London judges dismiss Howse retrial bid

Bruce Howse

Bruce Howse has failed in his bid to get a new trial on charges of murdering his two stepdaughters in Masterton in 2001, after the Privy Council in London threw out his appeal.

Howse will now have to stay in Auckland's maximum security Paremoremo Prison and serve his 25-year minimum non-parole sentence.

But in what will be one of the Privy Council's last rulings on New Zealand matters, just three of the five judges said they believed Howse had received a fair trial on charges of murdering half-sisters Olympia Jetson, 11, and Saliel Aplin, 12, on December 4, 2001.

A dissenting opinion from Lord Rodger of Earlsferry and Sir Andrew Leggatt found that "it is impossible to imagine a clearer example of a trial that has gone off the rails" and said the convictions should be quashed and Howse given a fresh trial.

But their opinion was not enough to get Howse's case re-heard after Lords Hutton and Carswell and Sir Swinton Thomas said the appeal should be dismissed.

The two sisters were asleep in a sleepout in their Masterton home when Howse killed each of them with a single knife blow. Saliel would have died quickly but a pathologist believed Olympia might have taken up to two hours to bleed to death.

After the killings, Howse first claimed he had been attacked by several men, whom he blamed for the murders, before admitting he had done it, and then changing his story once more to say the girls' mother, Charlene Aplin, had killed them and then asked him to take the blame.

But Howse was convicted in the High Court, a finding upheld by the Court of Appeal, before he took it one step further, to the Privy Council in London, hearing one of its last New Zealand cases before the new Supreme Court takes over completely.

Howse argued he had not received a fair trial, primarily because accusations that he had sexually abused Saliel, Olympia and other girls were heard in his trial.

The majority of the Privy Council judges, while agreeing there had been "irregularities" in Howse's trial, did not believe these had deprived him of a fair hearing.

They said the threshold for saying irregularities had caused an unfair trial was high and that had not been made in Howse's case.

"There were undoubtedly very serious errors on the part of the trial judge in a number of respects," the three majority-judgment judges said.

But "their lordships entirely agree with the conclusion reached by the Court of Appeal that the prosecution case against the appellant was overwhelming".

"The errors were not radical enough or fundamental enough, nor were they such a departure from the essential requirements of the law, as to deprive the appellant of a proper trial."

The two dissenting judges said they could not agree with the others.

"We have reached the clear conclusion that, in this very unusual case, there was such a fundamental or radical departure from the requirements of the law that the appellant's trial cannot said to be fair", said Lord Rodger of Earlsferry and Sir Andrew Leggatt.

They said a fair trial was a fundamental right and it had been breached in Howse's case by "hearsay" evidence of sexual abuse.

There had been a substantial miscarriage of justice, the conviction should be quashed and the Court of Appeal should consider whether to order a retrial, they said.
Howse's lawyer, Greg King, has said his client continues to maintain his innocence.

- NZPA