....Mistake in court cannabis accusation | New Zealand

....Mistake in court cannabis accusation

A false allegation against a man on cannabis charges has been corrected in the Blenheim District Court by Crown prosecutor Craig Ruane.
On Friday, Mr Ruane told Judge David McKegg and the jury that he had wrongly stated the previous day that fingerprints of defendant Cherrin Brian Pope were on a vacuum cleaner box filled with cannabis heads. In fact, the fingerprints belonged to someone yet to be identified. Pope, 33, and his brother, Hemi Paki Pope, 26, have denied four joint charges laid by police of cultivating cannabis, producing the class-B controlled drug, cannabis oil, and possessing cannabis material and cannabis oil.
Following two days of Crown evidence outlining what police found on a 3.8ha Te Hora Pa Rd property, Cherrin Pope was the first of seven defence witnesses.

He explained his name was one of 25 on a Maori Land Court certificate for the Te Hora Pa Rd ancestral land.

Asked by defence counsel Mike Turner who was "in charge" of the land, Pope said: "Everyone on the (certificate), including partners, whether they are Maori or Pakeha, and any children in their care."

Following the death of a friend in October 2005, whose tangi caused a huge row, Pope cut all family contact, left the property, moved into his girlfriend's place a few kilometres away and never returned to the land until March the following year, when he wanted to renew his firearm's licence.

The second witness was a Lake Brunner farmer, Drummond George Young. In 2006 he lived and owned two farms near Canvastown and was a former Department of Corrections worker. From September or October 2006, he employed Cherrin Pope as a general farm hand. He said he knew Pope had moved in with his girlfriend after the family row. She usually dropped him off at work each morning and picked him up in the afternoon. When she could not, Mr Young collected or took Pope to her house himself.

Asked if he ever saw Pope on the property after October 2005, he said he never did but at different times saw between 40 and 50 other people.

Some seemed to be staying over for a few days, others were pig hunting. His right to be there was never challenged, he said.

Another witness agreed that many people used the property and said he offered to store Pope's guns until his friend's firearm's licence was renewed.

The brothers' mother, Vanda Packer, was Friday's final witness.

Although living in the North Island, she returned to Canvastown regularly. She was there for Christmas 2005, although she and Cherrin did not see each other.

However, there was an unknown man staying in the caravan beside the cottage, she said. He had connected power from the cottage to the caravan and had set up a gas cooker on top of which sat a pot with burnt knives in it.

When the man said he had family connections, she told him she would be checking them. He left shortly after.

Ms Packer returned to Canvastown in March, 2006. Asked by Mr Ruane if she went "over the back, into the gully where the cannabis was being grown," she shook her head. This morning, closing addresses were to be delivered by the Crown prosecutor and the defence lawyers before the jury retires.

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