Gail Maney. Photo: Jason Dorday/Stuff.
Four people convicted of murder in the late nineties will find out this afternoon whether they are to be acquitted, or forced to face a retrial.
Gail Maney, Stephen Stone, Colin Maney (Gail's brother) and Mark Henriksen appealed their 1999 convictions for the murder of Auckland tyre-fitter Deane Fuller-Sandys, a crime for which Stone remains in jail, in the Court of Appeal in Wellington in August.
The Court of Appeal decision is set to be released to the public at 3pm.
Things were looking good for Maney, Maney and Henriksen at the conclusion of the appeal, with the original evidence against them shaky when it was aired again, two decades after it was first heard by a judge.
The Crown case in 1999 was that Maney believed Fuller-Sandys had burgled her, and she had asked Stone to kill him. Henriksen and Colin Maney were convicted of lesser charges - that is, taking turns to shoot Fuller-Sandys in front of a group of people in a garage on Larnoch Road.
Stone was also convicted of the rape and murder of Leah Stevens, who had supposedly witnessed the murder.
But this August, lawyers told the court that police coerced witnesses, and those witnesses lied frequently during the investigation, changed their story time and time again, and later, even recanted.
Counsel on both sides agreed the convictions should be quashed, and the Crown conceded it had no remaining evidence against Gail Maney, and was uninterested in pursuing Henriksen and Colin Maney - although it said it would still pursue a case against Stone.
Gail Maney has always maintained her innocence, saying she had never even met the man she was supposed to have ordered a hit on, and her investigative team have been working in the background on a case for her acquittal.
It matters because after 15 years in prison, Maney was let out on life parole, meaning breaching her conditions could see her recalled to jail at any time.
Her team's work turned up two documents - a fax, and a police job sheet. The Crown conceded both should have been disclosed to the defence back in 1999 and 2000, and the trials were ruled to have miscarried, more than two decades on.
The defence argued the fax, which contained the statement of a key witness, led to the story of another witness slowly converging on a similar tale, where they had previously held irreconcilable differences.
The job sheet showed the lead investigator was having secret meetings with another key witness, and those meetings weren't appropriately logged. The defence suggested this witness was leaned on to match her story to the others.
When the appeal wrapped up a little over two months ago, Gail Maney said she hoped for everyone's sake it wouldn't be a long wait for a decision.
This afternoon, they'll get their answer.
Read a more detailed version of the case for murder, the trials and the appeal, by RNZ contributing author Adam Dudding here.
