Neil Sands
The Supreme Court has rejected a double killer’s bid to use tikanga as grounds for permanent name suppression, backing a previous finding that open justice must prevail in a case of “overwhelming public interest”.
Leslie Raymond Parr killed two women 27 years apart and was found not guilty by reason of insanity on both occasions because he was suffering from schizophrenic delusions.
The first victim was Parr’s partner, Fiona Maulolo, who he beheaded in 1997, the second was his mother, Heather Condon, who he stabbed in 2024.
Until this week’s ruling, the fact that Parr had killed his mother could not be reported because he was attempting to take his application for permanent name suppression on both his own identity and his mother’s to the Supreme Court after it was rejected by the Court of Appeal.
Parr’s legal team argued that allowing him to be named would attract widespread media attention, creating undue hardship for Parr’s whānau, which is grounds for name suppression under section 200 of the Criminal Procedure Act.
“That wide-spread publicity is not consistent with tikanga principles because of the lack of relationality. Nor is it consistent with tikanga to allow permanent searchable storage and ongoing publication of intergenerationally-harmful information by the media,” Parr’s lawyers said, according to the Supreme Court judgement.
The judgement cited testimony from Māori cultural consultant Che Wilson who said the two branches of Parr’s family – the Parrs and the Condons – “had “been able to attain some balance” since the death of Heather Condon.
“Mr Wilson says the whānau will be retraumatised if they become the subject of renewed public attention with the shame or whakamā that will inevitably follow.”
Public protection
The Supreme Court noted that tikanga was not cited as a reason for name suppression until the case reached the Court of Appeal, which concluded ““even assessing the hardship of Mr Parr’s whānau through that tikanga lens, we are not persuaded that that hardship outweighed the strong public interest in open justice in this case”.
The Supreme Court ruling from Justices Stephen Kós and Ellen France said that while there was a question of public importance in how tikanga affects the public interest, Parr’s case was not the vehicle to decide it as “the evidence before the court is not extensive and has not been tested”.
It added: “Given the public interest in the matter and the acknowledged need for public protection, the proposed appeal [regarding name suppression] has insufficient prospects of success. Nothing raised by the applicant gives rise to the appearance of a substantial miscarriage of justice.”
The Court of Appeal decision, which was handed down in September last year with identities redacted, found that suppressing Heather Condon’s name was not in the public interest because understanding that Parr’s second victim was his mother “sheds light on the effect of [Parr’s] illness and the failings of mental health services”.
It also said the public had a right to know about Parr’s history of violence to understand the risk he could pose if ever released. It said the family of his first victim, Fiona Maulolo, should be free to discuss Parr’s actions without name suppression restrictions.
“There is an overwhelming interest in the principles of open justice in this case,” the Court of Appeal judgement said.
“[Heather Condon’s] death was discussed openly at her tangihanga, and expert evidence did not suggest that any tikanga principles were inconsistent with the principle of open justice.
“Additional inquiries and the inquest into [Heather Condon’s] death will be hampered if authorities cannot openly identify [Parr] as the individual who killed two persons closely connected to him whilst dependent on mental health services.”
The human repercussions of such tragic events often arises from our shared human nature, rather than a cultural framing of the reactions of human beings to trauma and tragedy; human responses to trauma has been the subject of in-depth scholarship and study, see for example the work of Professor A. J. W. (Tony) Taylor of Victoria University of Wellington, Te Herenga Waka. It seems to me that expert evidence based upon such studies might be a more fruitful area for developing legal argument in this field.
Given the law of New Zealand presently recognises tikanga in an increasing variety of contexts, it is important that it not be called in aid in circumstances where, in fact, the Court has to address issues that arise as a result of our shared humanity rather than any particular cultural inflection.