Teina Pora

Teina Pora was convicted of murdering Susan Burdett at age 17 and has now been in Paremoremo prison for 20 years.

In 1992, 39 year old Burdett was raped and murdered in her home in Papatoetoe. She was repeatedly struck in the head with a softball bat. About a year later, Teina Pora who was a Mongrel Mob associate, was picked up on other charges. When told there was a $20,000 reward for information relating to the case, he confessed and was convicted of rape and murder in 1994 - even though DNA from Burdett's body was not his. Two years later, by which time Pora had been found guilty, testing showed the semen inside Mrs Burdett belonged to Malcolm Rewa, who was unknown to police at the time of the murder. Eventually Rewa was convicted of sexually assaulting 24 women, including Susan Burdett - but was found not guilty of her murder. Pora appealed his conviction, but in 2000, was found guilty a second time, again based on his inconsistent 'confession' and testimony from witnesses paid by police.

Early history
Teina Pora grew up in Otara. His father was never around and his teenage mother died of cancer when he was only four. After his mother's death, Pora lived with grandparents and other family members. As a teenager he spent time in boys' homes but often ran away. His brother told TV3's 3rd Degree programme that by the time he was a teenager, Pora was already doing "heaps of crime" but that "he was never a violent person". His offending was all minor; he mostly stole cars and got into further trouble for failing to attend court.

Background to Pora's arrest
According to private investigator, Tim McKinnel, who has investigated the case, Pora and some friends were walking through a park in Manukau a few days after the murder; they found an old softball bat in a drain. It was not the murder weapon; the bat used to kill Susan Burdett was found beside her body at the scene of the crime. Unaware of this, when Pora's aunt found out about the bat in the drain, she suggested to police that Pora may have committed the murder. Police responded by interviewing Pora in April 1992 and again in May 1992. On both occasions he denied any involvement and provided hair and DNA samples to police, which excluded him as a suspect. However, his aunt continued to put forward the view that Pora was involved but the police concluded her information was unreliable.

However, after Pora was arrested and tried over a year later, court documents show the aunt was paid $5000 to testify at Pora's first trial. Police have refused Official Information Act requests about payments made to witnesses against Pora but the NZ Herald reports that a minimum of three witnesses were paid and received a total of $15,000.

Problems with Pora's confession
Almost a year later, Pora was arrested on unrelated warrants for relatively minor matters and taken into custody. When a police officer had a "general conversation" with Pora, Pora "told him of his troubled life, told the officer he wanted to go straight, that he felt unwanted by his family and that he knew he was being sought by the Mongrel Mob and police". He was held for four days during which he was questioned about the Burdett case for 14 hours without a lawyer.

During the course of this drawn out interview, Pora made a series of contradictory statements, much of which was recorded on video. Initially, he claimed he drove two Mongrel Mob members to the house and acted as lookout. He later said he went into the house after "hearing noises and seeing the crimes being carried out". Still later, he said he held Burdett down by the arms while the others raped her. To make their case against Pora, police took him to the street where Burdett lived and then asked him: "Would it help if I showed you the house?" However, according to Dominion Post reporter, Phil Kitchen, who has written extensively about the case, Pora "couldn't find the street Burdett lived in, couldn't point out her house when police stood him in front of it, described Burdett as fair and fat when she was dark and slim, didn't know the (victim's) bed was a waterbed...couldn't describe the house layout... didn't know the position her body was left in, (and) said she screamed and yelled when her closest neighbour heard only a series of dull thuds. And those he claimed had raped her were all cleared by DNA.

Gisli Gudjonsson, professor of forensic psychology at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College, London, was asked to review the nine hours of videotaped interviews; he also talked with Pora in prison. Professor Gudjonsson, who is a renowned authority on how people can be induced to make false "confessions", said Pora's confession were the result of intellectual impairment and his desire to claim the $20,000 reward - Pora was told there was an "indemnity against prosecution for non-principal offenders". Gudjonsson believes the convictions "are fundamentally flawed and unsafe". Research shows there are a number of factors which increase the risk of false confessions - being young, low intelligence, police use of inducements, extended period of time in police custody and being held in a small space. These factors all applied to Pora.

Profiling concerns
Two senior police officers have expressed concerns that Pora has been wrongly convicted - including former Detective Sergeant Dave Henwood whose testimony helped convict Malcolm Rewa of numerous rapes. Henwood believes Rewa raped and murdered Mrs Burdett and acted alone - based on "his detailed knowledge of Rewa's criminal signature, central to which was that he was a lone operator". In Pora's second trial, police claimed that Rewa and Pora committed the crime together. But Rewa and Pora were from rival gangs and there was a large difference in age between them; Rewa was 40 and a senior member of Highway 61; Pora was a 16-year-old Mongrel Mob associate.

Henwood, who has won multiple awards for his work as a criminal profiler, was not called to testify at the second trial and was subsequently censured by police for speaking to the NZ Herald about his views. In 2012 a second senior officer, who also worked on the case, wrote to Police Commissioner Peter Marshall expressing his concern that the wrong man had been convicted.

A British profiling expert who has examined the case, Professor Laurence Alison, chair of forensic psychology at Liverpool University, has also concluded it is "highly unlikely" Malcolm Rewa would have worked with any co-offender, let alone with Pora. Susan's brother, Jim Burdett, also believes that Rewa was the one who raped and killed his sister. He believes Susan stood up for herself, that Rewa took the bat off her that she kept for self-defence and "struck the blows that killed her".

Parole
In April 2013, Pora made his 11th appearance at the parole board. He is unlikely to be paroled because he maintains his innocence. But the board does not examine an offender's innocence or guilt - that's up to the courts. The board's over-riding criteria when deciding whether or not to release someone is the safety of the community. Prisoners usually have to complete rehabilitation courses before the board will consider release and Pora has refused to do violence and sex offender programmes he has been offered; apart from the assault on Burdett which he now disputes, he has no relevant offending.

Royal Prerogative of Mercy
Pora has applied for the Royal Prerogative of Mercy, under which the Governor-General can order a new trial. Assistant Police Commissioner, Malcolm Burgess, said police would continue to cooperate fully with any lawful requests made for information in relation to the case. However, Pora's lawyer Jonathan Krebs said the police had been unco-operative and for months had been refusing to supply information he had been seeking. Expressing his frustration with the lack of co-operation from police, Krebs said: "(Pora's) still only in his mid to late 30s, and it's simply a gross miscarriage of justice."

Support
The Maori Party has backed an inquiry in the case.