Teina Pora

Teina Anthony Pora
Born	(1975-06-09) 9 June 1975 Ōtara, New Zealand
Nationality	New Zealand
Occupation	Labourer
Known for	Convicted of the murder of Susan Burdett in 1994. Convicted again at retrial in 2000. Conviction quashed in 2015.

Teina Anthony Pora(born 9 June 1975)

Susan Burdett was raped and murdered in her home in Papatoetoe in March 1992. Pora was interviewed at the time, but Police did not think he was involved. It was not until he was arrested a year later on a separate matter that Pora mentioned to Police that he knew who committed the murder - after Police discussed both a monetary reward and indemnity from prosecution. In a series of interviews over four days, Pora then gave various accounts of what happened and of his involvement. Based on these 'confessions', in 1994 he was subsequently charged and convicted of Burdett's rape and murder. Four years later police discovered that the semen found in Burdett's body came from another man, Malcolm Rewa. In 1999, Rewa was tried and also convicted of the rape - but not the murder - of Susan Burdett. Following this development, Pora took his case to the Court of Appeal which quashed his convictions. However, Pora was retried in 2000, found guilty a second time, and returned to prison.

After spending 21 years in prison, Pora was released on parole in April 2014. Once his convictions were quashed by the Privy Council, his parole conditions no longer apply.

Personal life

Early life

Teina Pora was born with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, caused by his mother's drinking during pregnancy, although this was not diagnosed until a year before his Privy Council hearing in 2014. He grew up in Otara. His father was never around and his teenage mother died of cancer when he was only four.

After his mother's death, Pora lived with grandparents and other family members, including an aunt who tried to raise him as her own son. As a teenager he spent time in boys' homes but often ran away. His brother told TV3’s 3rd Degree programme that by the time he was a teenager, Pora was already doing "heaps of crime" but that "he was never a violent person".

Life since release from prison

Since his release on parole Mr Pora has been working as a labourer at a construction site in Auckland. He is reported as being fit, has been training in prison all his life and is now interested in taking up boxing. He works long hours at his job and leads "a pretty active social life". After the Privy Council quashed his convictions, his boss gave him the rest of the week off to celebrate. Mr Pora baked a banana cake for the occasion and had a beer. He has also obtained his driver's licence, become a Christian and now has a daughter and grandson.

The murder of Susan Burdett

Susan Burdett was a 39-year-old accounts clerk who lived alone in Papatoetoe. On 23 March 1992 she went bowling at the Manukau Superstrike. After she got home, she had a shower and was then raped and bludgeoned to death with a blunt object. When she was found, the softball bat, which she kept for her own protection, was found lying on the bed beside her.

Background to Pora's involvement

Pora and some friends were walking through a park in Manukau a few days after the murder when they found an old softball bat in a drain. It was not the weapon used in the Burdett murder as this was found beside her body at the scene of the crime. Unaware of this, when Pora's aunt found out about the bat in the drain, she suggested to police that Pora may have committed the murder. Police responded by interviewing Pora in April 1992 and again in May 1992. On both occasions he denied any involvement and provided hair and DNA samples to police, which excluded him as a suspect. However, his aunt continued to put forward the view that Pora was involved but, at the time, the police concluded her information was unreliable.

His 'confession'

Pora was a prolific car thief and almost a year later, he was arrested for failing to attend court. In the course of a "general conversation" with a police officer, Pora "told him of his troubled life, told the officer he wanted to go straight, that he felt unwanted by his family and that he knew he was being sought by the Mongrel Mob and police". After police told him there was a reward of $20,000 for assistance in capturing Susan Burdett's murderer, Pora claimed he knew who committed the crime. He said he drove two Mongrel Mob members to the house and acted as lookout while they went inside.

Pora didn't give the names of the Mongrel Mob members, but when police put two names to him, he went along with these suggestions. Later on, police determined the two Mongrel Mob members both had alibis and their DNA did not match that found in the body. The DNA came from Malcolm Rewa but police didn't learn that until four years later.

After claiming he was at the scene, Pora was held for the next four days during which he was questioned about the case for 14 hours - without a lawyer. During the course of this drawn out interview, much of which was recorded on video, he frequently changed his story about what happened. After initially claiming he acted as a lookout for the two Mongrel Mob members, he later said he went into the house after "hearing noises and seeing the crimes being carried out". Still later, he said he held Burdett down by the arms while the others raped her. Pora was subsequently charged with Burdett's rape and murder.

In 1995, once Pora was in prison, he provided three more names to police after they offered him another $50,000 and said they would help when he came up for parole.

Trials & hearings

First trial 1994

No finger prints, DNA, or any other direct evidence linking Pora to the murder scene were produced in court. Nevertheless, despite the contradictory nature of Pora's 'confessions', the Crown successfully argued at his trial that no one would confess to being involved in such a brutal rape and murder if they were not actually involved. His aunt, Terry McLaughlin, was a key Crown witness at the trial. Court documents showed she was paid $5000 to testify against him at the trial. Police have refused Official Information Act requests about payments made to other witnesses against Pora but the NZ Herald reports that a minimum of three witnesses were paid and received a total of $15,000.

Conviction of Malcolm Rewa for rape

Four years later, the semen found in Burdett's body was identified as belonging to Malcolm Rewa, and in 1999, he was convicted of raping her on the night she died. Rewa was also charged with her murder. But by that time, Pora had already been convicted for this and had been in prison for four years. Although Rewa was found guilty for sexually assaulting Ms Burdett the jury was unable to decide whether he was involved in the murder.

In addition to the rape of Susan Burdett, Rewa was also found guilty of raping numerous other women and is currently serving preventive detention for these attacks. His offending went on for some years before the police finally brought him to justice. In 2014, TV3's 3rd Degree programme suggested police had overlooked Rewa's involvement in six different sexual assaults. The IPCA was then asked to investigate Rewa's offending including one particular sexual attack which occurred in 1987, five years before he raped Susan Burdett. Police eventually apologised to Malcolm Rewa's victims over the length of time it took to catch him and prevent any further offending.

Second trial 2000

Pora appealed his conviction after the semen in Ms Burdett's body was found to belong to Malcolm Rewa. The Court of Appeal ordered a retrial and in 2000, Pora was found guilty a second time. Pora then applied for the Royal Prerogative of Mercy, under which the Governor-General can order a new trial. In May 2013, his legal team prepared an appeal to the Privy Council to have his convictions quashed which put his application for the Royal Prerogative of Mercy on hold.

Parole hearings

Over his 20 years in prison, Pora made numerous appearances before the parole board. At those hearings he repeatedly denied he had any part in Burdett's murder, which made it difficult for the board to grant him parole. His 12th attempt to be released on parole was declined in October 2013 after he admitted visiting a prostitute with a former inmate while on temporary leave. He was finally released in April 2014. At a monitoring hearing five months later, the board noted he was doing well but added: "Given his lengthy time in prison, and limited education before (being) imprisoned, (reintegration) will be a difficult and necessarily slow process of which he is aware."

Concerns about conviction

Two police officers initially raised concerns that Pora has been wrongly convicted. Detective Sergeant Dave Henwood, a criminal profiler, and an unnamed senior officer who worked on the case both believed Rewa raped and murdered Mrs Burdett and acted alone, Susan's brother, Jim Burdett, also believed that Rewa was the one who raped and killed his sister.

Doubt about Pora co-offending with Malcolm Rewa

The prosecution case was that Rewa and Pora committed the crime together. Detective Sergeant Dave Henwood, a criminal profiler, believed Rewa raped and murdered Mrs Burdett and acted alone, based on his knowledge of Rewa's criminal signature as a lone offender - a serial stalker and rapist who has been convicted of attacks on 24 other women. In 2012 an unnamed senior officer who worked on the case wrote to Police Commissioner Peter Marshall expressing his concern that the wrong man had been convicted. Further doubts were cast as Rewa and Pora also came from rival gangs and were significantly different in age; Rewa was 40 and a senior member of Highway 61 while Pora was a 16-year-old Mongrel Mob associate. Evidence put to the Privy Council also suggested that Rewa suffered from erectile dysfunction and would have been unlikely to have had an accomplice because of his embarrassment about this.

Professor Laurence Alison, chair of forensic psychology at Liverpool University, concluded that it is "highly unlikely" Malcolm Rewa would have worked with any co-offender, let alone with Pora. He said: "These conclusions would have been much harder to arrive at at the time of Teina Pora's appeal since far less was known about behavioural profiling and specific co-offending patterns in rape.

Pora's confession

Gisli Gudjonsson, professor of forensic psychology at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College, London, was asked to review the nine hours of videotaped interviews and talked with Pora in prison. Gudjonsson is a renowned authority on how people can be induced to make false "confessions". He said Pora's confession were the result of intellectual impairment and his desire to claim the $20,000 reward - Pora was told there was an "indemnity against prosecution for non-principal offenders". Gudjonsson believed the convictions "are fundamentally flawed and unsafe".

Calls for inquiry

In 2013, the Police Association officially called for a review of Pora's conviction, citing "sufficient concern among some senior detectives to warrant an inquiry". The Maori Party also backed an inquiry into the case.

A documentary about his case titled The Confessions of Prisoner T was aired on Maori television on 5 May 2013. It featured defence lawyer, Marie Dyhrberg, who said that out of all the criminals she has ever been involved with, she believed in Pora's innocence more than any other. In response to the documentary, the Green Party also called for a review. Green Party spokesman David Clendon has written to Police Commissioner Peter Marshall asking him to reopen the case. He said "serious misconduct by police was rare in New Zealand", but "it was important to maintain the public's faith in the justice system by holding a review".

Role of Tim McKinnel

Former detective Tim McKinnel was the first to take a serious interest helping Pora prove his innocence. McKinnel said that he had been "shocked by the heated discussions among senior (police) staff about whether Mr Pora was wrongly convicted". He left the police to study criminology and became a private investigator. He first visited Pora in prison in 2009 and subsequently drove from his Hawkes Bay home to Auckland to see Pora more than 50 times. McKinnel teamed up with lawyers Jonathan Krebs, and Ingrid Squire of Hastings. Between them, they have racked up several thousand hours work on the case most of it unpaid.

Privy Council hearing 2014

In August 2013 Pora's lawyers applied for leave to appeal to the Privy Council. Leave was granted in January 2014, and oral arguments were heard in London before a panel of five judges, including Chief Justice Dame Sian Elias in November 2014. Pora's lawyer Jonathan Krebs told the Privy Council his client had recently been diagnosed with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder and had a mental age of nine or 10 at the time of the crime. He said this disability meant Pora was easily confused, had a drive to please others, and that his confession in 1993 should therefore be seen as unreliable.

Questions were also asked about the people named by Pora as having committed the murder. One of the Privy Council judges, Lord Toulson asked New Zealand's Solicitor-General "Why didn't Pora name [Malcolm] Rewa?" The explanation given by Pora's lawyers was that "Pora couldn't name Rewa because Pora didn't know him and because Pora wasn't there". The Solicitor General, Michael Heron, disagreed saying that a number of people had testified to having seen Pora and Rewa together and argued that Pora had special knowledge about the crime indicating he was involved.

Decision 2015

The Privy Council delivered its decision on 3 March 2015, quashing Pora's convictions for the crime. In a decision delivered by Lord Kerr the Privy Council found that the new evidence concerning Mr Pora's mental capabilities undermined the legitimacy of his 'confession' 21 years ago, and established the risk of a miscarriage of justice. The decision meant Pora was no longer on parole and his parole conditions no longer applied. In an unusual move, the Council called for submissions to be delivered within four weeks on whether there should be a retrial.

Impact on Malcolm Rewa

The decision opens up the possibility that Malcolm Rewa could be be retried for the murder of Susan Burdett for a third time, a situation that legal experts described as 'very rare'. Associate Law Professor, Chris Gallavin, said this is possible because Rewa's two previous trials for Burdett's murder resulted in 'hung juries'. Prof Gallavin said: "Hung juries are different to an acquittal, and you can just start again." It means the Solicitior General could order another trial without having to introduce new evidence.

Concerns about prosecution process

Pora's case has raised concerns about the integrity of the New Zealand justice system. An editorial in the ''New Zealand Herald'' said: "The case has not reflected well on our courts. Coming hard on the heels of the Bain case, and with the David Dougherty and Arthur Allan Thomas cases still in memory, the public is bound to wonder if something is seriously wrong in our prosecutions and conduct of trials." The editorial suggested that New Zealand may need to establish a Criminal Cases Review Commission similar to the one set up in Britain in 1997. Associate Law Professor, Chris Gallavin, supports the proposal noting that: "Miscarriages are typically of a nature that requires more in-depth and independent analysis than that which can be conducted by a court of appeal."

Following the Privy Council decision, both the Labour Party and the Maori Party supported calls for an independent commission to be established. Labour's justice spokesperson, Jacinda Ardern said: “In countries such as England, Scotland, and Norway commissions act as a safety valve for the justice system, ensuring miscarriages of justice are properly investigated and remedied." Maori Party co-leader, Marama Fox, said it was all the more necessary because "the Teina Pora case would be one of the last to be heard in the Privy Council." Prime Minister John Key claimed a commission was not needed as existing procedures worked well in the majority of cases.

This is contradicted by private investigator, Tim McKinnel, who said he "seethed over the process of extracting information from the police" to assist Pora. He had to use the Official Information Act to obtain information from police who he said were largely unco-operative. "All but the interviewing policeman's name on one lengthy document was blacked out before it was released." McKinnel said that requests for information about the person whose semen was found at the murder scene were "routinely rejected on the grounds of privacy." McKinnel and Pora's legal team sued the police twice to try and the get information released.

Compensation

If a retrial is not ordered, Pora would automatically be eligible for compensation. In such cases, Cabinet guidelines specify around $100,000 can be awarded for every year spent in custody, meaning he could receive around $2 million. Pora's lawyer, Stuart Grieve QC said compensation would only be granted if Mr Pora's case made it through "significant hurdles". He couldn't predict how long the process could take, but said David Bain's five-year bid for compo was a "bad example".