a search warrant – it needs particulars like dates, addresses etc. But a photocopy of an arrest warrant doesn’t mean it’s the same as the original warrant, unless it was notarised at time of copying.
I suspect that if they don’t have the original paperwork, some very interesting questions will end up being raised.
Definitely muppets. Makes one wonder how many non-millionaires have been incarcerated based on “appeared to be” copies…
not being date stamped leaves open the assertion they were not issued at the time claimed or even produced much later
Disgusting. I guess now that it is in a real court not ‘the herald and TV3 news beat up’ real evidence needs to be established and some American Hollywood fake email can not be used. It could all have been avoided as Sony lawyers wisely knew it was a waste of time as a similar case had been bought against You Tube and they were found not guilty of copywrite infringement. File sharing is not a crime.
When 70 armed defender abseil into someones home for a copywrite case and scare a young family and young kids, then something is defiantly wrong.
When they repeat the mistakes with illegal spying, illegally seizing assets before guilt has been found so someone does not have the funds to defend themselves, and further try to increase the charges to money laundering to justify handing them over to the American justice system for a show trial then this is not justice.
I
a question…..is it really possible the Crown would pursue these proceedings without such an apparently basic level of preparedness?…or is another agenda at play?
Having dealt with crown law on a number of occasions I can confirm they are more than capable of this level of incompetence.
ditto.
and sometimes they pursue stuff without best legal foundation cos someone asks them to
good grief
Don’t worry it’s not ‘real’ money it is just tax payer money to be squandered!
You know like 11 million Sheep brides, or 200 million for Sky City.
They did the raid without being properly legally prepared, why would they change that lack of thinking something through now?
The whole Justice system is so under funded they most likely had a lot of inexperienced underlings doing the bulk of the work. The originals are most likely misfiled or misplaced.
The originals are most likely misfiled or misplaced.
Or perhaps they were procedurally invalid in some way and were then surreptitiously altered and photocopied to conceal the alterations. Let’s not forget Wormald’s perjury.
Or simply didn’t exist until someone realised the mistake and quickly filled them in – except for the date.
Let’s not forget Wormald’s perjury.
Exactly! It gets very very fishy.
It could have just been a golf game handshake. No paperwork necessary.
Isn’t that how we do business? Sky city /Hollywood law changes, TPPA deals – u piss in my pocket – i’ll piss in urs?
When the Crown has spent millions of taxpayers money on prosecuting the FBI case, surely there is one little person who guards the critical documents. Wow
Those damned back office jobs the nats keep wanting to cut are slightly more important than they thought.
They sure are. Enjoyed Lisa Owen taking Anne Tolley to task on that very point on The Nation last week when Tolley blathered on and on about CYFs caseworkers being overburdened with paperwork and unable to focus on the needs of their clients.
BOOM!! Nailed it.
I hope you all remember that the Police have had to issue a “guarantee” of up to $2B to Dotcom et al in the event of the chain of prosecutions failing. Any bets on whether the house will have to make a payout on the jackpot.
Citation?
Sounds like BS Gristle provide evidence of such a claim. The police charge to convict I’ve not heard of any situation where they agree a damages figure before they commence.
tc, tc tc… if only you had scrolled down just a bit more and read Pasupil’s sourcing. Then you would not had to show to one and all that you don’t read very much before jumping to print.
But I agree with you that it is extremely unusual for the Assist Com of Police to have give the Court this sort of undertaking. Which of coarse is why it was memorable. If had been me signing up to the undertaking, I would be feeling nervous that Sony had abandoned the litigation.
Um I have never heard of a similar situation occurring before. I would agree with TC.
The fact that Marshall signed an undertaking in this case shows how unusual it is …
This may prove to be a very costly omission in the paperwork, from the (millions of dollars…) link above:
of course he may begin to enforce it and then settle for an apology from key and collins in a form he writes… or resignation in return for not suing.
seems VERY odd to omit 2 such important things. In my experience court officials are pretty i dotty and t crossy…
Damn i really was looking forward to seeing those pandas
Makes me want to watch an old episode of Rainbow, I think I know now whose playing the character of Bungle.
Love it Maui
Man accused of stealing $5 in snacks died in jail as he waited for space at mental hospital
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=11521633
‘Justice’ in the USA!
Man dies in debtors prison.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/family-sues-after-man-dies-while-in-jail-for-unpaid-parking-ticket_56044469e4b00310edfa778b
No original? ‘Appeared to be copies’? Not notarized? No date stamp? (Good luck getting a WINZ benefit like this.)
Gosh what is that smell?
Originals found.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/285802/dotcom-case-crown-finds-original-extradition-notices