Watson\u2019s father, Chris Watson, was still reading through the judgment when contacted by NZME.<\/p>\n
He said it was a \u201chatchet job\u201d on his son, whom he spoke to briefly this morning about the decision<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s obviously disappointed, but it\u2019s just pretty much business as usual for him,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Chris Watson confirmed that an application for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court<\/a> had been discussed.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ll continue dripping on the rock,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The disappearance<\/p>\n Hope, 17, and Smart, 21, were last seen stepping off a water taxi in Endeavour Inlet<\/a>, in the Marlborough Sounds, in the early hours of New Year\u2019s Day 1998.<\/p>\n The young friends attended a New Year\u2019s Eve celebration at Furneaux Lodge the evening before leaving the water taxi with a lone man, who offered them a place to sleep on his yacht, Blade. They have not been seen, dead or alive, since.<\/p>\n It has been accepted that Hope and Smart died at the hands of the lone man in circumstances which amounted to murder.<\/p>\n Watson was eventually identified by the taxi driver and the lodge\u2019s bartender, Guy Wallace, as the lone man.<\/p>\n Following a three-month trial in the High Court at Wellington in 1999, a jury found Watson guilty of the murders. <\/p>\n Some 26 years later, he remains in prison, where he maintains his innocence and has made several unsuccessful appeals since 2000. <\/p>\n He became eligible for parole in 2015<\/a> and will next appear before the Parole Board in January 2026.<\/p>\n In 2020, then Governor-General Dame Patsy Reddy referred the convictions to the Court of Appeal to determine whether a miscarriage of justice may have occurred.<\/p>\n The latest appeal<\/p>\n Following last year\u2019s hearing, presided over by Justices Christine French, Patricia Courtney, and Susan Thomas, the appeal court has today released its decision.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is a case that has gripped but troubled the nation,\u201d the justices said at the start of their 291-page decision, which determined Watson\u2019s trial was fair and the convictions must stand.<\/p>\n \u201cUltimately, the Crown presented a compelling circumstantial case to show that only Mr Watson could have been the lone man.<\/p>\n \u201cThe evidence was carefully presented, challenged, and subjected to submission and analysis. It was a fair trial.\u201d<\/p>\n The appeal hearing focused on evidence about Hope\u2019s hairs that were said to have been located on Watson\u2019s boat, and Wallace\u2019s evidence that identified Watson as the lone man.<\/p>\n The hairs examined<\/p>\n Watson\u2019s defence team, led by Nick Chisnall, KC, had raised questions about the strands of hair \u2013 one 15cm long and the other 25cm \u2013 purportedly found on a blanket taken from Watson\u2019s boat.<\/p>\n When ESR first examined a bag containing some 400 dark hairs off the blanket in January 1998, no blonde hairs were found.<\/p>\n But when it was re-examined in March, two blonde hairs were discovered. A small cut was also found in the bag containing the reference hairs from Hope.<\/p>\n Watson\u2019s team submitted it would have been critical that Hope\u2019s reference hairs were examined on the same day, at the same workbench, as the hairs taken from the blanket.<\/p>\n They argued it couldn\u2019t be ruled out that the hairs got on the blanket either through transference \u2013 Watson picked up the hairs at the party the night of the disappearance \u2013 or from contamination in the ESR laboratory.<\/p>\n Defence also argued that the DNA evidence used to link the two hairs found on the blanket with Hope was overstated at trial, partly because there was no New Zealand database at the time.<\/p>\n But the Crown\u2019s team, led by the deputy solicitor general Madeleine Laracy, submitted that the issues of transference and contamination were well traversed at the trial, where Watson had four experts at his disposal. <\/p>\n It also rejected attempts by Watson\u2019s team to paint the ESR in 1998 as some sort of chaotic, substandard laboratory.<\/p>\n The Crown submitted the DNA evidence linking the two hairs on the blanket to Hope had become stronger since the trial, as DNA databases had grown over the past 20 years.<\/p>\n The issue of identification<\/p>\n On the issue of identification, Chisnall had argued the police exerted significant \u201cinterrogative and moral pressure<\/a>\u201d to get Wallace to change his story.<\/p>\n Wallace originally described the lone man as having long, scraggly hair,<\/a> in direct contrast to the photos of Watson from that night showing he had short hair. <\/p>\n Watson\u2019s team submitted the police pressured Wallace to identify Watson as the lone man, showing Wallace a photo of Watson early in the investigation and then pressuring him during a subsequent police interview<\/a>. <\/p>\n Defence also argued the media reinforced this by showing Wallace an image of Watson. More than three months later, Wallace identified Watson in a police montage, referred to as montage B, as the lone man. A claim he repeated at the trial. <\/p>\n However, the Crown submitted that the witness identification from the montage didn\u2019t rest on Wallace\u2019s evidence, pointing out half of the 53 people shown the montage identified Watson from it.<\/p>\n The impact of showing Wallace a photo of Watson in the initial stages of the investigation could only be speculative and didn\u2019t mean the identification from montage was unreliable, it was argued. <\/p>\nScott Watson, right, has unsuccessfully claimed he is the victim of a significant miscarriage of justice over the disappearance of Ben Smart and Olivia Hope. Photo \/ NZME composite<\/p>\n
This picture of Scott Watson, midway through a blink, was the only one of him originally shown to witnesses.<\/p>\n
Scott Watson’s boat Blade in 2017. Photo \/ Mike Scott<\/p>\n
Ben Smart and Olivia Hope have not been seen or their bodies found since New Year\u2019s Day 1998.<\/p>\n
Chris Watson leaving the Court of Appeal in Wellington where his son Scott sought to overturn his convictions. Photo \/ Mark Mitchell<\/p>\n