Steve Cullen: defence lawyer on the group of Restore Passenger Rail protestors being allowed to withdraw guilty pleas

A defence lawyer says the outcome of the trial of Restore Passenger Rail protesters is 'strange'. 

The Post reports six people have been allowed to withdraw their guilty pleas, and the judge tossed their charges. 

It was over a series of Wellington protests that disrupted traffic. 

Steve Cullen says it might be a case of the judge responding to a moral undercurrent. 

"A certain proportion of the community felt that these people shouldn't have been convicted at all."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now, speaking of the courts, all the charges against the
handgloing restore passenger rail protesters have been dismissed. But what's
weird about this is how they've been dismissed. Six of
these dudes had already pleaded guilty to minor charges and
then yesterday they turned up to court to find out
what the sentencing date would be, and at that point
they changed their minds and they decided to withdraw the
guilty please and go for not guilty please, and the

(00:21):
judge allowed it. Steve Cullen is a criminal lawyer with US. Now, hey, Steve,
Oh good a, Heather, is that weird?

Speaker 2 (00:27):
It's very odd. Under the Criminal Procedure Act, people are
in told of withdraw a plea of guilty, but normally
it's on a written application with arguable grounds. This seems
to be that the Crown has looked at the fact
that the jury did not convict anybody, that there's a
backlog built up in the courts the post COVID world,
of course, that there's a real pressure on the district

(00:50):
courts to get rid of things. And we've also had
the solicited generous guidelines go out and say if you
don't have a realistic prospect of success, then you really
need to consider a position. They took all of that
into account and said, why are we wasting our time
with these people, it seems, and told them so the
people that could then go before the court and say, well,
we want to vacate our pleas because they hadn't been convicted.

(01:12):
They're on their way to arguing that they should have
been discharged. So instead of going down that path and
wasting more time and resources, it seemed to have been agreed, well,
actually we're just vacate the please of guilty de facto
deal with the discharges by the crown, agreeing to offer
no evidence and withdraw everything, and they walk away scot free.
It's remarkable.

Speaker 1 (01:32):
Okay, So I can understand that if what we were
talking about is we're going to tie the courts up
for weeks on end or even days on end with
trials and all that kind of stuff. But we'd already
got the success. They pleaded guilty. All we needed to
do was the sentencing. Is that really something that would
have taken that much time?

Speaker 2 (01:48):
Well, it would have been an afternoon. The sentencing wasn't
necessarily going to proceed because they were asking for discharges
which would have encompassed sentencing, but it requires a judge
to consider whether the penal would be disproportionate to their actions.
And of course you get the feeling there's some sort
of moral undercurrent acpearing, which I quite frankly I don't

(02:09):
really want to address.

Speaker 1 (02:11):
Well, now I want you to address it. Wants the
moral undercurrent?

Speaker 2 (02:14):
Well, you do get the feeling that either one, people
were of the view that a certain proportion of the
community felt that these people shouldn't have been convicted at all,
or they were exercising their freedom of speech. There's no
doubt about that. It's a methodology that led to them coming.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
Are you saying to me, Steve, that there may be
some people within the criminal justice system who think that
it's okay to do it a little you know, on
the side, a little wilful damage, Jobby, just a little
bit of criminal nuisance, as long as it's in the
name of the climate, it's okay.

Speaker 2 (02:45):
Well, I don't know if that's the message. I don't
know if that's what anyone in particular is thinking, but
you do get the feeling that people just thought it
was impractical to allow this to continue and wasting resources.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
Okay, Steve, shiate your work very much. Steve Cullen, criminal lawyer.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
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