Hard to get over a ‘false confession’ during a sting operation: defense

Lawyers for a murder defendant claimed to have made a false confession, they thought that if the jury listened, a guilty verdict would surely follow.

Speaking at the Court of Appeals in Wellington on Thursday, Christopher Stevenson said jurors and judges found it almost impossible to believe that a confession was false.

David Owen Lyttle’s confession came during a “Mr Big” police sting operation that tricked him into believing that he was ready to join an elite criminal organization offering easy money and good times.

Lyttle was especially susceptible because he was under financial pressure, drank heavily, and was in poor health.

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Mr. Big wanted to know anything that might attract the attention of the police and Lyttle was asked specifically about Bretton (Brett) Hall.

He denied knowing anything and, when pressured, made a confession that, according to the defense, contained details that could be shown to be wrong.

Stevenson, one of two attorneys for Lyttle, 55, said a Superior Court judge for the trial in late 2019 found that the circumstances of the confession affected its reliability.

Having made that decision, the confession should only have been before the jury if other independent, clear and obvious evidence “saved it,” he said.

Instead, the independent evidence strengthened doubts about its reliability, Stevenson said.

Hall was friends with Lyttle, a builder from Halcombe, Manawatū, and perhaps Lyttle’s only close friend.

Lyttle was building a house for Hall in a remote rural site near the Whanganui River and the Crown said Hall was unhappy.

Hall disappeared in May 2011 and his body has not been found.

The disappearance was treated as a homicide. He had been on probation from prison for drug offenses when he disappeared.

Lyttle was indicted in 2014 and finally convicted in late 2019. He was sentenced to serve at least 11 years of life in prison.

The Court of Appeal reserved its decision on his appeal against the conviction.

Lyttle had told him that Big Hall was pressuring him to get involved in the drug scene.

One of the Crown’s attorneys, Mark Lillico, said no evidence was found to support that motive, but that there had been tension between the two over the house.

The jury was told that confession alone was not enough to find a murder conviction.

Lillico told the three appellate judges that the jury’s direction actually favored Lyttle.

It would have been enough for the jurors to know that it was up to them what to do with the confession and to be careful about it.

Even without the confession, the Crown still had the other comments Lyttle made to the police after he was briefed on the sting operation. That included Lyttle saying, “It was self-defense.”

The Crown was criticized for improper disclosure of information that should have gone to defense attorneys.

Another Crown attorney, Catherine Ure, described it as a “disclosure deficit.”

One of the appellate judges, Judge David Collins, said it was a “vanilla term” for the problems that had led to a $ 75,000 cost award against police. Most of the money went toward Lyttle’s legal aid bill, but $ 10,342 went to cover the Lyttle family’s expenses related to the lengthy trial.

The Crown has appealed against the order for costs.

However, Ure said criticism of the disclosure did not go as far as saying that evidence consistent with innocence had not been released, and nothing that was discovered pointed to the trial being unfair.

But Stevenson said police were required to reasonably investigate and that included the officer in charge being told that someone had apparently confessed and that the person was not interviewed.