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Courts have found that police acted in self-defence when Steven Wallace was fatally shot in Waitara in 2000. (File photo)
The mother of police shooting victim Steven Wallace has suffered a double blow in her more than 20-year fight for accountability for her son’s death, with the Court of Appeal on Monday rejecting her case and overturning a previous win.
Raewyn Wallace, whose son was shot in the Taranaki town of Waitara in 2000, had taken a novel legal claim that her son had the right not to be deprived of life.
Steven Wallace, then 23, was shot by Senior Constable Keith Abbott after he attacked the police station and a police car with a golf club. Wallace died soon after.
The Crown decided not to prosecute Abbott, so the Wallace family brought a private prosecution. But in 2002 a jury acquitted the police officer on the grounds of self-defence.
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The High Court upheld the finding a year ago, with the
High Court judge saying, on the balance of probabilities, Abbott probably had shot and killed Wallace in self-defence.
The judge rejected Raewyn Wallace’s central claim that the killing breached her son’s right not to be deprived of life. Self-defence was a legal exception to the right, the judge said.
An animation prepared for the Wallace family alleging what happened when police shot Steven Wallace in Waitara April 30, 2000
But the High Court judge found fault with the official process after the death, saying that the police investigation of the death did not comply with a Bill of Rights obligation to be sufficiently independent, because police were investigating one of their own.
The Solicitor-General should have given reasons for the decision not to prosecute Abbott, she said.
Raewyn Wallace appealed against the High Court decision, arguing that the self-defence finding was wrong. The Crown, representing Police and the Attorney-General, cross-appealed, saying the judge’s two findings in Wallace’s favour were wrong.
KEVIN STENT/Stuff
Raewyn Wallace, left, has been through several sets of court proceedings following the death of her son. (File photo)
In a decision issued on Monday, the Court of Appeal dealt Raewyn Wallace a double blow in rejecting her appeal and allowing the Crown’s so that the gain she made in the High Court was lost.
The Court of Appeal said that in the civil case, Raewyn Wallace had to show it was more likely than not that self-defence did not apply. She had not met that standard, it found.
Like the judge in the High Court, the three Court of Appeal judges said it could not reopen a general argument about the evidence at the criminal trial. It was likely impossible to revisit some of the controversies in the case, they said.
The judges upheld a finding that Abbott had reasonable grounds for thinking immediately before the shooting that his life was in danger.
Once Steven Wallace was shot police could do nothing to save his life but more could have been done sooner to comfort him, they said.
Phil Reid/Stuff
Constable Keith Abbott raised self-defence when he was charged with murder and a jury acquitted him. (File photo)
The court said the criminal trial of Abbott, along with the coroner’s inquiry and Independent Police Complaints Authority, was adequate to meet the state’s obligation to investigate the loss of life at the hands of a police officer.
The other fault the judge had found was that the Solicitor-General should have given reasons for the decision not to prosecute Abbott, leaving the Wallace family to take a private prosecution.
The Court of Appeal said the lack of reasons for the prosecution decision was not formally an issue in the High Court case and the judge made her decision without the Crown having the chance to put forward evidence about the process that was followed.
The court said that it would not rely on an animation of the event seen from the Wallace point of view because it did not have expert evidence of the person who created the animation.
Mother of police shooting victim Steven Wallace loses civil appeal & Latest News Update
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