Law Society is wrong

The New Zealand Law Society has recommended that the partial defence of provocation should be kept until Parliament creates a law to replace it. Parliament should completely ignore the Law Society.

The defence is, in essence, a kind of “self-defence” plea in which a murder accused attempts to mitigate the charges by claiming that their victim somehow drove them to commit the murder. It was in the news recently because of a high-profile murder case in which the accused, Clayton Weatherston, said he was provoked into stabbing his girlfriend, Sophie Elliott, 216 times. His ploy failed, as it often does, and politicians—shocked that he was able to try and assassinate the character and impugn the integrity of his victim—made moves to end the charade of this defence.

However, a few shorts weeks before the Weatherston case, the defence was successful: A 69-year-old gay man, Ronald Brown, was beaten with a banjo before the banjo's neck was rammed down his throat. The murderer, Ferdinand Ambach, was found guilty of manslaughter rather murder, using the partial defence of provocation; he claimed Brown made sexual advances toward him.

A couple years (more or less) before that, another gay man was murdered and his killer got off with manslaughter by claiming the victim made unwanted sexual advances—despite the killer being a rentboy.

In fact, the first calls to repeal this defence began after a group of teenage thugs beat a gay man to death in 1964. The youths had set out that night for "spot of queer bashing", but were found not guilty because—of course—they claimed their victim made a sexual advance.

"It's very hard to escape the question from our point of view that while it was just a couple of gays getting whacked nobody was all that concerned, but when a pretty young girl was involved it was somehow different," as Rainbow Wellington spokesperson Tony Simpson put it. He’s absolutely right.

The Law Society apparently believes that there may possibly be cases in which a defence of provocation is legitimate. If so, wouldn’t it make far more sense to change the laws on self-defence, rather than keep on the books a law that’s been used by homophobic killers to avoid conviction for murder? Wouldn’t it be better to make defendants prove self-defence rather than allow them to slander their victims?

This law must go. The Law Society is wrong and Parliament must ignore them. Failure to repeal this law simply has no defence.