Noel Rogers tried to block the tape being shown. Photo / Brett Phibbs
TVNZ has broadcast a videotape showing a man cleared of murder confessing to the crime, after the Supreme Court ruled it was in the interests of open justice.
Noel Clement Rogers, who was accused and then cleared of the murder of Far North woman Katherine Sheffield, took the
case to the country's highest court trying to prevent the tape being aired.
But the court today ruled that Rogers' right to privacy was outweighed by the interests of open justice.
But the Supreme Court judges criticised the police for releasing the tape to the media in the first place.
TVNZ's Sunday programme wanted the right to screen the videotape leaked to it by police in which Rogers confessed to and reconstructed the murder. Ms Sheffield was murdered in 1994.
The videotape was intended to be used as evidence in Rogers' murder trial, but it was ruled inadmissible because it was obtained in breach of his human rights.
TVNZ had previously won an appeal against a High Court ruling which prevented publication of the tape.
At the beginning of a long legal fight, the High Court said the broadcast of the videotape of Rogers would amount to a wrongful invasion of his privacy. It issued a permanent injunction restraining the broadcast by TVNZ.
The case then went to the Court of Appeal, which acknowledged the privacy issue but decided the low-level privacy interest was outweighed by the high-level public interest in the videotape's contents.
Rogers appealed to the Supreme Court, which today upheld the Court of Appeal's ruling, handing victory to TVNZ.
Rogers' uncle, Lawrence Lloyd, was convicted in 1995 of Ms Sheffield's manslaughter and served seven years of an 11-year sentence before his conviction was overturned in the Court of Appeal in 2004.
- NZ HERALD STAFF, NZPA
