The number of people found unfit to stand trial has doubled in the past decade.
File image. Photo: RNZ / Nate McKinnon
New Zealand Law Society President Tiana Epati highlighted the trend while speaking at the Court of Appeal in Wellington on Thursday where teenager Haami Hanara is appealing his conviction on the grounds he was unfit to stand trial for the 2018 killing of Kelly Donner.
He was found guilty of murder in the High Court at Napier that year, and in February 2019 was sentenced to life imprisonment with a non-parole period of 10 years.
Hanara sought an appeal of his conviction this week on the grounds he was unfit to stand trial because of significant disabilities, including fetal alcohol spectrum disorder and ADHD.
Epati said the number of people found unfit to stand trial over the last 10 years has gone from 94 in 2012 to 195 in 2021.
Of those numbers Māori make up nearly 50 percent, a 20 percent jump in a decade, while Pasifika make up 10 percent with an increase of 3 percent.
Epati said Māori and Pasifika are being disproportionately represented when it comes to people being deemed unfit to stand trial.
In a context distinctly Anglo-Saxon in nature, Epati said the system as it stood did not cater for those who fit outside of the box of a pākehā adult.
"It is fair to say the fitness to stand trial test is increasingly impacting children, particularly Māori tamariki.
"When you take a Māori child and put them in an adult trial they are at a disadvantage."
Hanara's appeal raises a number of questions, including whether he had disabilities that may have prevented him from understanding the trial himself.
Epati and the NZLS removed the conversation from the specific case at hand, discussing the wider issues of what deems a fair trial for a young person unable to fully participate in their own case.
"This unique context means it is apt to reconsider the current fitness to stand trial test in Aotearoa and whether it sufficiently accounts for the constellation of factors which can impact a defendant's ability to effectively participate in a trial."
Epati said to be found unfit was not a mana enhancing experience for Māori.
Hanara was 14 when he stabbed Donner outside the Flaxmere Tavern in Hawke's Bay, attacking the homeless man with four other youths.
The appeal was adjourned on Thursday afternoon and will continue in July when it is expected to hear further evidence.
* This story originally appeared in the New Zealand Herald.