Teina Pora (born 1975)[1] is a New Zealander who was wrongfully convicted of murdering a woman he had never met, named Susan Burdett, when he was aged 17; he served 20 years in Paremoremo prison from 1994, until he was paroled in 2014.
About a year later, Pora who was a Mongrel Mob prospect at the time,[3] was arrested on other charges and, when he learned there was $20,000 reward for information, claimed he was there when the murder happened.
He was interviewed for 14 hours without a lawyer present, and was later said to have a mental age of nine or 10 at the time of the crime due to foetal alcohol syndrome.
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.
[15] 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.
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".
"[5][12] 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.
[18] No finger prints, DNA, or any other direct evidence linking Pora to the murder scene were produced in court.
So although Rewa was found guilty for sexually assaulting Ms Burdett on the night she died, the jury at the time was unable to decide whether he was involved in her murder.
The difficulty with this view is that Rewa had a track record as a lone offender – a serial stalker and rapist who was convicted of attacks on 24 other women.
[27] 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.
[18] In May 2013, his legal team prepared an appeal to the Privy Council to have his convictions quashed which put his application for mercy on hold.
[5] In 2012 a second senior officer, who also worked on the case, wrote to Police Commissioner Peter Marshall expressing his concern that the wrong man had been convicted.
[31] 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".
Green Party spokesman David Clendon wrote 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".
[6] 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.
Pora's lawyer Jonathan Krebs told the Privy Council his client had recently been diagnosed with foetal alcohol spectrum disorder and had a mental age of nine or 10 at the time of the crime.
One of the Privy Council judges, Lord Toulson asked New Zealand's Solicitor-General "Why didn't Pora name [Malcolm] Rewa?"
[38] On 15 June 2016, Teina Pora was awarded NZ$2.52 million compensation and received a government apology for being wrongfully convicted of rape and murder.