John Banks case exposes festering sore

John Banks after his stand up media conference at the Stamford Plaza, Auckland. Photo / Brett Phibbs

John Banks has done us a favour and shown our justice system to be truly broken. But what chance would he have had if he had been a young man, down and out, up against the system, or even an average person or, indeed, an ordinary MP?

He or she would have had no chance.

As it was, Banks had hundreds of thousands of dollars to spend.

And spend it he had to — to clear his name.

He had a wife who, stung by Justice Edwin Wylie refusing to believe her testimony, hunted down the key witnesses who turned the case around.

The Crown didn't do that. The fancy lawyers didn't.

Banks was, of course, a Government Minister, a party leader and a critical vote in Parliament.

It was never an everyday case and we would expect the Crown prosecution to be at its very best and most professional.

Here's what the Court of Appeal found: "[Solicitor-General] Mr Heron was not in a position to explain the Crown's current theory of the case."

That's after two Court of Appeal hearings, a week-long hearing at the High Court, depositions hearings at the district court, a judicial review at the High Court, many, many judicial telephone conferences, and a spend of taxpayer money in excess of a million dollars.

And after all that, the head of Crown Law could not explain the Crown's case when asked by the second highest court in the land.

Heron told the court the Crown might still be sticking to the theory that the all-crucial lunch took place on June 5.

Even Dotcom, when confronted with the evidence, had given that one away.

Heron didn't have a case but still he was pushing on.

We know all too well how Crown Law and the police become blinkered, dogged and all too ready to overturn justice.

Banks has picked a scab and now, too, the political establishment can see the festering sore. The Crown prosecution also withheld from the court the Butler memorandum in which Dotcom again said the crucial lunch was a second lunch that took place on June 9, which Justice Wylie had already ruled — and the prosecution had accepted — was not true.

It was crucial evidence. The effect of withholding it was "to mislead the court".

The court satisfied itself the withholding was "attributable to an error of judgment rather than misconduct".

The judges are more kindly disposed to the Crown than me.

Banks was humiliated, convicted, his political career ended, his marriage not helped, and he's out of pocket hundreds of thousands.

But that's just the scab.

Think of the sore that is Scott Watson still languishing in jail and the many others badly dealt to without the wherewithal and assistance needed to fight back against the weight of the State that continues to be ready to crush any individual without regard to justice.

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