Hall is European. <\/p>\n
Turner and his wife had been driving near his mother\u2019s house that night when they paused at an intersection and spotted the man. <\/p>\n
Alan Hall spent 17 years in prison before being exonerated in 2022. Photo \/ Greg Bowker<\/p>\n
\u201cI looked to my left and I saw this person running across Clevedon Rd,\u201d Turner told police in a signed statement the next day. \u201cHe was really motoring across the road.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe ran straight to the right of way… When he got to the right of way, he stopped and looked around behind him. He walked down the right of way a bit and kept looking around and then he ran off down the right of way. It was dark in the right of way and I couldn\u2019t see his face when he looked around. <\/p>\n
\u201cI would describe the guy as being a male M\u0101ori and his height would be between 5\u20327\u2033 [1.7m] and 6\u2032 [1.83m]. I am 5\u20326\u2033 [1.68m] and he was definitely taller than me… When he turned around I could see that he was definitely dark-skinned. He was not white.\u201d<\/p>\n
Police returned for a follow-up statement in February 1986. <\/p>\n
\u201cI still feel that person I saw that night was a M\u0101ori,\u201d he wrote in that statement. \u201cHis features seemed M\u0101ori. His stance seemed to be M\u0101ori. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I asked my wife to look at this guy, I remember saying to my wife, \u2018Look at the sneaky guy over there\u2019. My wife reckons I said, \u2018Look at the M\u0101ori guy\u2019. I cannot remember if I said that or not.\u201d<\/p>\n
His statement continued: \u201cI am 100% sure he was a M\u0101ori. That was my immediate impression. I do not feel he was a P\u0101keh\u0101, not even a dark-skinned one.\u201d <\/p>\n
Turner said today he had expected to give evidence at trial, at which point he would have said the same thing. But he got a call at some point stating he wasn\u2019t needed. <\/p>\n
He was approached two years after Hall\u2019s conviction by a private investigator working on the appeal. Turner was shown a typed copy of his second statement, which authorities presented at a preliminary hearing in 1986, and he realised for the first time that all \u201cM\u0101ori\u201d references had been removed, he said. <\/p>\n
He signed a new affidavit, dated March 1988. In it, he recalled that the police officer who took the second statement seemed very focused on race. <\/p>\n
\u201c[He] appeared to be trying to get me to be uncertain or change my mind as to whether I could say the man I saw was M\u0101ori,\u201d he wrote. \u201cI remained firm in the clear belief and recollection that the man I saw was a M\u0101ori.\u201d<\/p>\n
An officer had returned to his house in June 1986 and asked him to sign a typed version of the previously handwritten second statement, he recalled in the 1988 affidavit. He did not reread the typed version at that time, he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cI now note the important point that I definitely identified the person as being of M\u0101ori race has been omitted from my court statement,\u201d he continued in the 1988 document. \u201cI did not intend to exclude it and did not realise it had been omitted.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am extremely surprised by the omission … particularly after the police sergeant had tested me at length on this very point, and made an issue of it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI still believe that the person I saw that night was a M\u0101ori person and that would have been evidence if I was called to court, and the police certainly knew that I was definite on that identification…<\/p>\n
\u201cI am now aware that my statement was read to the jury in the trial of a European. I know that the person I saw running across Clevedon Rd that night was not a European, not even a dark-skinned European.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was definitely not what I saw, and police are aware of that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Aside from confirming that the prior statements were his own, Turner didn\u2019t have much new to add today during direct examination from the prosecution. His memory has faded over the past four decades, he said. <\/p>\n
Defence lawyer David Jones, KC, suggested the witness did not seem to be nearly as confident today as he was back then. When approached by an investigator before the current trial, Turner was described as having said something off the cuff along the lines of: \u201cThink about it lots. Maybe I didn\u2019t see the right person. Person I saw maybe wasn\u2019t M\u0101ori\u201d.<\/p>\n
Defence lawyer David Jones, KC. Photo \/ Dean Purcell<\/p>\n
Turner, who is M\u0101ori himself, didn\u2019t deny having said those words. But he still thinks his racial identification was correct, he said. <\/p>\n
Jones asked how Turner could have identified the stranger\u2019s race when he couldn\u2019t see the man\u2019s facial features in the dark. <\/p>\n
\u201cJust his mannerisms and his movements,\u201d Turner responded. <\/p>\n
\u201cDo you associate certain mannerisms with ethnicity?\u201d the defence lawyer followed up.<\/p>\n
\u201cYup,\u201d the defendant said. <\/p>\n
Jones noted Turner used the words \u201cfeel\u201d and \u201cseemed\u201d as qualifiers when describing the man\u2019s race. He also initially wrote in one of the handwritten statements that he was 95% sure before crossing that out and amending it to 100%.<\/p>\n
The defence lawyer suggested the witness had heard a preliminary description of the unknown attacker as M\u0101ori on the radio on the night of the killing and tailored his statements to fit it. The victim\u2019s sons had initially described the intruder as M\u0101ori. <\/p>\n
\u201cWere you trying to be helpful?\u201d the lawyer asked. <\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d the witness said of the implication he had embellished the police tip. <\/p>\n
The court next heard from Turner\u2019s ex-wife, who had been in the car with him during the sighting. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s all quite vague \u2013 it\u2019s so long ago,\u201d she said of her current recollection. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I heard of the conviction, I was surprised. I said to my husband, \u2018They\u2019ve got the wrong guy\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
During cross-examination, Jones noted it would have been dark for about an hour and a half when the couple saw the mystery man. The woman said her recollection was that visibility had been good. <\/p>\n
The woman was also asked about a statement she made in 2022. In it, she said she now remembers being the person who first saw the mystery man \u2013 not her husband. They had a laugh about the mistake but never corrected the record because the other basic facts of what they had seen were correct, she said at the time. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been so long ago that I may be confused,\u201d she admitted today. <\/p>\n
Assuming it was her who saw the man, Jones asked her the same question as her ex: how could she know in the dark that he was M\u0101ori? <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s hard to describe, but back then M\u0101ori seemed to walk in a specific way,\u201d she said, acknowledging that she would have only had a glance at the man\u2019s eyes because he was wearing a balaclava. \u201cIt was the way he strutted, and that was my first impression of him.\u201d<\/p>\n
She had grown up with M\u0101ori, she said. <\/p>\n
\u201cI could be wrong,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
The final witness of the day was defence lawyer Bruce Stainton, who had been practising law for about 10 years when Hall\u2019s mother approached him in 1987 and asked him to help out with the appeal, which was being spearheaded by trial lawyer Peter Williams. <\/p>\n
He described a frustrating indifference from authorities as he tried to get documents in preparation for the appeal. The main defence theory at that point, he said, was that the real killer had been an acquaintance of the victim \u2013 a man they knew to have a criminal record, and who happened to be M\u0101ori. <\/p>\n
Based on this theory, he sent an urgent letter specifically requesting any police bulletins having previously described the suspect as \u201ca six-foot M\u0101ori\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cCould the statements Mr Turner made to police … have been of assistance to the appellant?\u201d Crown prosecutor Grant Burston asked. <\/p>\n
Crown prosecutor Grant Burston. Photo \/ Marty Melville<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the answer is clearly … it would have been critical to us, and it would have changed the balance of evidence before the jury…\u201d Stainton replied. \u201cWe certainly would have made the maximum use of those two letters.\u201d<\/p>\n
Police may view some of the evidence they sought as unreliable, but \u201cthat is not the test\u201d, Stainton said in a letter to authorities before the failed 1987 appeal. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s a sentiment that was repeated by prosecutors at the outset of the current trial. The defendants may have genuinely believed Hall was guilty, but hiding evidence from the defence was still a miscarriage of justice, they have said. <\/p>\n
Stainton, who has not yet been cross-examined, is expected to continue giving evidence tomorrow as the trial continues before Justice Ian Gault.<\/p>\n