No Bain - No Gain - Joe Karam claimed a total of $272,822 in legal aid - now wants a share of David Bain's compo

Beyond the HuttRiver - New Zealand today..: Joe Karam claimed a total of $272,822 in legal aid - now wants a share of David Bain's compo...

I repost this here fully acknowledging that it was posted here

Karam Claimed 2045 hours over a 13 month period on the Bain Case

Information released by Legal Aid Services in relation to the 2009 retrial of David Bain: During the period up to and including the 2009 retrial Joe Karam claimed some $365,879 in legal aid. Of this $272,822 was in fees and $93,057 in disbursements (expenses such as accommodation, food and travel). From 22 May 2007 to 31 January 2008, Karam claimed 749 hours for which he was paid $75 per hour as an "unqualified legal executive" acting under the supervision of Michael Reed. From 1 February 2008 to 5 March 2009, Karam claimed about 2045 hours at $95 an hour. This amounts to around an average of 37.5 hours on a weekly basis, allowing for statutory holidaysbut no other time off, for a 13 month period. Karam claimed a further 235 hours for work during the retrial from 6 March 2009 to 5 June 2009. Summary:

749 hours	@ $75	$56,175
2045.5 hours	@ $95	$194,322
235 hours	@ $95	$22,325
TOTAL

It has been suggested that any compensation awarded to David Bain would include payment for legal services to Joe karam. As you can see above, Joe karam was well-paid for his legal services - a total of $272,822 in legal aid

April 2012 Update:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10797188
Convicted killer Clayton Weatherston's legal aid bill has passed $440,000, with more invoices due

Related articles

• No Bain no Gain (pdubyah.com)


• Joe Karam claimed a total of $272,822 in legal aid - now wants a share of David Bain's compo... (peter-petterson.blogspot.com)

update : 28th April http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/6823376/Bains-legal-aid-bill-3-33m

The legal aid bill for David Bain's retrial was $3.33m, the highest amount in legal history.

Convicted in 1995 of murdering his parents, Robin, 58, and Margaret, 50, his sisters Arawa, 19, and Laniet, 18, and his 14-year-old brother Stephen, Bain was acquitted at a 2009 retrial.

The Ministry of Justice told Radio New Zealand that the final figure for Bain's defence was $3.33 million.

Of that amount, $2.33 million went towards the retrial costs and almost $1 million was paid for expenses in the retrial like research, investigators and forensics.

Lawyer's fees throughout the High Court, Court of Appeal and retrial process amounted to $1.77 million of the total bill.

Bain's lawyer, Michael Reed QC, told Radio NZ most of the costs of the retrial were to pay for overseas experts.

Bain is not receiving legal aid in his bid for compensation.

No Bain no Gain

I was spurred on by this today about David Cullen Bain :  David Bain Defence Still Less Than Convincing | Stuff.co.nz.

I'll put my stall out before I get to the article;

My opinion on this is that Robin didn't do it. Despite insinuation and denial it's not that cut and dried. It could have been if David had testified in the re-trial, which he chose not to do, relying on fear, uncertainty, doubt and liberal attitudes to sway an unpredictable jury.

For me the key piece of doubt relies on the time that the computer was switched on.

The time. What exactly was the time, compared to what time, there was no "reference time", everyone looked at their own watches and decided that was the time. It's was a nonsense from the get-go

So how do you tell when a computer was started, I might have missed a trick or two but I still do not know how or where a computer of that age would have stored that kind of information, and I then assume that it was a guess. A guess based on some "expert" pressing the go button and timing with a stopwatch the time it took him, an expert, to type in the mystery message. Like a said a nonsense.

Lets assume that there was a record, somehow, in a history boot file, or something unknown to me, that only tells us a relative time, it's not "the time" it's the time that the computer thinks it is.

If I could get that answer straight in my head then I'd be happier. I might be the only on banking on that drum though, the prosecution and certainly the defense don't want to answer  the question. I even asked the defense team once and got a very off hand reply.

Any way via David Bain Defence Still Less Than Convincing | Stuff.co.nz.

The second item of key evidence is the bloody footprints found in the Every St house. Clearly, if Karam can show the footprints were made by Robin Bain, then he is home and dry. This is because Robin's socks, when he was found, had no blood on them, showing he must have changed them between shooting the family and then himself.

Robin's foot was 270mm long and David's 300mm. A bloodied footprint in the house measured 280mm, but the scientist who did the testing stressed the footprint might not show the "extremities of the heel and toe".

Karam hangs his hat on testing done by both defence and prosecution experts who had subjects dip their feet in a tray of pig's blood and then walk on various surfaces.

These tests showed it was very unlikely a person with a foot of David's size would make a 280mm print under luminol testing (it is usually larger). As with most reconstructions, this testing was flawed from the start. The variables were huge. Were the socks the same? Was weight put on the feet the same? Did the carpet in the tests match the Every St carpet? Was the amount of blood on the socks the same?

...

At the trial I counted at least 20 items of important evidence which, in my view, pointed to Bain's guilt. According to the book, they all have innocent and logical explanations, but key points such as the damaged glasses found in Bain's room, sister Laniet's gurgling, the fingerprints on the rifle, the blood on Bain's clothes and the bruises on his face are formidable although admittedly not unimpeachable pieces of evidence.

Interestingly, Karam does not mention the bizarre if not ludicrous scenario that would have played out if Robin had been the killer. This involves Robin putting his bloodied clothes in the washing basket and then changing his clothes and socks before killing himself in a highly unusual way.

The trial-by-ambush scenario as trumpeted by the title of the book is not sustained. I had to wonder if this was because the defence was not immune to springing things on the prosecution and had to be counselled by the judge on several occasions.

...

Karam is right about many things in the Bain case. Some of the police bungles were inexcusable, but neither was it the shoddy inquiry he makes it out to be. It's true some tests, if done, might have exonerated Bain, but also they might have supported his alleged guilt.

I doubt this book will change many minds. Karam has once again done a superb job for David Bain. Perhaps more debatable, in my opinion, is whether he has done such a fine job for justice.

I've been known to change my mind before, on many thing's, and I've read the books, read various web pages, articles, Wikipedia entries, and pro and anti sentiments. The family was dysfunctional and Robin was a "strange egg" but whilst it's not unusual for the police to get the wrong man, for me in the case they didn't and we've had an ongoing tragedy played out before us.

I wish David well, I have no personal malice or desire to cause him hurt harm or distress, only he knows for sure, and only him, and he had the chance to say, and he chose not to.

I rest my case.

Related articles

• Timeline: David Bain - one of New Zealand's most controversial murderers to claim compensations... (peter-petterson.blogspot.com)


• Retired Supreme Court judge to head New Zealand inquiry (theglobeandmail.com)

Murder Most Foul #1 in a series

There are many murders that get your attention and pique your interest. Fortunately there aren't that many that go unsolved. And even the solved ones can twist like a snake when you take what is mostly a superficial look at them. But we have to have an opinion and we have to have questions, it's the human condition, and you can believe one way or the other that justice was served, or that by your own view it hasn't.  I can think immediately of two that I have a view on.

Away: Peter Falconio.  (20 September 1972 – c. 14 July 2001)  disappeared in the Australian outback in July 2001, while travelling with girlfriend Joanne Lees and is now presumed dead. It's rather contentious and tonight (1st August) it was again alleged on TV that Peter Falconio did a runner and is still alive, and has been seen by 4 people no less, since he was allegedly killed. There was a bit of twitterage about this and seems that there is more than a little doubt that he was killed and that he chose to be disappeared. The whole story seems a little improbable, and they did convict someone of a murder.

It's not possible to put your own reasonings on this, you probably wouldn't stage your own murder/disappearance. Can you imagine living 'on the lam' as it were for what is now a decade? I'm not an expert on this, but how would you survive with a foreign accent in a foreign country, It is possible, people have done it, and will do it again, but I don't recall any background that would indicate Peter F had a bag of cash and the means to get away with it. Improbable but not impossible.

Home: David Bain. Convicted in May 1995 of the murders of his parents and siblings in Dunedin on 20 June 1994. He was acquitted when retried on the same charges 14 years later.

Never has an event really split people so widely. It is my opinion only that the truth hasn't been told in this. The police really stuffed it up from the get go. But after a re-trial where the only possible witness, David Bain, didn't testify what can you conclude?

My two favorite things that are wrong so wrong are; Problems with "index time" that is a central time piece against which everything is timed. What should happen is the lead detective declares the time, and everything you do should be based on the time of that watch/clock/device despite what your watch says. Your watch, my watch, the computer time, the oven, the microwave, the dvd player they all have different times on them, you therefore need a central time clock where you reference too. The police didn't. Big mistake.

And some really weird way in which you can tell when a computer was turned on. Even if you could, and I still don't know how you can, particularly if you turn the computer off and then back on again, what use is forensically diagnosing the time, if the time you arbitrarily decide does not match any reference time, it's just the time you decide on your watch, and not the reference watch. So the forensic test of time will return a time, which is completely arbitrary since there is no way of knowing what time that really is, it could be 10 minutes fast or slow, who knows? Big mistake.