Gail Maney. Photo: Jason Dorday / Stuff
Standing outside the courtroom after two days of debate, and an admission from the Crown that there's no longer any reliable evidence against her, Gail Maney is close to tears.
On Tuesday she heard lawyers on both sides agree the case against her was gone, two decades on from the murder of west Auckland tyre-fitter Deane Fuller-Sandys.
She, along with Stephen Stone, Mark Henriksen and her brother Colin Maney, were convicted in 1999, and she spent 16 years in prison.
They appealed their convictions in the Court of Appeal in Wellington this week; Stone appeared via videolink from prison, where he remains on a life sentence for the crimes, and the other three sat in the gallery at the back of the courtroom.
On Wednesday, lawyers on both sides agreed those original convictions should be quashed - but the question remained whether the judges would order a retrial, or an acquittal.
At the end of the second day, the three justices - Ellis, French and Collins - reserved their decision, and Maney said she hoped an answer would come quickly.
"I'm disappointed, a bit, that we didn't get a decision today," she said."They did say there's no case against me yesterday and talk about an acquittal, so it would have been nice to have that today, but I do fully understand and respect that there's a lot for the judges to consider, and hopefully it's not too lengthy for all of us."
They had waited long enough, she said. "And our families, and there's people like the victims' families, they need answers too."
How did it feel hearing there was no evidence left to tie her to the murder? "Yeah, that was hard," she said, voice breaking. "I was a mother, I had three young children, it's really hard. I know I'm innocent, we're all innocent.
"I was crying, and then, I've been smiling as well."
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 that murder.
But yesterday, the appellants' lawyers argued that the evidence of four key witnesses, who all received immunity, was fundamentally unreliable, and that the police coerced and coached the four witnesses so their accounts matched.
Maney has always maintained her innocence, saying she had never even met the man she was supposed to have ordered a hit on.
No case against Maney, Crown agrees
Yesterday, lawyers on both sides agreed there was no remaining reliable evidence implicating Maney in the homicide.
The only evidence linking her to the homicide of Fuller-Sandys was the witness statement of a woman, who has name suppression, and later recanted her statement. She died last year.
On Wednesday, Crown lawyer Mark Lillico confirmed they would not be seeking to uphold that conviction - and while there was a case against Maney for assault, "the Crown isn't going to pursue a case against her for that".
Case against Stone still exists, Crown says
But in his closing statements, Lillico said when it came to Stone, the Crown still believed it had a case.
"The Crown case is a banked fire, which Mr Stone took the bellows to in 2009 and 2010 [when he confessed in prison]," he said. "He agreed, effectively, with [two key witnesses]."
But Stone's lawyer Paul Wicks KC told the court on Tuesday he had only confessed to get into a rehabilitation programme he thought would increase his chances at parole.
For all four appellants, the wait goes on, while the justices take time to consider their decision.
