Sedition Trial: UPDATE

Queen v Selwyn

UPDATE

Well I gave evidence today. My own lawyer's questions to the end felt like an interrogation, but that was just to set me up for the hell of a cross-examination today by the Crown Prosecuter - very gruelling. I tried to make my points regarding the issue of the trial, the two documents, but he just wanted to focus on the stuff on the periphery that would make me look bad and hack away at that from as many angles as he could - all in a dull, plodding monotone. I point blank refused to answer at least half a dozen of his peripheral questions (esp. about questions that could implicate others or were just gratuitously irrelevant) and tried to get it back to what the purpose of the texts were and the intent behind them. It became a bit testy but he did accept some of my views surrounding intent - and made sure to quickly cut me off when he caught himself acknowledging my points.

The trial so far has had a couple of odd turns that I can hopefully tell you about later.

Tomorrow (Thursday) I'll give my final korero via re-examination from my lawyer, and then closing statements from the lawyers, and then the judge will summarise all the issues for the jury and they will deliberate and hopefully come back with a verdict before the end of the day. If they choose to go into all the documents and try to create timelines and scenarios they could waste a lot of time and get side-tracked with all the circumstantial evidence (I think).

I have to trust that jury.