A Wiki Defence — A Whale of a Case

by Whaleoil on December 28, 2009 · 28 comments

I have been get­ting a lot of sup­port via email, Face­book and other messages.

I have decided to take a rad­i­cal step given the extremely high pub­lic inter­est in this case, inter­est­ingly caused by the Police try­ing to incon­ve­nience me by lay­ing issu­ing their sum­mons after all the law firms had shut for Christ­mas. Also Christ­mas tra­di­tion­ally is a news vac­uum which they con­ve­niently allowed me to fill. Accord­ing to DPF my page views were 50% higher than his for Christ­mas and Box­ing day.

Any­way onto my exper­i­ment. For all those bud­ding lawyers, real lawyers and inter­ested par­ties out there I have cre­ated a Wiki editable page for the devel­op­ment of the defence. I don’t think any­one has ever devel­oped their defence in pub­lic before but given the Police have a dis­tinct lack of under­stand­ing of tech­nol­ogy, social media and the inter­net I reckon it will be an inter­est­ing experiment.

Given that I have already rung 20 law firms and only received out of office mes­sages that they will be closed till the 11th this is really my only option other than an adjourn­ment. Still I’d trust my read­ers and the inter­net way more any­way to col­late and assem­ble a rea­son­able defence.

Let me know in com­ments if there are any issues, or via email. I believe that if you are a reg­is­tered user on the blog then you can edit the Wiki page. When adding para­graphs you do need to pop into the html edi­tor and add para­graph tags e.g. <p>

So there you go, help the Whale if you are able.

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{ 26 comments }

mediatart December 28, 2009 at 5:05 am

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Reg­is­trars adjourn­ment, not even any need to make a plea– unless you want to throw your­self onto the floor of the court in front of the judge and chant ‘Revoco’ . It was all the Church wanted from Mar­tin Luther

Paul December 27, 2009 at 9:52 pm

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Don’t worry about the out of office mes­sages, the best you’ll get on the 5th of Jan­u­ary is an adjourn­ment to a later date. You’ll be fine your­self on that date.

PK:) December 27, 2009 at 10:16 pm

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Good man – using the tech­nol­ogy in smarter ways, bril­liant:) I thought of you when I saw the MSM news item on all those peo­ple yes­ter­day flock­ing to that coro­man­del beach to save all those beached pilot whales. When it comes to strug­gling whales the peo­ple can’t help them­selves – auto­mat­i­cally go into save mode Cam.

Avalon December 27, 2009 at 10:26 pm

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Dont sup­pose you would con­sider a Pay­pal Donate but­ton for dona­tions towards you defence? It wouldnt be much – but I guess every lit­tle bit would add up.

Robert December 27, 2009 at 10:28 pm

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Some­body must have ini­ti­ated this action, so the ques­tion then becomes who and why? Your aver­age cop doesn’t so you need to know who the enemy is. Of course once you estab­lish that there is lots of infor­ma­tion in the social media about these peo­ple.
Don’t know if you can do this but no doubt FESmith. can tell you. Ask for full dis­clo­sure of all doc­u­ments relat­ing to the deci­sion to charge you, includ­ing who par­tic­i­pated and dates etc.
If you can’t get it by5th then ask the court to order the infor­ma­tion be sent to you.
It will no doubt send some of the Gestapo run­ning for their hidey holes.
I beleive you have a right to face your accusers in court. .Each and every­one of them.

Giblet December 28, 2009 at 1:49 am

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Call the legal aid lawyers in Manukau, after­all when the Baz­ley report came out a few weeks ago they all bleated how hard work­ing and ded­i­cated they were to their clients, so I imag­ine prob­a­bly all of them will be wait­ing by their phone’s right now for your instructions.

alex Masterley December 28, 2009 at 2:12 am

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Ring the pros­e­cu­tions sec­tion at the Auck­land Cen­tral Police sta­tion tomor­row, it should be open.
Have some fun. Demand that they give you all their dis­clo­sure by close of busi­ness on Thurs­day, by courier, copied onto a cd or any other form of elec­tronic media you care to name.
Then if it does not appear moan and groan at court on the 5th.
I might drop in to watch the fun if I’m in town.

Paul December 28, 2009 at 3:46 am

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I won­der – how do you know that there is a name sup­pres­sion order – what are the offi­cial chan­nels for com­mu­ni­cat­ing the exis­tence of a sec­tion 140 sup­pres­sion order ?

Inter­est­ing that there’s an action against wha­le­oil and just ear­lier this month there was an Inter­netNZ / Min­istry of Jus­tice sem­i­nar on the sub­ject of the Inter­net and court sup­pres­sions – see http://blog.internetnz.net.nz/?p=303
Here’s an extract:
“The Sem­i­nar, co-hosted by Inter­netNZ (Inter­net New Zealand Inc), the Law Com­mis­sion and the Min­istry of Jus­tice, focused on issues around sup­pres­sion orders, con­tempt of court and the Internet.”

Madeleine December 28, 2009 at 4:40 am

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Cameron this is awful. Crim­i­nal law is not my strength so I can­not help you beyond agree­ing with Paul’s first com­ment – all you’ll be required to do is enter a plea and you don’t have to even do that given you’ve had no time to con­sult a lawyer, it will get adjourned and you’ll have time to find a lawyer and work out your moves.

In the mean time make sure you come to blog­gers drinks – draw strength from your friends and remem­ber who is in con­trol :-)

Whaleoil December 28, 2009 at 4:51 am

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As an aside, when are Blog­gers drinks?

Michael December 28, 2009 at 6:42 am

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I double-dare you to ask for name suppression.

Graeme Edgeler December 28, 2009 at 6:52 am

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Whale – there’s no way they are expect­ing you to do any­thing on your first appear­ance. Feel free to enter a plea, but that won’t even be required or expected. If you’d like to hurry things along a lit­tle, you might as well enter a plea, but this is very much the first call.

Your options are:

1. plead guilty and be sen­tenced (it’s minor so they would sen­tence you on the first day); or
2. plead not guilty and have a date set for your next appear­ance (which may deter­mine a trial date, but prob­a­bly won’t); or
3. enter no plea, and have a date set for you plea (at which point 1 or 2 kicks in as appropriate).

Your defence is a lit­tle more inter­est­ing. But as a lawyer, I just don’t think I can do it in a wiki or a com­ment. Will e-mail instead.

PK:) December 28, 2009 at 8:56 am

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Good on ya Graeme – you da man

Wrapster December 28, 2009 at 9:05 am

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For a “man” who once pho­to­shopped the face of a 15 year old boy onto a lewd pho­to­graph I reckon your trou­bles are well deserved. Dress it up all you like Cameron but you did break the law and for the sake of your fam­ily you should plead guilty and use some of your dole money to pay the fine.

Whaleoil December 28, 2009 at 9:30 am

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Get fucked anony­mous coward

Watch the law get changed and watch me do it.

Wrapster December 29, 2009 at 4:42 am

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So tell us Cameron, will you be chal­leng­ing every­one in the court room to a box­ing match upon los­ing your trial? I seri­ously doubt you under­stand the grav­ity of your situation.

Whaleoil December 29, 2009 at 5:24 am

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I fully under­stand the grav­ity of the sit­u­a­tion, its about a $1000 fine if that because no-one ever gets the max.

Actu­ally I doubt that the Police fully under­stand the Social media shit-storm that is about to be unleashed on them. If they wanted to set and exam­ple but keep it rel­a­tively quiet then they picked the wrong person.

Spanishbride December 29, 2009 at 3:32 am

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Gee the boy gets younger every­time I hear that well worn accu­sa­tion.
Wo has actu­ally amazed me by hold­ing back on that par­tic­u­lar YOUNG man.
There are so many non pho­to­shopped images avail­able on Face­book and else where of that par­tic­u­lar young man as well as ads online seek­ing cer­tain types of encoun­ters that include more than two peo­ple, placed by that YOUNG man.
In fact the cold hard evi­dence leads me to con­clude that WO’s satir­i­cal pho­to­shop of an image imply­ing that the YOUNG man was a wanker is incred­i­bly TAME. The real­ity of that YOUNG mans actual sex life is jaw drop­pingly orig­i­nal to say the very least.
I am amazed that WO has held back con­sid­er­ing the abuse reg­u­larly hurled his way by that YOUNG man.
Remem­ber the say­ing Sleepy, boys in glass houses should not throw stones.

Gooner December 28, 2009 at 9:38 am

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Graeme is right. It will be in the reg­is­trars list and the reg­is­trar can grant you an adjourn­ment with­out plea for two weeks. You can use the duty solic­i­tor for that on the 5th, if you can’t find your way up to the registrar’s desk yourself.

I also take Graeme’s point about not divulging a defence in pub­lic. What I am ini­tially inter­ested in is what the sup­pres­sion order was under sec­tion 140. If it was a blan­ket order then that solves that issue. But sec­tion 140 appears to have options for the Court and so if it wasn’t a blan­ket sup­pres­sion order you should cer­tainly see exactly what the court prohibited.

F E Smith December 28, 2009 at 11:00 am

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I am not sur­prised that you can­not get in touch with a law firm until the hol­i­days are over. Even the biggest only have a skele­ton staff on over the break and they don’t usu­ally answer calls unless you have their DDI.

But you are look­ing in the wrong direc­tion. Firms don’t do crim­i­nal law much these days and are gen­er­ally inex­pe­ri­enced at it when they do. Spot­ting lawyers from big/medium firms in court is easy– they are the ones who are unsure of them­selves and take ten times longer than every­one else, for five times the cost.

Despite what Chris Fin­layson and Simon Power say, go and see a senior bar­ris­ter. That is the only way you can get qual­ity rep­re­sen­ta­tion. I would advice you to to the NZ Bar Asso­ci­a­tion web­site (nzbar.org.nz) and use their find a lawyer sec­tion to get a senior crim­i­nal lawyer in Auckland.

F E Smith December 28, 2009 at 11:06 am

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Robert and Alex, under the new Crim­i­nal Dis­clo­sure Act the cops have 21days from the date the charge is laid to pro­vide ‘ini­tial’ dis­clo­sure. That means a Sum­mary of Facts and his crim­i­nal his­tory, if he has one. They can give more if they want but are not oblig­ated to do so unless asked until after a plea of ‘not guilty’ has been entered. What Whale needs to do is write to them and ask for full dis­clo­sure under both s12(1) and s12(2) of the Crim­i­nal Dis­clo­sure Act. This will give him most things that will be dis­closed to him.

Unfor­tu­nately, it will not tell him who is behind it because the super­vis­ing offi­cer usu­ally stands at arms length on a case so they can­not be called as a witness.

I agree with Graeme about not putting your defence up. The police aren’t that good at guess­ing defences (because most of them aren’t that bright) and I wouldn’t tell them if I were you.

Iron­i­cally, if this was a case done on legal aid then an adjourn­ment for advice would surely be seen as ‘delay­ing tac­ticts’ by they defence.

Titan-Uranus December 28, 2009 at 6:00 pm

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I notice this morn­ings Her­ald on the front page(of the web­site ‚at least) has a pho­to­graph of a crime vic­tims home and car.
This is OK because the crim­i­nals have not been caught and don‘t have name sup­pres­sion?
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_i...

James December 29, 2009 at 8:06 am

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Clearly, there is incon­sis­tency in the way the law applies. Some vic­tims get name sup­pres­sion and some don’t. Some accused get name sup­pres­sion and some don’t. Even when con­victed, some accused still receive name sup­pres­sion. The sys­tem has been brought into dis­re­pute because of the seem­ing ad hoc way that name sup­pres­sion applies. You could make the point that when the sys­tem has been brought into dis­re­pute, some­thing needs to be done and that by con­vict­ing you, the sys­tem will have acheived very lit­tle. You could also say that the Law Com­mis­sion is look­ing at this very issue. It may not nec­es­sar­ily help you but it will at least pro­vide some con­text for the posi­tion you find your­self in.

notsonic December 28, 2009 at 8:44 pm

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You could always go get a job so you could pay a laywer?

Black Paul December 28, 2009 at 10:31 pm

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I’d say the fact that noone has put a sin­gle word on that wiki page yet indi­cates that its not the way to go about it.

Stick it up them Whale.

sally December 29, 2009 at 11:39 pm

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Have a look at kiwisfirst.co.nz, there could be some help for you there.
NEW ZEALAND vs THE INTERNET
23 Decem­ber 2009
In a speech to an R v Inter­net sem­i­nar spon­sored by the Law Com­mis­sion ear­lier this month, NZ Solic­i­tor Gen­eral David Collins sug­gested infor­mal inter­na­tional law enforce­ment arrange­ments and “inter­na­tional treaties” be sought to com­bat inter­net pub­lish­ers who do not abide by gov­ern­ment sup­pres­sion orders.
Collins admit­ted to under­tak­ing “3–4″ con­tempt pros­e­cu­tions against inter­net pub­lish­ers dur­ing his reign.

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