Rights for Victims of Insane Offenders Bill

I move, That the Rights for Victims of Insane Offenders Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Justice Committee to consider the bill.

Graeme Moyle first contacted my electorate office in Cambridge on 18 October 2010 about unsupervised visits by Matthew Ahlquist. Ahlquist had paranoid schizophrenia and had been discharged early from a mental health facility. Colin Moyle was known as a Good Samaritan. He had been feeding and taking care of the local homeless. He invited Ahlquist to stay in his home. Unfortunately, they’d had a row, as Ahlquist was using meth. Two days later, Ahlquist broke into Colin’s home, put the kettle on to boil, retrieved a spade from the outside shed, and waited for his former flatmate to return home. Colin returned home and Ahlquist threw boiling water at him, hit him with the spade, doused him with petrol, and set him alight. Colin died on 11 May 2007. This bill is not about Matthew Ahlquist; this bill is about Colin Moyle, his brother Graeme, their family, and every other family of victims like this. This is a bill about victims’ rights.

National believes that victims should be at the heart of our justice system. I want to acknowledge the fierce advocacy of Graeme Moyle and show that MPs can and do change laws based on behalf of constituent visits to their office. Under the current law, the verdict returned would say not guilty on account of insanity. What is clear is the action of Ahlquist caused the death of Colin Moyle. This case is only one of many, in fact, a growing number of cases, where a person is found not guilty on account of insanity. The challenge in these instances is there is absolutely zero doubt about who caused the death, who committed the act. Since 2004, 33 people have been found not guilty by reason of insanity. This bill changes the finding to something that demonstrates that there is no doubt about who committed the act. It’s similar to a law in Canada which provides victims with the acknowledgment that a person was proven to have caused death, even if they lacked the intent to be guilty of murder.

A second element of the bill is ensuring that victims are notified if the offender is being released from a secure health facility into the community. This should be in line with what happens when an offender is released from prison into the community. I accept that the process around victim notification isn’t perfect, which is why National is proposing to have the victim notification register changed from an opt in to an opt out to make it easier for victims of crime and their families to be kept informed about offenders. This change isn’t covered by this bill, but it is something that we are working on.

The third element of this bill is to give victims’ families a voice before decisions are made about the release of the offender into the community. In the justice system, we have the Parole Board and the ability for families to have their say. In the health system, there is currently no equivalent way for victims and their families to have their voices heard. There are other high profile cases, and one in Nelson I’m sure my colleague will speak of, Wendy has a petition before the Parliament at the moment to do exactly what my bill is doing. Wendy was the victim of a horrific attempted murder where the offender escaped conviction on the grounds of insanity. To add insult to injury, when the offender was recently relocated to Nelson, she had no input. Under the criminal justice system and the Parole Board, she would have had a say. Her petition is seeking a change so that victims of such crimes will have the same protections as rights of other victims of crime, and this bill is improving the rights of victims and creating consistency for the victims.

It is a complex issue because it amends not one piece of legislation, but four. It amends the Criminal Procedure (Mentally Impaired Persons) Act 2003. When a defendant raises a defence of insanity, it must be determined that the defendant committed the acts or omissions that constitute the offence and that the defendant was insane at the time the offence was committed. This bill proposes that the verdict recorded would be the acts or omissions are proven, but the defendant is not criminally responsible, on account of insanity. Originally, we worked on a much simpler verdict, which was proven but insane, but ran into some challenges that could be progressed in a select committee process.

The bill also amends the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act 1992 so that when the offender or special patient is released, a certificate must be sent to victims registered under the Victims’ Rights Act 2002. Victims will also have an opportunity to make a submission to the review tribunal about whether the patient should continue to be subject to a detention order. This is about giving the victims a voice.

The Intellectual Disability (Compulsory Care and Rehabilitation) Act of 2003 is also amended, as some people are detained as a special care recipient rather than a special patient.

Finally, the fourth piece of legislation that is amended is the Victims’ Rights Act 2002. So the Director-General of Health must give victims reasonable notice prior to any unescorted leave of absence or unescorted overnight leave of absence rather than just the first unescorted leave.

I want to thank the Hon Andrew Little, the Minister of Justice, for meeting with me on more than one occasion about this legislation. With his support, I hope that his officials, if we progress to the select committee, can improve this bill. I admit it’s not perfect, but I do believe there is an issue of unfairness between victims in this instance. Victims should be at the heart of our justice system and our health system. Violent assaults, attempted murder, or the death of a family member is traumatic. Whether this has occurred by a person sane or insane shouldn’t affect the rights of the victims or their families. I commend this bill to the House.

Reading through this bill, it’s quite incredible that this hasn’t happened before, and I compliment the member for picking this up. I’m only sitting here wondering why it hasn’t happened before, and possibly it’s because the offenders in these crimes are often close family members of or are known to the victims.

I know from my personal experience in the police that that’s the only reason I can think of why it probably hasn’t come into being, but, with that said, it’s very much a changing thing. I note the number of cases where people have been found not guilty by way of insanity is on the increase. Again, I can only put that down to the amount of mental illness that’s now going to be the result, particularly, of our P epidemic, the results of which appear to show that it, basically, hollows out the brain. There’s going to be a much more long-term effect of this, because, certainly, the effect of the crimes of somebody on P are really actually much more horrific than many of the, shall we say, normal offences that, certainly, people like myself, as detectives, have been involved with over the years.

I know of one personal case where a young man, who actually took up with a gang, ended up giving evidence against his fellow gang members. He did his bit, and would have appeared to have established for himself a normal life. He actually gave up the drink and found a religion, and it looked like he was actually going to be heading to a life perhaps away from that, given he had that fresh start in life. I got a phone call from him on a Monday evening to tell me that he’d changed his life around and he was ready to go. I was driving home on the Friday night, and I heard that someone had killed his two children and his neighbour in Hokianga, and I immediately knew intuitively who it was going to be. I rang the then Detective Inspector Viv Rickard, who was running the inquiry, and told him what I knew, and he was very surprised that I knew. That was the person who then, obviously, was a classic case of a young man who had, basically, gone over the edge—an absolutely horrific crime.

That person is—I’ve got to be careful with it, obviously—still in care, but one day, he may well be released. It would be actually a travesty if somehow through the system, if the people who—well, obviously, not the immediate victims, but the families of victims didn’t know that this not now young man any more, or this person was actually going to be released into society. I have to say, if the truth be known, I’d probably put myself in that as well. I’ve often thought that if he did end up out and about, that person—I may well be in his sights.

So not to personalise this too much, but, again, I’m somewhat shocked that we have got to this stage and no one has ever really thought of this, and this bill hasn’t been here. So, again, I commend the member for having, obviously—and I didn’t hear all of her speech, so, presumably, there is something that has come about that has brought to her attention the anomaly in this bill.

My understanding—and, again, I haven’t come with research—is there is still the possibility that these people can stand trial again if they have never stood trial. So while there are those who are found not guilty by way of insanity, there are those who actually are unfit to ever stand trial, and that’s actually another category of person. I’m just not quite sure—and I see the member has gone now. But I will certainly discuss this later on when we get further into the select committee part of this—which I’m pleased to see will be coming to my select committee—to work out whether that category actually is, as I say, people who have never, because of the mental state they were in at the time, actually stood trial.

So there is actually never a finding, and it’s only if, eventually, those cases end up in the coroner’s court, and that’s the time when we get a few findings, particularly around anything that does require any subsequent court case or legal processes around findings. That’s where you have to go to—to the coroner’s court—to actually find the results of that.

So, again, in looking at the provisions of this bill, I can only commend this bill. As far as the rights of victims go, again, it’s pleasing to see, just in my time, the evolving of the criminal justice system. Certainly, we’ve seen the rights of victims come to the fore, and absolutely rightfully so. It’s getting that balance right to make sure that those who are criminals, or those who we bring before the courts, do get the right to have evidence tested. It’s actually getting that balance right, and I know, even just in my short time in the House here, I have been involved in several bills that, again, like this bill, do seek to get that balance right.

There will always be people who, sadly, will commit crimes, horrific crimes, with the evidence clearly showing for any number of reasons that those people aren’t responsible for their actions at the time. Of course, that brings us to the discussion about what they’ve done or what they’ve been responsible for doing to get themselves into that state in the first place, through lifestyle or various other things. But the reality of it is that it’s very much a science.

Again, I’ve had involvement with medical specialists, those whose job it has been to assess such people, and, again, it’s not that easy because there tends to be—well, one thing I won’t say is that I remember as a very young police officer going to the then Lake Alice, and up until then, I’d sort of grown up with hearing that people get off with insanity. Well, let me say one thing that I do assure anyone who is listening now: if you think anyone gets off with insanity, where they end up and the sorts of institutions they end up in are much worse than spending—I’ve always said that five years in what used to be called, obviously, insane asylums or those mental health units is a place where I would have probably, with my experience, sooner have spent time in Her Majesty’s normal custody than in one of those places.

So one thing I can assure people of is that if there’s anyone who thinks somehow that an insanity plea is getting away with it, is that it certainly isn’t. It enters offenders into a process that certainly generally means that they won’t be in a position to walk freely around the world. Though, as I say, it does happen, and this bill—Madam Speaker, coming right back to the bill; as you know, I want to very rarely stray off the bill in my time on my feet—will ensure that those victims of crime are at the centre, and should always be at the centre, of everything we do with any justice legislation. They’re put where they should be, where a terrible situation may have arisen where family members have been victims, and someone may run into someone walking the streets whom they still thought was locked away in some sort of an institution.

So for that reason, I do commend this bill to the House, and I commend the member for discovering what has clearly been a long-held gap in our system. If she does nothing else in her time in the House and this does go through to its logical conclusion, I think it will be something she’ll be, rightly, very proud of having brought to the attention of this House. I commend this bill to the House.

Debate interrupted.