Surmise on trip to shore vital flaw: defence

By Alison Horwood and Eugene Bingham

The case against Scott Watson has been shattered because the Crown cannot prove he returned to shore after taking a lone trip to his boat, defence counsel said yesterday.

In his closing address, Bruce Davidson said Watson returned to his boat at 3.30 am on New Year's Day 1998 and was "tucked up in bed" when Olivia Hope and Ben Smart disappeared on to a mystery ketch.

This week, the Crown conceded for the first time that Watson might have returned to Blade alone with water-taxi driver Donald Anderson, but said he must have rejoined the party.

Mr Davidson said: "That concession is highly significant because it enables you to say this: 'If the Crown can't demonstrate to us how the accused returned to shore, that is the end of the crown case'."

During a four-hour address, Mr Davidson also questioned Crown claims about Watson's obnoxious, sexually explicit behaviour.

His client might have been "flirtatious" at the Furneaux Lodge party, but the Crown had exaggerated this to build a case that he was a sexual predator.

"It is a crude attempt to blacken the accused and turn you against him. It takes you nowhere."

Watson's behaviour was no different from that of many people who drank at bars, hotels and parties around the country, he said.

Mr Davidson also said the evidence of three people whom Watson allegedly told of his desire to kill a woman had been taken out of context.

"This evidence can't make the accused the man on the Naiad [the water taxi that dropped Ben, Olivia and a lone man at a moored yacht], it can't make him a killer, it does not overcome the direct evidence. The real danger is that the Crown has attempted to elevate this evidence and give it a character that it does not really have."

Mr Davidson said his interpretation of the Crown case was that it revolved around three pieces of circumstantial evidence:

* Water-taxi driver Guy Wallace's identification of Watson as the man he dropped off with Olivia and Ben.

* The discovery of two hairs on Watson's boat.

* Claims that Watson confessed to two prison inmates.

"The defence answer is that if those three circumstances collapse, there is no case."

Mr Wallace's identification of Watson was "pitifully weak and excluded Watson."

Mr Davidson showed the jury the computer sketch prepared by Mr Wallace on January 9, 1998, and said it could not possibly be Watson. Holding it up with a photograph of Watson at the celebrations, he said: "Let's just get real. How can you turn that into that - it's a remarkable feat."

Mr Davidson said the Crown had been selective about Mr Wallace's evidence, asking the jurors to believe his identification of Watson and dismiss his belief that he dropped the couple on a ketch.

"What Mr Wallace saw was a ketch. There can be absolutely no doubt ... He was there, he saw it, he touched it."

Dealing with the hairs, Mr Davidson alleged there was a possibility a reference sample of Olivia's hairs taken from her home had inadvertently been mixed with the 400 strands seized from Blade.

Nor did he believe that the Crown had satisfactorily established that the hairs belonged to Olivia. There was also a chance they had been innocently transferred to Watson during the party.

"I suggest to you these two hairs have no real value."

Turning to the evidence of the cellmates who said Watson had confessed to them in Addington Prison, Christchurch, Mr Davidson said their testimony was unreliable, unbelievable and lacked credibility.

The first witness spent only four days in a cell with Watson, which was not enough time to establish a relationship of trust.

The second man had received favours from the police in exchange for giving evidence. On the day he first told police about his alleged conversation with Watson, charges relating to a serious assault of his partner were reduced and he was granted bail. He also received a car and a cellphone from the police.

Mr Davidson said the defence case had four main features:

* The circumstantial evidence against Watson was vague, tenuous, and did not lead to his guilt.

* Substantial amounts of evidence proved Watson was not involved and nor was his boat.

* The mystery ketch exists.

* Behaviour of Watson proved he was not involved.

Central to the evidence of Watson's innocence was the Crown's concession that Mr Anderson took the accused to his boat alone.

The Crown says he may have gone to Blade with Mr Anderson about 2 am, but he must have returned to shore somehow and met Ben and Olivia on a second journey about 4 am.

Mr Davidson said sightings of Watson in the bar closer to 4 am could be explained because the defence believed the journey with Mr Anderson was much later than 2 am.

Watson's presence at Marine Head about 9 am on New Year's Day, and later that day at Kura Kura Pt, pointed to his innocence.

"If he has this couple on his boat in this terrible, sinister, criminal, malevolent fashion, don't you think he would be well and truly gone by 9 o'clock?"

Mr Davidson also said that if Watson were guilty he would have shaken or washed the tiger blanket free of hairs and replaced the scratched lining on his forward hatch.

He disputed that the marks on the rubber lining of the hatch were caused by finger-nail scratches, saying it was a "hypothesis that had crept into the case."

Concluding his submissions, he said the Sounds murder mystery had not been solved.

"What this case has demonstrated is one jigsaw of the mystery, and that is, it was not the accused's boat and it was not the accused."