Justice Minister Phil Goff has backed a proposal to allow people acquitted of crimes by lying to the courts to be retried on the same charges.
Mr Goff said his initial view was to support the "principled exception to the double jeopardy rule" which the Law Commission has put up as an option for dealing with people acquitted by perjury or similar means of a crime they very probably committed.
"The double jeopardy rule is a long-standing aspect of our law, designed to prevent unwarranted harassment of an accused by repeating prosecution for the same matter," he said.
But if an offender was able, like Black Power member Kevin Francis Henare Moore, to benefit from abuse of the criminal justice system, public confidence in the administration of justice would be undermined.
Moore was sentenced last year to seven years' jail for conspiring to defeat the course of justice after the murder of Robert Raymond Jillings on October 30, 1991. Moore and his brother Peter were acquitted of the murder in 1991.
The court was told last year that Moore conspired with a witness who gave false evidence in the murder trial.
When Moore was sentenced, Justice Doogue said he had "literally got away with murder."
Mr Goff said Moore should have received at least 10 years' imprisonment for murder, whereas he may serve as little as two years and four months on the lesser offence of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.
He said that in Britain in 1996 the law was changed to allow for the retrial of a person for an offence if acquittal on an earlier charge was tainted. "My preference would be to follow this course."
But he would await the final report of the Law Commission before making any decision about submitting a proposal to the cabinet for a law change.
- NZPA
Goff favours retrial for perjurers
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