No easy road to compensation - QC

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David Bain faces an "onerous task" to get any compensation from the Government by having to prove he is innocent of murdering his family, lawyers say.

Bain's lawyer, Michael Reed, QC, said after the not-guilty verdicts in the High Court in Christchurch yesterday that he believed Bain should get compensation after wrongfully spending 13 years in prison for the 1994 murders of his mother, father and three siblings.

Bain would be in line for $1.3 million Cabinet guidelines indicate about $100,000 a year for wrongful imprisonment and money for other losses if he is found to be eligible for compensation. However, Christchurch lawyer Nigel Hampton, QC, said the Cabinet criteria had a deliberately "high hurdle" for claims.

Unlike the murder trial where the Crown had to prove his guilt, a compensation claim would require Bain to prove on the balance of probabilities that he was innocent.

Hampton said the criteria was set deliberately high to prevent a flood of compensation claims from anybody who spent time in prison and was later acquitted.

Christchurch lawyer Jonathan Eaton represented Rex Haig in an unsuccessful compensation claim when Haig's murder conviction was quashed after he had spent 10 years in jail.

A former High Court judge ruled against the compensation claim in February this year, saying Haig was probably guilty of the murder.

Eaton said the Haig case demonstrated that without a clear forensic indication, such as DNA evidence, compensation applicants faced an "onerous task" to prove their innocence.

One of the few successful applicants was David Dougherty, who was awarded $868,000 after wrongfully spending more than three years in prison after DNA evidence led to him being acquitted of abducting and raping a girl in 1993.

Eaton said Bain would have to prove that it was more likely than not that his father, Robin, was the killer.

In the murder retrial, for example, Bain's defence team had raised doubts about who made the bloody footprints in the house, but in a compensation claim Bain would have to prove they were not his.

The first stage of a compensation claim was for the minister of justice to decide whether it was worthy of consideration.

If so, it would be referred to a QC, who could conduct a wide-ranging inquiry, not bound by any particular procedure, Eaton said.

- © Fairfax NZ News