Freed man ‘can finally sleep’

Mauha Fawcett is once again a free man after a decade of having his life blighted by a murder charge.

After a charge of murdering sex worker Mellory Manning in 2008 was dismissed in the High Court in Christchurch yesterday, his lawyer Chris Stevenson said an oppressive burden had been lifted from his client.

‘‘He had around a decade of his life taken away from him including years in jail, so he is just incredibly relieved and happy now that the High Court judge has dismissed the case. As he said to me, he can finally sleep.’’

Manning was stabbed, strangled, sexually violated and bashed with weapons after she was picked up from a street corner in Christchurch on December 18, 2008, and taken to a Mongrel Mob gang pad. Her halfnaked body was dumped in the Avon River in Dallington.

Fawcett, a former Mongrel Mob prospect, was first interviewed in 2009 and after numerous interviews was charged in 2012 with being a party to her murder. He was found guilty in 2014, and sentenced to at least 20 years in jail.

His conviction was quashed by the Court of Appeal in 2017, but the charge remained, pending a new trial.

Yesterday, the High Court dismissed the charge against

34-year-old Fawcett on an application under s147 of the Criminal Procedure Act, which allows the court to dismiss a charge before a trial.

‘‘I hope that Mr Fawcett’s life can take a new turn now, and I wish him all the best,’’ Justice Rachel Dunningham said.

In September, the judge found admissions made by Fawcett during interviews used in evidence against him at his 2014 trial were unreliable because he suffered from cognitive disabilities due to foetal alcohol spectrum disorder.

She excluded the interviews from his new trial saying: ‘‘Given Mr Fawcett’s neuro-disability which makes him an unreliable historian even when he is endeavouring to tell the truth, and without solid corroborating evidence of his involvement, I consider Mr Fawcett’s foetal alcohol spectrum disorder adversely affected the reliability of his statements, and I am satisfied they should be excluded on this ground.’’

The finding meant the Crown agreed to drop the murder charge, but it wanted to withdraw it under s146 of the Criminal Procedure Act rather than have it dismissed.

Speaking in support of the s147 application yesterday, Stevenson said police had plenty of indications his client was impaired. ‘‘Police had quite an amount of information from a variety of sources that there was some sort of cognitive limitation operating with Mr Fawcett, and it was exceedingly obvious in those early interviews that there was something that should have been checked out and no investigation was ever done,’’ Stevenson said.

The charge hanging over Fawcett had caused him something akin to the ‘‘exquisite agony’’ mentioned by the Supreme Court in Canada in a similar case and had taken a ‘‘terrible toll’’ on him.

Justice Dunningham’s dismissal of the charge means Fawcett cannot be recharged with the murder without the leave of the Court of Appeal. She reserved her reasons.

She said Fawcett had effectively been punished in some way or another for nine years ‘‘and for someone with his disabilities that is a tough call’’.

‘‘It is appropriate I give a results judgment because I know for Mr Fawcett these time frames have been interminable, so I am granting Mr Fawcett’s application. It’s important there is some certainty for Mr Fawcett about where he stands.’’

The dismissal of the charge against Fawcett means the end of a suppression order over the Court of Appeal judgment granting him a new trial.

The new trial was granted on two grounds. The first related to Fawcett representing himself at his 2014 trial with the assistance of lawyer Craig Ruane as an amicus. The court ruled Ruane put defences that were inconsistent with Fawcett’s blanket denial of involvement in the murder.

The Appeal Court heard expert evidence not put before the High Court trial jury that Fawcett met the criteria for foetal alcohol spectrum disorder. His IQ was within low to normal bounds, but test results showed extreme variability of function.

‘‘He has very weak verbal reasoning and memory deficits and is prone to confabulate to fill gaps in memory. Importantly, he is very suggestible.’’

The case had ‘‘certain parallels’’ to the Teina Pora case, the court said. Pora was wrongfully convicted in 1994 of murdering Auckland woman Susan Burdett when he was 17. He also suffered from foetal alcohol syndrome and the condition meant he had the mind of a 9-year-old at the time he was interviewed by police about the 1992 murder.

‘‘There was a reasonable possibility that Mr Fawcett’s defence would earn him an acquittal had the expert evidence about his police statements been called, since that evidence might result in his statements being excluded by the court or discounted by the jury,’’ the Court of Appeal said.

Stevenson said yesterday that Fawcett had made a ‘‘bewildering array’’ of incomprehensible statements during his police interviews. Key features of what he said were shown to be wrong when tested against objective evidence.

Fawcett was first interviewed in Nelson in January 2009. He admitted he was involved in taxing prostitutes, but said he knew nothing about Manning’s murder.

He was interviewed formally as a suspect five times between August 10, 2009 and March 29, 2012.

He admitted being present when Manning was killed, hitting her with a pipe when instructed to, and dumping the body. In later interviews he resiled from that account, saying he arrived at the gang pad to find her already dead and had taken part in disposing of her body.

Mark Zarifeh, for the Crown, said Fawcett should be discharged under a section of the Criminal Procedure Act that allowed him to be charged with an offence related to the murder in the future.

‘‘It’s unfortunate those disabilities weren’t known at the outset for sure, there is no argument with that.’’

The Crown accepted there had been delays and the matter had been hanging over Fawcett for a long time. However, the court had to balance those factors against the seriousness of the offence and the fact an investigation continued.

‘‘It will be hanging over Mr Fawcett’s head but so will new and compelling evidence . . . the Crown could still bring the charge again.’’

Several people are thought to have been involved in Manning’s death and police are keen to identify a man dubbed ‘‘Male B’’, whose semen was located in the autopsy.

Manning went to work on the evening of December 18, 2008, and stood on the corner of Manchester and Peterborough streets about 9.30pm. She had not worked for some time but wanted to earn money to buy Christmas presents for her family.

At his trial Fawcett, then 26, told the jury he made a false confession to police because he was ‘‘coached’’, or was high on methamphetamine.

Because his story did not add up, police kept re-interviewing him to get ‘‘more glue to make it stick’’, he said.

‘‘I’ve talked about how I took part in hurting Miss Manning. Well I’ve lied to the police. I was never at the gang pad. I didn’t take part in this. It’s just all a made-up theory,’’ he said.

Fawcett said he had nothing to gain from protecting the Mongrel Mob. ‘‘I’m wanted from [by] the Mongrel Mob. I will never protect Male B,’’ he said.