Busy day for NAP Legal Team!

Today was a very hectic day for the network against prohibition legal team.

We started in the Supreme Court. Ema Corro, Nicolette Burrows, Rob Inder-Smith and Gary Meyerhoff were arraigned (some legal term meaning set down for trial by judge and jury sometime early next year). This was for sitting in Clare Martin's office for half an hour or so. The 4 are charged with trespass and the insidious business invasion offence, that has a maximum penalty of 7 years jail.

Anyway, Ema appeared with the assistance of Legal Aid Lawyer Louise Bennett, while Rob, Nic and Gary of the NAP legal team represented themselves, to the dismay of our learned friend Justice Dean Mildren.

Justice Mildren did his best to talk the NAP legal team out of defending themselves. He even tried the quote "the man who represents himself has a fool for a client" (seriously, see the transcript if you don't believe us) and explained to us that only lawyers were capable of making certain submissions during the trial. Despite this Nic, Rob and Gary all informed Justice Mildren in a round about way "thankyou very much for your advice your honour, but we will represent ourselves."

We could have told him that we couldn't afford to pay people in wigs a few hundred bucks an hour to be our mouthpieces, or that we would maybe consider using legal aid, if they didn't have a passion for insisting that their clients plead guilty, but we had an urgent appointment at the Darwin Magistrate's Court.

Court 1 - with Magistrate Alistair McGregor, on his last day of work as a Maggie for the NT Government - dealing with the NAP and PARIAH members facing charges arising from the 6th community smoke-in in October last year.

The contentious issue was the prosecution request to amend the charges re alleged damage to police cars. Already at the last mention, the number plates of the police cars were amended. After todays mention it looks like there are now up to 4 NT police vehicles, who knows, the prosecution seem to be pulling rego numbers out of a hat.

The prosecution tried to amend another of the damage charges, faced by Nic, Stuart Highway, Gary and Micky Barry. This was for damage to a police car for over $5000, an indictable offence, but the prosecution wanted to amend it to a summary complaint. In typical NT prosecutorial style they had added up the damage costs incorrectly, it wasn't over $5000.

Only thing is, a summary complaint must be laid within 6 months of the offence, which was alleged to have occurred in October last year.

Nicolette had already had her charge amended at the last court mention, by Magistrate Gillies. Mr Mcgregor refused her requests for the charge to be stayed so that this legal point could be reviewed by the Supreme Court.

Mr McGregor refused to amend the charges from indictable to summary for Rob, Gary and Micky. He set this and other charges down for a commital hearing starting on September 15th, with some summary charges and some indictable charges. We are a little confused.

PARIAH Coordinator Mick Lambe, Ema Corro and Rob Indersmith also faced charges related to the October 2002 incident and were also told to prepare for the committal hearing.

After all this, Gary and Micky frantically tried to get their new file - 2 counts each of affixing a bill to a pole without a permit - before the court to remove the 10pm to 6am curfew that they have been subject to since Tuesday night. The staff at the Magistrate's court didn't have the file so the pair, with NAP members Stuart Highway and Raoul Crooke in tow, marched off to the Department of Public Prosecutions. The DPP staff didn't have the file either.

So Micky, Gary and co visited the NT Ombudsman's office. Someone there spoke to us (didn't identify themselves - probably the janitor), they went off to make some calls and told us that we would have to go to the Peter Macauley Centre - Police HQ in Berrimah to ask the police to vary the bail.

Micky had had enough by this stage and went off to have a life. Gary went back to the Magistrate's court and quoting some jargon from the bail act (and remember, someone from the ombudsman just rang them) managed to get the file brought up before Mr McGregor, at about 4pm, the last case of the day, and possibly the last case for Mr Mcgregor as a magistrate.

Confusion reigned (as it often does at the Darwin Magistrate's Court), the prosecution didn't have a file, the court didn't have a file, but Gary had the bail papers he had received from Sergeant Lyndon on Tuesday night - this was more than enough evidence that he had been placed on bail, with the curfew.

As the prosecution didn't have a file, Mr Mcgregor discharged Gary from the charge, let him off, even told Gary he should "run fast so the police don't find the file and come after you!"

Like a stunned mullet, Gary stood there, not knowing what was going on. Perhaps he had unknowingly made a bizarre freemason tongue signal. Anyway, he didn't get what was going on and the prosecution nearly frothed at the mouth at the site of Gary grabbing his stuff and walking out of the court - free of the curfew, and the charge.

Mcgregor realised his error (or did he), and quickly told Gary he should come to court tomorrow at 10am, giving him back his bail papers.

So the saga continues in the NT.

More soon.