Donna Chisholm - Sunday Star Times - Lundy Truth

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Donna Chisholm - Sunday Star Times

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SUNDAY , 20 MARCH 2005

By DONNA CHISHOLM

The majority of a jury in a mock television trial of the Mark Lundy case has found him not guilty - boosting supporters who hope to mount a Privy Council challenge to his murder convictions.

The Inside New Zealand documentary - What's Your Verdict? . . . Mark Lundy to screen on TV3 on March 31 - distilled the evidence for and against Lundy for a new, apparently well-educated and predominantly young jury (the oldest was only 42) of seven women and five men.


Just three of the 12 thought Lundy was guilty of bludgeoning his wife, Christine, and seven-year-old daughter, Amber, to death in their Palmerston North home in August 2000. Lundy is serving a 20-year non-parole jail term.


The show's host, Wellington lawyer Greg King, said the result was a surprise. He asked if Lundy was simply unlucky with the jury he had - or whether the way the facts were presented mattered more than the facts themselves.


He told the Sunday Star-Times that Lundy supporters had asked him to work with them on a possible appeal, but he felt his role in the documentary compromised him. He said while the concerns of the TV jury were real, he did not know enough about the evidence to comment.


If the case goes to London, it would be one of the last - the Supreme Court became the country's highest appeal court last July.


Several of the documentary's jurors doubted Lundy could commit the murders in the time he had. On a business trip to Petone, he made cellphone calls that placed him in Wellington at 5.30pm and 8.28pm. Within that time, the Crown alleged he drove 300km in a round trip to Palmerston North –- leaving Wellington at peak hour - donned and disposed of overalls and a disguise, ran 500m to and from his home, slaughtered his family, reset the clock on the home computer, broke a window latch to fake a burglary and disposed of Christine's jewellery box and the murder weapon.


A few hours later, the prosecution said, he hired a prostitute in Petone as an alibi.


The "jurors" also questioned the almost invisible trace of Christine Lundy's brain or spinal tissue on Lundy's polo shirt and some asked why there was not more, given the bloody nature of the killings.


King said the documentary used the Lundy case as a vehicle to show jury dynamics - the trial jury had the advantage of determining the credibility and reliability of witnesses, including Lundy.


Asked if the real jury could have been influenced by Lundy's appearance as much as the evidence, King said: "We are all guilty of judging books by covers and that's as apparent in jury trials as in any sector of society. The jury pays a huge amount of attention to the accused - what he does in the dock, what he says under his breath, how he reacts when a witness is asked a tough question."


But, he said, in assessing the truth, jurors were entitled to look at not only what was said, but how.

One of Lundy's trial lawyers, Steve Winter, said much of the evidence in the case didn't fit - "particularly the drive time".

Asked why a wife murderer would hire a prostitute as an alibi, Winter said: "If Mark Lundy had meant to paint a favourable picture, he didn't do a very good job."


Corrections staff refused a Star-Times request to speak to Lundy, but a spokesman for a group working on his case said while they were initially elated by the mock vote, "the evidence presented still had grave anomalies". The group had declined to co-operate in the programme's making.


The jury that found Lundy guilty in 2002 heard 160 witnesses in the six-week trial and deliberated for seven hours.

The Court of Appeal later threw out Lundy's appeal - and increased his non-parole term by three years - saying the evidence suggested Lundy planned his wife's killing very carefully.

The judges rejected the defence assertion that the brain tissue on his shirt was the result of accidental contamination, saying the theories were fanciful.
A pathologist who analysed the contents of Christine's and Amber's stomachs put the time of death at 7pm - within an hour of eating a takeaway dinner - not after 11pm as the defence contended.


The defence said Christine's usual bedtime was 11pm, a neighbour testified lights were on in the house at that time, and there was no evidence the computer clock had been tampered with.


This article is reproduced with kind permission from Donna Chisholm of the Sunday Star Times.

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