David Bain - Joe Karam and Appeals

Joe Karam and Appeals

Bain maintained his innocence, and thus began a lengthy campaign to have his case reheard, spearheaded by former All Black Joe Karam. According to one of his friends, media commentator Paul Holmes, Karam was appalled at the way the family, the Police and the Fire Service arranged to burn the Bain house down. He felt something was wrong with the case and began to study the evidence presented at the original trial. He went to visit Bain in prison in Christchurch and subsequently visited him over 200 times.

Over the next 13 years, Karam wrote four books about David Bain's case and helped him in his numerous appeals against his convictions. The first appeal was made to the New Zealand Court of Appeal in 1995 but the Court refused to even hear it on the grounds that "the Crown case appeared very strong and the defence theory not at all plausible". New Zealand did not have a Supreme Court at that time, so in 1996 Bain made his first appeal to the Privy Council in Britain. However, the Privy Council also declined to hear the case.

In June 1998 David Bain petitioned the Governor-General for a pardon. The Governor-General passed the application on to the Ministry of Justice which conducted an investigation into new information presented by the defence team. In 2000, Bain received his first ray of hope when Justice Minister Phil Goff said the investigation had shown that "a number of errors" may have occurred in the Crown's case against him and some aspects of the case were referred back to the Court of Appeal. In September 2003, those hopes were dashed when the Court of Appeal examined the new evidence but decided once again that a retrial was not needed - on the grounds that it would not have changed the jury's verdict.

Karam did not give up. In March 2007 he travelled to London with David's defence team laying out nine arguments why his convictions should be quashed. One of the nine points was about Robin Bain's mental state and potential motive. Reliable witnesses said Robin had been depressed, and living alone in squalid conditions in a caravan. Journals in his office at the school where he taught were found to contain stories about the mass murder of a family. The Privy Council wrote: "Many of those facts are highly contentious and the evidence could well have influenced the jury's assessment of them... If the (original) jury found Robin to be already in a state of deep depression and now... facing the public revelation of very serious sex offences against his teenage daughter, they might reasonably (have) concluded that this could have driven him to commit these acts."

The Privy Council concluded that: "In the opinion of the board, the fresh evidence adduced in relation to the nine points... taken together, compels the conclusion that a substantial miscarriage of justice has actually occurred in this case." The Privy Council quashed his convictions and ordered a retrial. Bain was bailed to live with Karam.