KEY POINTS:
Scott Watson is willing to take the stand to give evidence if the Governor-General orders a retrial over the murders of Olivia Hope and Ben Smart, say his lawyers.
Defence counsel Greg King and Mike Antunovic are preparing to file a petition this year to the Governor-General who,
in consultation with the Ministry of Justice, can recommend Watson be pardoned or the case be referred back to the Court of Appeal.
Watson has told King he would testify in court if needed but the high-profile defence lawyer said new evidence produced since the last trial was the key to overturning Watson's convictions.
King says these include:
* Key police witnesses Guy Wallace and Roz McNeilly have since retracted their evidence of picking Watson from a photo montage.
* A secret witness has retracted his evidence that Watson confessed to him while in jail.
* Sailing speed tests show it is impossible for Watson to have been sighted in the Cook Strait when police say he was.
* Forensics show that scratches on the hatch of Watson's boat Blade could only have been made when open.
* No evidence to prove Watson made two trips to shore on the night Ben and Olivia disappeared, a theory that the Crown revealed on the last day of a 13-week trial.
* Another witness initially told police he saw Watson between 10am and midday on New Year's Day. That estimate changed to 5pm the same day the man was sentenced for cannabis cultivation.
"You can pick over the bones of the trial but the jury accepted that evidence," said King. "But can you say that the outcome would be the same, had all this information been fully explored in front of a jury in the first trial? Categorically, no.
"But doesn't it say it all when the father of Olivia Hope, who sat through the entire trial and bawled his eyes out, goes public with serious reservations about the convictions?"
King was referring to recent coverage in the Herald on Sunday and North & South magazine, which have raised serious questions about the police case and the trial.
"What we got was a conviction but we never got the truth. And that's the part that still really rips me up," said Gerald Hope, the father of Olivia.
"I'm not saying [Scott Watson] is not guilty. What I'm saying is let's clear up the doubt."
Hope was equally amazed that nobody - especially politicians - had responded to allegations made in Trial by Trickery, a book by Auckland journalist Keith Hunter, in which he makes a stinging attack on those who put Watson away.
In an eight-page article based on the police case in last week's Listener, lead Crown prosecutor Paul Davison, QC, said the criticism was "nonsense" and "sensationalist" journalism.
King praised Davison for speaking out on such a high-profile case but was disappointed the QC had not canvassed the new evidence found since the trial. "There's nothing new in it [the Listener article]. But what he states as fact, is in my view, completely open to interpretation," said King. "He has not been prepared to enter that debate, he is still relying on what they had 10 years ago. But the things that, to this day he keeps harping on about, have been completely rebutted and that is our case to the Governor-General."
Mike Antunovic, Watson's original lawyer from the trial, said he stopped reading the Listener article half way through in anger.
"Like so much I've read about the Scott Watson case over the years, some of it was correct, some of it was completely wrong," said Antunovic. "The Crown played with that evidence. Fancy words put together to make a lovely story which they managed to get a jury to swallow. That's how I feel about it, frankly."
If the Governor-General ordered a retrial, Watson was willing to take the stand, said King.
"I've spoken to Scott Watson and I'd have no qualms from calling him. He has always, at all stages, maintained his innocence," said King.
"The danger with putting someone on the stand in a complex, circumstantial case is that it takes the focus away from the evidence."
Barely a week goes by without another credible sighting of the "mystery ketch", said King, which he described as like the Loch Ness monster. "That won't reopen the case. But when police officers come out and say they were concerned with the investigation, when the father of the deceased speaks out, that has to ring alarm bells."
Rob Pope, head of Operation Tam and now deputy police commissioner, has refused to be interviewed by the Herald on Sunday since November.
Key points to Governor-General
1. Water-taxi driver Guy Wallace and Furneaux Lodge bar manager Roz McNeilly were key police witnesses.
Police showed them an image of Scott Watson midway through a blink, mimicking their description of the mystery man whom they saw at Furneaux Lodge on the night Ben and Olivia disappeared.
They were never shown a photo of Watson taken on New Year's Eve, in which he was clean shaven with cropped hair.
Wallace and McNeilly now say they were pressured by police and have retracted their evidence.
2. The two criminals who claimed that Watson had confessed to the murders in prison were also key to the police case. Secret witness A recanted his testimony in 2000, saying he'd lied, then retracted his recantation when re-interviewed by police, then recanted his retraction. Watson had been warned about jailhouse snitches and kept his silence throughout the investigation, even to his girlfriend, who was secretly reporting to police.
Secret witness B claims Watson told him, a virtual stranger, about murdering Ben and Olivia.
The pair never shared a cell, the confession was supposedly through a peephole, and despite claims to the contrary, witness B received a phone and car from police. The career criminal also received a light sentence for the charges he was facing.
3. Police say Watson took Ben and Olivia's bodies into Cook Strait on New Year's Day, dumped them, returned to Erie Bay and lied about the time he arrived. Watson says he was in Erie Bay by 10am; police say it was 5pm.
A man who gave Watson paint for his boat initially said he arrived between 10am and midday. Those estimates gradually changed until he and his children said Watson arrived at 5pm. The man was sentenced for cannabis cultivation the same day he told police it was 5pm. A father and son on an interisland ferry are the only people who say they saw Watson's boat in Cook Strait at 4.30pm. However, author and investigative journalist Keith Hunter recreated the trip from where they saw it to Erie Bay.
That trip took two hours, 30 minutes - therefore impossible to have Watson arriving before 7pm even if the police theory is correct.
4. Extensive scratching of rubber inside the forward hatch of Watson's boat was evidence of Olivia Hope desperately trying to escape, the Crown said.
However, the marks go right to the edge of the foam, which means the scratches could only have been made when the hatch was open. The hatch can only be fastened from the inside, unless a heavy object weighed it down.
Watson and his sister maintain his nieces scratched the hatch. The scratches were so faint that the police failed to find them until March 1998 despite scouring the boat for evidence.
5. The Crown case was that Watson returned from Furneaux Lodge around 4am with water-taxi driver Guy Wallace, invited Ben and Olivia to his yacht, and then murdered them. Drunk and without a watch, Watson told police he thought he returned to his boat at 2am, leaving Furneaux after an altercation with Ollie Perkins.
Other witnesses said that altercation happened between 3.30am and 3.45am.
However, another water-taxi driver, Donald Anderson, told the court that he took Watson to his yacht between 2am and 4am, confirmed by occupants of boats rafted to the Blade.
So the defence was confident Watson didn't come back with Wallace, as argued by the Crown.
But on the last day of the three-month trial, the prosecution said Watson had made two trips back to his yacht - at 2am with Anderson then 4am with Wallace.
Even the trial judge was surprised, as earlier the Crown had challenged the 2am trip with Anderson and had not questioned any of the 500 witnesses about seeing Watson go back to shore.
Lawyer Greg King says there is not "one iota" of evidence to back the Crown's theory of a second trip, as the theory was raised after all witnesses had given their evidence, "ambushing" the defence.
