Editorial: Road to justice far too long

Teina Pora's rape conviction has been quashed.

How hard is it to right a wrong in this country?

If the case of Teina Pora is any example, the answer is "too bloody hard".

Mr Pora is now a free man after the Privy Council this week quashed his convictions for the 1992 rape and murder of Susan Burdett.

Mr Pora spent more than two decades in prison, despite evidence arising in 1996 linking Malcolm Rewa to the murder scene, and Rewa's subsequent conviction for the rape of Ms Burdett.

Even though Mr Pora's initial convictions were quashed by the Court of Appeal in 1999, he was convicted again at retrial in 2000, based in part on his confessions, confessions that Mr Pora's legal team have now successfully argued could not be regarded as reliable.

As Maori Party co-leader Marama Fox says, the Pora case shows how "convoluted, expensive and difficult it is to have injustices like this rectified".

And that's not good enough.

If the evidence, or lack of, points to a miscarriage of justice, we need a system that doesn't require jumping through so many hoops to see justice realised.

Mr Pora could still face a retrial - stretching what has already been a prolonged ordeal even further, but if a retrial is not ordered the question of compensation arises.

Compensation for wrongful conviction and imprisonment is a sensitive subject right now, given the debacle over the David Bain case.

Whatever your feelings about the Bain case, the fact remains he spent 13 years in prison for a crime that, according to our justice system, he did not commit. The Government, in considering the case for compensation, has been accused of shopping around for the answer it wants, i.e. that David Bain does not deserve a payout.

Let us hope, should there be no retrial, that the question of Mr Pora's compensation is answered with less fuss, more haste.

Considering the amount of time it has taken to get to this point, it would be indecent to drag it out any longer than necessary.