The Court of Appeal has given permission for the Crown, acting on behalf of The Commonwealth of Australia, to bring the case back to court. Photo: RNZ / Rebekah Parsons-King
Australia is making another legal bid to get a Tairāwhiti man extradited for a decade-old crime he did not know he was suspected of.
The Court of Appeal has on Wednesday given permission for the Crown, acting on behalf of The Commonwealth of Australia, to bring the case back to court, after a ruling last year said he could stay in New Zealand.
The High Court decision from June said the man, whose identity is suppressed, was in his early twenties and living in Perth in 2014. He decided to return to New Zealand in February 2015, about the same time Western Australian Police identified him as a suspect in a violent carpark incident in November 2014.
Extradition documents were drafted in May 2015 but were not submitted to the public prosecution department until a year later, and were not approved for a further four years. New Zealand authorities finally received the request in February 2022, seven years after the man had first left Australia.
He was arrested in October that year, two months before his partner gave birth to their first child, but was later released on bail.
Justice Rebecca Ellis said there was nothing to suggest the man was aware that he was wanted in connection to the incident.
"There has been, and can be, no suggestion that [the man] has taken any steps to avoid a criminal process that he did not know about. Indeed, he returned to Australia several times during the eight-year period, without impediment or alert. As far as I am aware his whereabouts have always been readily ascertainable."
The father-of-one had no criminal convictions, the High Court decision said. He was the family breadwinner, and a valued member of the community where he lived. He accepted he was eligible for surrender under the Extradition Act but wanted the court to use its discretion under the same law.
Justice Ellis found it would be unjust or oppressive to surrender him to Australia, based on the amount of time that had passed and because of the man's circumstances. If extradited, he would be taken almost 6000 kilometres away and would probably have to wait months (or even years) until trial, during which time he would be unlikely to receive bail in Australia.
While she considered whether the case should go before the relevant minister, the judge ultimately decided that was not necessary.
Australia is now looking to overturn the High Court judgement and has been granted leave to to bring the case back to court. The appeal will focus on whether the court's ruling that it would be "oppressive" for the man to be extradited was a correct reading of the law.
