Archive for February, 2009

This Day at the Courts, 4 February 2023

Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009

The Linwood House of Horror

A verdict was reached today in the High Court in the trial of Mrs Annie Hutchkins of Linwood. The jury took only two hours to reach its decision, finding Mrs Hutchkins guilty on all seven charges, which ranged from willful disregard for human safety to environmental vandalism.

 

The horrific nature of Mrs Hutckins’s offences became apparent when her property in Cashel Street was raided on 2 July. Police had a tip-off that someone was lighting unauthorised fires, and Mrs Hutchkins was discovered “obtaining warmth from an open fireplace”. She was actually burning wood, thought to be her own dismantled furniture. A store of wood prepared for the purposes of combustion was found hidden under the floorboards of her living-room.

 

The existence of the fireplace had been concealed from neighbours and the LASER (Light And Smoke Emission Reconnaissance) squad because the chimney had been dismantled by council workers 13 years before. Mrs Hutchkins had lit fires in the grate and allowed the smoke to pass into the room.

 

‘It was truly disgusting’, reported Detective-Sergeant Peter Melder, who was one of the first on the scene. “There was carbon monoxide, particulates and sulphates everywhere.” Dr Ian Parkin gave evidence at the trial that there was a 0.003% likelihood that smoke escaping from apertures in Mrs Hutchkins’s house had detrimentally affected 0.15 people with respiratory problems. In addition, this would have increased the carbon footprint of the whole city substantially, and another polar bear was likely to die and a major chunk of ice fall off the Antarctic ice sheet as a result. The room was decontaminated by the Environmental Special Emergencies Squad.

 

An electric heater of a kind long-banned (August 2010) was found in a cupboard, and forensic tests indicated that it had been used within the last month. To her plea that she had been cold, Justice Callen replied that if we all turned on a heater when we were cold where would the country be? This brought a round of cheers and applause. He also noted that if Mrs Hutchkins had been doing the Exercise Commission’s mandatory exercises she would have kept warm that way. Having osteo-arthritis was no excuse.

 

However, it was the backyard that revealed the true horrors of what has been dubbed “the Linwood House of Horror”. An unregistered dog was discovered chained to its kennel. The dog, a mixed Labrador-retriever, was well over the legal weight limit for dogs (10kg), had not had its teeth removed, and barked at a police officer who approached it. There was no record of its having been taken to the Canterbury Approved Dog Exercise Facility in Rangiora for two hours a day, as is required by law. Subsequent investigation showed that anyone with wire-cutters, and who had what Detective-Sergeant Melder described as a ‘very basic knowledge of  alarm systems’, could have got into the yard and been bitten. The dog was shot on site.

 

Next to the dog was found a bowl of water, which at 4 cm deep and 20 cm across was over the legal limit for unfenced bodies of water. ‘Some child could have got in here, gone face down in that water and drowned before you know it,’ Detective-Sergeant Melder commented in court, visibly distressed. During this part of the trial Justice Callen twice had to warn the public to be quiet or he would be forced to clear the courtroom.

 

Finally, when Mrs Hutchkins was strip-searched at the police station she was found to have on her possession two roll-your-own “cigarettes”.  Since smoking was banned in private in 2017 there has been a black market in tobacco, but it was unclear how Mrs Hutchkins had come by the illegal substance. Neighbours reported that she “had seemed such a nice person”. The damage to Mrs Hutchkins own health was only part of the story, according to Justice Callen. Secondary, and even tertiary, smoke could have affected a large number of people passing the house, who as a result would be likely to contract cancer within the next ten years and would be absorbing health funding for many more.

 

In summing up, Justice Callen said the case was one of the worst of its kind in recent years. The police officers involved are all receiving psychological counselling and are likely to be off work for at least 12 months. Mrs Hutchkins was sentenced to a total of 87 years imprisonment. After the sentence was read she appeared stunned. Justice Callen said he did not condone the painting of green triangles on the doors of members of Mrs Hutchins’s immediate family, combined with some petty vandalism, although it was an understandable reaction given the severity of the offences.

 

The Courts in Brief

The death of a toddler in Otahuhu has been widely condemned as “completely avoidable and utterly unforgiveable”. The toddler, Baby Jay, was drowned in the bath by his stepfather. The Ministry of Social Welfare said that there were three social workers permanently stationed in the house, but that budget cuts had meant the “One Room, One Social Worker” for at-risk families action plan had not been able to be implemented. The driving force behind the action plan, Mr Richard Hewson, said that this was not good enough. “A report from seven years ago mentioned the possibility of violence from the stepfather (whose name has been suppressed), and there should have been constant surveillance of this poor man”. The stepfather was acquitted, and is undergoing counselling.

In response to this crisis, the Ministry says that it has has come up with a revolutionary new plan for monitoring at-risk Maori families, who are particularly vulnerable. The Minister, the Right Honourable Martha Douglas explains it as follows: “We’ve known for a long time that each child needs to be assigned at least two social workers, and that it is best if these come from the child’s iwi (tribe). Lately, research has shown that there are improved results if the social workers come from the child’s hapu (sub-tribe), or even whanau (extended family). The radical idea in this new plan is that the biological parents will take the place of social workers, which should provide an even closer affiliation between the caregivers and the child.” This radical plan has been widely hailed for its insight and sensitivity.

In other court cases, an organiser of a “fun” children’s soccer match at Leithfield Park, Mr Dennis Athfield, was found guilty of criminal negligence and ordered to pay a fine of $100,000 or accept imprisonment for ten years. An 11-year-old boy playing in the soccer match had gashed his arm falling on a piece of glass. The gash required two stitches. It was found that Mr Athfield was not registered as an events organizer, and had failed to provide written advice to all players that there was the possibility of encountering hazardous objects on the field. A council representative pointed out that over the previous five years the council had erected 47 hazard signs around the park, and all users of Hagley Park should first read a 60-page manual outlining all the drowning, falling, bacterial, cycling and other hazards that could be encountered in the park. Entering the park without having first read the manual was “just asking for trouble”.

 

Mrs Muriel Beckett was found guilty of failing to provide suitable access to her house without encountering a dog. Mrs Beckett, who celebrated her 84th birthday while remanded in custody, sobbed in Court as she explained that the wooden planks from the barrier had twice been stolen, presumably for illicit combustion. Justice McClennan said that this was no excuse, and that Mrs Beckett should count herself lucky that the inspector had not been bitten. The fact that her dog, Bessie, was unable to walk was irrelevant. This brings to 373 the number of elderly people imprisoned for access offences. Mrs Beckett’s husband, Stan, a retired carpenter, was also charged with erecting a building without having a current registration. His excuse that it was only a doll’s house for his grand-daughter and that it was hardly worth paying the $3,500 annual registration fee was dismissed by Justice McLennan, as was Mr Beckett’s claim that he had spent 47 years in the building industry.

 

An office manager, Ms Marion Hodge, was convicted of failing to wear a pedestrian helmet on a Class B3 road. To her plea that she had “just nipped out to put some money in the parking meter”, Justice McLennan  responded that if people wished to use footpaths next to roads on which more than five motorised vehicles passed every 10 minutes, they would just have to get used to the idea of wearing helmets, as required by the revised Health and Safety regulations. He labelled  as “irresponsible” evidence in a recent report that pedestrian helmets had not altered the number or seriousness of pedestrian accidents.

 

Finally in this day at the Courts, Mr James Wilson appeared in Court today after proceedings were interrupted yesterday and the Court had to be cleared due to disruption. Mr Wilson, a prominent member of OAMDF (Organisation Against Media-Driven Fascism) has been charged with vandalism and disturbing the peace after incidents that occurred during a protest against recent changes to the way legislation is passed, popularly known as “the New Democracy”. Mr Wilson said in a written statement that “the constitutional move to have legislation enacted and/or amended by popular electronic vote following the six o’clock news is simply government by hysteria”. He was convicted and fined $10,000. Justice McLennan noted in his decision that “we live in an advanced liberal democracy, and any group who tries to subvert that will be ruthlessly suppressed”.

 

On a brighter note, in international news, the Minister of Enhancing Abilities applauded the completion of wheelchair access to the summit of Mount Everest, but described as “appalling” the delays that had been encountered. The project, which had cost $14 billion, was “long overdue” according to the Minister. “It is simply disgraceful that people with enhanced abilities, such as those using wheelchairs, had been denied access to Mount Everest by a callous and biased international community.” People with enhanced abilities  (previously referred to as people with disabilities) had been victimized too long, he said, and Mt Everest was just another step on the road to making the entire Earth accessible to all.

 

Boethius 2

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Iraq and the Precautionary Principle

Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009

According to Wikipedia “The Precautionary Principle is a moral and political principle which states that if an action or policy might cause severe or irreversible harm to the public or to the environment, in the absence of a scientific consensus that harm would not ensue, the burden of proof falls on those who would advocate taking the action.” In other words, if the potential consequences of doing something are bad enough, it’s not up to opponents to prove they will, or are likely to, happen. It’s up to those contemplating the action to prove that these consequences won’t happen. If you can’t supply this proof, you shouldn’t go ahead.

This principle is often employed in relation to genetic modification (genetic engineering, transgenics). It is often argued that even if nothing demonstrably bad has happened so far as the result of genetically modifying food crops, the consequences of something going wrong are so terrible that, on balance, the risk is not worth taking, because it cannot be shown that such risks can be reduced to zero. Put another way, even in the absence of conclusive evidence to show that genetic modification is dangerous, the onus is on the genetic modifiers to show that the negative consequences are well nigh impossible. The Precautionary Principle would therefore seem to indicate that we should not genetically modify our food.

Take something like corn syrup, which is incorporated into a huge range of processed foods. If some genetic modification to corn turned out to be toxic to humans, carcinogenic say, the consequences would be truly horrendous.

If one accepts the argument from the Precautionary Principle, it is not enough for scientists to remonstrate that selective breeding for the last five thousand years has done similar kinds of things, in a more random way, to genetic modification. By changing the genetic make-up of people’s food in rapid and radical ways that would be impossible in nature, they are putting whole populations at risk – and the risk is not worth it. Doesn’t this sound like a reasonable argument?

Of course the same reasoning also applies to not taking action. Which is to say, if the consequences of not taking action are horrendous enough, then the onus is on those who oppose this action to prove their case. Again, in the same way, even in the absence of conclusive evidence, if the consequences of inaction are terrible enough, then the onus is on those opposing the action to prove their case and show that these consequences are well nigh impossible.  

In attacking Iraq on the basis of a belief that it was preparing weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and had the will to use them, Tony Blair and George W Bush can be seen as applying the Precautionary Principle in just the same way as it is applied to genetic modification. There was some evidence that Iraq was preparing WMDs, and even if this evidence was not conclusive, even if in hindsight it would appear to have been exaggerated, at the time the consequences of being wrong and of not acting were so genuinely terrifying that the Precautionary Principle applies.  Even a crude WND targeted at Jerusalem, with 747,000 people, or Tel Aviv, with 390,000 people, would have caused huge devastation and doubtless begun a war that would have claimed many more.

Of course someone might argue that GM is different, in that the alternative course is harmless.  Thus, they might argue, when it comes to GM, stopping the action has no negative consequences, apart from monetary losses to the fat industries involved, whereas the alternative course in the case of Iraq caused tens of thousands of deaths. On the one hand, this overlooks the fact that one of the drivers of the genetic modification of food crops has always been to create crop varieties that will thrive in adverse conditions, such as in Africa, and that will help feed whole countries. The enormous counter drive to prevent genetic modification may thus potentially cause millions of deaths. There are indeed negative consequences of applying the Precautionary Principle in this case, and with global warming the need for hardier crops to feed a starving world will become ever more pressing.

On the other hand, the decision to invade Iraq and ensure there were no WMDS caused relatively few deaths. It was George W Bush’s decision to stayand attempt to establish a democratic state in a country long run by a ruthless dictatorship that caused the large number of deaths. It was naive, absurdly optimistic and badly handled, but it was a different decision. If George W Bush had pulled out of Iraq after establishing the absence of WMDs, mirroring the tactics of his father in the first Gulf war, it would certainly have saved thousands of American lives and billions of dollars – dollars that are now in short supply.

Yes George Bush was wrong about WMDS. But was his decision to invade Iraq based on inconclusive evidence wrong? Was it reasonable to apply the Precautionary Principle in this situation given the potential consequences of inaction? Those high-minded individuals who eat organic food and despise Bush should try, for a few moments, to put themselves in his place. Your advisers, your intelligence agencies, are telling you that a rogue state that fosters terrorism and tortures and murders thousands of its own citizens may have WMDs. You agree with the use of the Precautionary Principle. What do you? What do you do?

Boethius 1

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