February 21, 2018
Checkpoint after Exit meeting to check elderly attendees were okay, court told
The Dominion Post, Court Reporter
Police set up a checkpoint to identify people leaving a pro-euthanasia group meeting to make sure they were okay, a jury has been told.
A police officer’s evidence about the checkpoint was greeted with laughter from the public gallery at the High Court trial in Wellington of Susan Dale Austen, 67, who is charged with aiding a suicide.
Austen was the chairwoman of the Wellington branch of the pro-euthanasia group Exit International. A meeting was held at her home in the Lower Hutt suburb of Maungaraki on October 2, 2016.
Defence lawyer Donald Stevens, QC, suggested the failed luggage search followed by a checkpoint stop of elderly Exit members, was a “shambles” for police, but that was denied.
Detective Sergeant Miriam Reddington said Detective Senior Sergeant Warwick McKee had directed a checkpoint be set up in the suburb to identify people who went to the meeting, with a view to following up to make sure they were okay.
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Police were concerned that Austen was aiding and abetting people to commit suicide and providing them with the means to do that, Reddington said.
There was a real concern that people were being supplied with pentobarbitone and there was a risk that people might take their own lives.
Police had a duty of care to ensure that the aiding and abetting of suicide they were investigating did not take place, Reddington said.
Police stopped drivers and asked for licence details, addresses and phone numbers. People were not to be asked if they were members of Exit, she said.
Under cross examination, Reddington agreed it became major news and the police district commander had to give an explanation.
The checkpoint was two days after police and customs had searched Austen’s bags when she returned from Hong Kong.
Reddington said the aim was not to alert Austen to the search. Nothing was found in her checked in luggage. She and her carry on bags were not searched.
Defence lawyer Donald Stevens, QC, asked if it was a shambles to have had the search that found nothing, followed two days later by the checkpoint in Maungaraki, but Reddington denied it.
She told prosecutor Kate Feltham that until that point the police investigation had indicated that pentobarbitone was being imported through the mail, rather than in person.
Austen, a retired teacher, has pleaded not guilty to two charges of importing pentobarbitone, and one of aiding a suicide.
Annemarie Treadwell, 77, died of pentobarbitone poisoning on June 6, 2016. After her death a diary was found in which Treadwell wrote that Austen had helped her obtain a package from overseas.
Earlier on Monday, the court was told that an elderly woman was angry when police seized her bottle of pentobarbitone from her fridge.
The woman, Bev Hurrelle, was quite upset, Detective Constable Leanne Meikle said.
“Bugger that, I am now angry that you have taken my out! It’s been there for nine years, I now have nothing,” Hurrelle said, according to Meikle’s notes.
Under cross examination Meikle said that as well as finding the pentobarbitone in Hurrelle’s fridge, police had found white powder in Hurrelle’s small suitcase in the back of Austen’s car.
Meikle said Hurrelle seemed stunned that it was found. “It’s not for me to use,” she said.
The court has been told that Hurrelle was with Austen when police arrested Austen in her car at a public reserve. The pair were allegedly putting powder into smaller packages. Hurrelle was not charged due to her age and health.
Austen’s trial could take up to three weeks.