A new commission set up to examine miscarriages of justice have had as many application in the first five months that they expected to get in a year.
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Te Kāhui Tātari Ture Criminal Cases Review Commission has been accepting applications since July this year for convictions where the applicant believes they were wrongly convicted or sentenced.
Its Chief Commission Colin Carruthers said the New Zealand model is largely based on a similar commission in Scotland, which gets around 125 application each year.
He said they had expected a similar number in the New Zealand commission's first year.
Carruthers said the applicant had to be alive and convicted in New Zealand, and the application needed to be made by the convicted person or they had to give authorisation for another person to put in the application.
"We expected there would be a spike to start with, but in five months we have already got to 125."
So far five applications had been declined, and the rest were still being assessed.
He said the most common reason for turning down an application was that the person had not exhausted their appeal rights.
Carruthers said there have also been applications relating to a person being found guilty on grounds of insanity and someone who lost assets under the proceeds of Crime Act, but as neither of those are convictions they don't fall under the commission's purview.
The convictions covered by applications at the moment range from very recent cases to a case more than twenty years old. Carruthers said there is a broad range of convictions covered by the applications, mostly very serious crimes.
Of the applications, 54 are for convictions for sexual assault, with half of those for crimes by adults and half by minors.
The next largest group of types of convictions are for murder/manslaughter with 21 applications.
There are 18 applications for violence convictions, 10 for drugs, eight for dishonesty/fraud/financial crimes, six for family harm, four applications listed as other, and four not disclosed.
Carruthers said the commission was conscious of the need to notify victims of crimes if they were looking into a case or publishing a decision, but said they needed to make a judgement about the best time to do so, as not all applications would go further and have a full investigation.
"We are looking at the timing of notifying victims, because one of the matters we are obviously concerned about is re-victimizing those victims. We are careful about timing as to when we notify victims."
"If we are making a decision not to proceed with an application we need to consider then whether there is anything that needs to be said to a victim.
"We have to publish that decision but whether we need to say anything depends a little bit on the circumstances of the case."
He said they had no control over applicants making public that they had put in an application.
If a full investigation is conducted than the commission will produce a report, and then the commissioners will review the investigation report and decide whether they will refer the case to the court.
The commission will not decide guilt or innocence in the case, but if the case is referred, then it will get a new hearing in an appeal court.