John Billington, a Queen’s counsel sportsman, may not be as good in the golf course as he used to be when he was a representative of New Zealand universities. Now, though, that he is in his early 70’s, he seems to have come out stronger than ever in the golf course.
Billington was an old defense campaigner who completed defending 300 jury trials. However, he didn’t succeed in defending the Crown in the Peter Ellis appeal case in the Supreme Court. The hearing took place in the past two weeks, and was completed on Thursday, October 14, 2021.
Ellis passed away in September 2019 at 61 years old. He appealed 13 convictions which involved sexually abusing six children he took care of. The incidents took place at the Christchurch Civic Creche. Ellis worked there in 1986 to 1991.
Ellis was convicted of 16 charges for sexually abusing seven children after a trial took place in 1993. One girl renounced the accusation from the case in 1994, though, and lowered the guilty verdicts down to 13 charges.
If Billington gets a strong hold on this case, he would have restrained it in this appeal. This appeal turned out to have become more of a debate among experts, the court, and the lawyers. But, Billington has stated that at times, it felt like a trial commenced.
Billington cleared he was not going to take sides unfairly while he represented his client. This statement meant Billington was willing to do some concessions to the appellant, and prevent having any intelligent, but, useless debate.
There were instances it felt like Billington was the sixth member of the jury, playing the role of an adviser to judges while they were answering questions. Billington argued that the evidence from the Ellis trial looked like it could be open to receiving criticism. But, its weaknesses were not severe in the sense that the court should object the verdicts handed down, and let injustice prevail.
Billington acknowledged that the children’s testimonies in the case seemed inaccurate and unreliable. He admitted there could have been better ways to interview these alleged victims. Billington likewise thought there were proofs experts produced that may have been altered. Nevertheless, in Billington’s view, the risk of danger that unfair verdicts pose was not so serious that he saw the need for them to be overturned.
So far, the justice system has been administrated lawfully and fairly recently, though. Efforts were invested in making the implementation of the process of production of evidences, witness’ testimonies, and the facilitation of trials be fair and legalized.
