Acquitted and angry after 25 years' jail
A man who spent 25 years in prison for the murder of Auckland tyre-fitter Deane Fuller-Sandys has been acquitted.
Stephen Stone was imprisoned in 1999 for that murder, as well as the rape and murder of Leah Stephens.
In October last year his convictions were quashed by the Court of Appeal, alongside those of Gail Maney, Colin Maney and Mark Henriksen, and a retrial was ordered.
Crown prosecutor Alysha McClintock told the High Court at Auckland today that the Crown would not be pursuing charges against Stone in a retrial.
McClintock said a criminal trial could only proceed if there was sufficient evidence to prove the charges beyond reasonable doubt, and there was no longer sufficient evidence to support Stone being retried.
Three of the key witnesses were no longer available and additional ESR testing had not produced any results of significance, she said.
Justice Brewer acquitted Stone on all charges.
Stone stood with clenched fists in the dock as the judge announced the decision. 'Disgraceful miscarriage of justice'
Private investigator Tim McKinnel, who has worked on a number of wrongful conviction cases, said the decision had been a "long time coming".
"He appeared today and the Crown stood up and offered no evidence against him, which, we'd had some advance notice was going to occur," he told RNZ's Midday Report programme today.
Henriksen, Gail Maney and Colin Maney were also convicted on various charges relating to the case, but had their convictions quashed at the same time as Stone.
"This case, in my view, is a disgraceful miscarriage of justice," McKinnel said. "We have four people who were wrongfully convicted for murder and rape involving two supposed victims, and the case, I think, can be best described in my view as a corrupt investigation, and the fact that it's taken this long to remedy is a tragedy.
"What's also a tragedy, we think, is that the families of Leah Stephens and Deane Fuller-Sandys haven't been told the truth over the last few decades. And I think that there's still some work to do to make sure that the truth emerges."
McKinnel said Stone's head was "spinning".
"A real mixture of emotions for Stephen - primarily anger. He's had his life taken from him. He has been incarcerated and institutionalised for nearly three decades, and his life and his family's life has been tipped upside down for crimes that he had nothing to do with.
"Gail was in court today to support Stephen, and for her, today was an important day because effectively a continuing prosecution of Stephen suggested that the Crown thought these events may well have occurred, and so she was eager to make sure that the case was put to bed once and for all.
"So it's a good day for her and Colin and Mark as well."
McKinnel said money would never make up for what the four went through, and there was a "fairly rigorous process to go through" to prove their innocence on the balance of probabilities - the benchmark for receiving compensation.
"We think there needs to be an inquiry… I think the public and the Stephens and Fuller-Sandys family deserve to understand what went wrong here. The case is so old, so complex and so troubling that we think an inquiry needs to occur."
The first thing Stone had planned after being freed was getting some food, McKinnel said, before visiting his mother's grave.
"His mother died in 1989 when these supposed events occurred, and so he wants to go and see her and spend some time with her."
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