# Wrongful conviction of David Lyttle

David Owen Lyttle is a New Zealander who was wrongfully convicted of murdering Brett Hall, his friend of 30 years. Hall was a drug dealer who had spent time in prison. He went missing from his property north of Whanganui in May 2011, but his body has never been found. The police focussed on David Lyttle as the potential killer, and ignored information pointing to a drug deal that went wrong involving Hall's criminal associates.
Police had no forensic evidence linking Lyttle to Hall's disappearance so after four years, they initiated an undercover operation called 'Mr Big' to target Lyttle. He eventually told an undercover police officer (Mr Big) he committed the murder and claimed he cut the body in half. He took police to two spots where he claimed body parts were buried. Police excavated the sites but found nothing. Nevertheless, Lyttle was arrested for the murder in 2014.
Due to a series of failures by police to disclose relevant information to his defence team, Lyttle's trial was subject to numerous delays. This included thousands of pages describing the undercover operation, hundreds of pages from police notebooks, and a copy of a statement from a police informant who said Hall was not murdered by David Lyttle but by an associate who had stolen drugs worth $200,000 from him. The police had access to all this information in March 2014, well before the Mr Big operation began, but never followed up on the informant's claim. Lyttle's defence team were not made aware of this statement by the informant until July 2017.
In February 2017, a senior police officer gave an assurance to the court that all police notebooks had finally been handed over. The following month another 600 more pages of material were disclosed for the first time. In 2018, a week after Lyttle's trial started, further disclosures came to light, and the judge declared a mistrial. The case finally went to trial in 2019. It lasted nine weeks, during which the jury heard hours of secret recordings from the Mr Big operation. Influenced by his 'confession' to Mr Big, Lyttle was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison - with a non-parole period of 11 years.
In November 2020, he took his case to the Court of Appeal. His lawyers were adamant he had only confessed because of enticements he was offered as part of the elaborate Mr Big operation. In March 2021, the Court of Appeal quashed his conviction, stating that virtually nothing he told the police as part of their Mr Big operation carried any credibility. The Court concluded: "A miscarriage of justice has occurred." Lyttle spent four years in prison before being released on 11 March 2021.

## Background

David Lyttle and Brett Hall had been friends for 30 years. In October 2009, Brett Hall was released from prison after serving five years for selling methamphetamine. In 2010, he purchased a section in Pitangi north of Whanganui and lived in a caravan. Although he was still on parole, Hall was suspected of secretly dealing drugs at the property. After he disappeared, the police found a bucket with cannabis and $14,000 in it.
Lyttle had worked as a builder for most of his life and Hall asked him to build a house on the property. Work began in late 2010. Hall agreed to pay Lyttle $70,000, of which $30,000 would cover materials. The remaining $40,000 would be paid to Lyttle at the end of the job. Lyttle was an alcoholic and had a shoulder injury, so work proceeded slowly.
On 27 May 2011, Lyttle visited Pitangi to work on the house, and caught up with Hall. When Hall's son Damian arrived at Pitangi the next morning, there was no sign of his father. Two days later, Lyttle said he drove to Pitangi for some final building work, had a beer with Hall and left around 11:00 am. That afternoon, a number of vehicles were seen on the track leading to Hall's property. The following day, a neighbour heard cries for help from Hall's place, and called the police. The Crown subsequently claimed that Hall died on the Friday and the screaming sounds were made by a goat.

## The investigation

Lyttle had no history of violence, whereas Hall had a criminal history and convictions for drug dealing. Police learned that Hall was involved in a drug deal with the Mongrel Mob and other gangs at the time of his disappearance; and that he had previously been the victim of two home invasions at the property, in one of which, shots were fired. He slept with guns beside his bed.
However, the police focussed on Lyttle when he lied to them about buying guns for Hall and interrogated him eight times in the space of a few weeks. (Due to his parole conditions, Hall wasn't allowed to own firearms.) There was no forensic or physical evidence that linked Lyttle to the murder, so they bugged his phones and followed him around. During this secret surveillance, Lyttle never said or did anything to suggest he was involved. At the end of 2011, the police scaled down their inquiry due to the lack of evidence agasinst him.

### Mr Big operation

Due to their lack of progress in the case, it was eventually referred to police's covert investigations group. In 2014, the police targeted Lyttle with an undercover operation known as Mr Big. Over the course of three months, he was introduced to a mock criminal organisation and asked to participate. Altogether, police conducted 24 undercover scenarios with him. However, he was repeatedly told he had to be honest with them, confess to any crimes he had previously committed, and eventually, he could join the organisation and receive a 'big pay day'.
Finally, Lyttle was introduced to a man known as 'Mr Scott', who was another undercover police officer posing as head of the criminal network. Initially, Lyttle told 'Mr Scott' that he knew nothing about the murder of his friend. However, he had a wife and three children to support and was struggling financially. He decided this was his chance for a better life and decided to 'confess' to the murder. He told 'Mr Scott' he shot Hall between the eyes with a .22 rifle, cut the body in half with a Stanley knife and a hacksaw, put the torso into one plastic bag and the legs into another, and then buried them at separate beaches. He was arrested later that day.

## Police failures to disclose relevant information

Lyttle's trial was frequently delayed because the police and the Crown refused to disclose vital evidence to his lawyers Christopher Stevenson and Elizabeth Hall. They had to obtain a court order forcing the police to hand over the transcripts and recordings of the 24 Mr Big scenarios. During this time, Lyttle spent spent two years in prison on remand before being bailed.
In February 2017, a senior office on the case claimed that all police notebooks had been disclosed. The following month another 600 pages of notebook entries were disclosed. More information followed, including 68 hard drives containing CCTV footage and phone data. The statement made to the police in March 2014 by an informant that Hall's murder was arranged by someone who had stolen drugs worth $200,000 from him was not given to Lyttle's lawyers until July 2017.
In October 2017, Justice Simon France delayed Lyttle's trial once again, ordering the police to carry out an audit of what had been dislosed and what hadn't been. Four officers, led by Detective Sergeant Grayson Joines, conducted the audit which took two months. As a result, hundreds more documents were released, including nearly all the notebooks of Detective Senior Sergeant Dave Kirby, one of the officers in charge of the investigation. However, the police redacted almost all of the content before handing them over.

## Mistrial declared

Lyttle's trial finally began in Palmerston North in October 2018, four years after he was arrested. At the end of the first week, the officer in charge of disclosure, former detective sergeant John Gleeson, was on the stand when he realised large parts of his own notebooks had not been handed over. Those notebooks included details of someone claiming to have been present when Brett Hall was killed, and that the murder was the result of a drug deal gone wrong. Justice France noted that the police had held on to this information for six years. He immediately stopped procedures and declared a mistrial.
The police continued to drip-feed even more disclosures. This included information from another informant who told police how Hall was killed and where he was buried - and that David Lyttle had nothing to do with it. Police admitted they ignored this information and never followed it up.

## Subsequent court process
### The trial

Lyttle's trial finally commenced in September 2019. His lawyers insisted he was induced into making a false confession by his reduced circumstances and the potential rewards that seemed to be on offer from Mr Big. Research in the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law has found that false confessions induced by the police are a leading cause of wrongful convictions. The jury members in David Lyttle's trial were no exception and convicted him of Hall's murder.

### The appeal

In November 2020, Lyttle took his case to the Court of Appeal. His lawyers argued that the undercover operation put “significant psychological pressure” on Lyttle to confess. They said the police exploited his difficult financial situation, and preyed on his isolation and vulnerability by offering him supportive colleagues. They pointed out that people struggle to believe someone would confess to a murder they did not commit and that juries are significantly more likely to convict those who have made them.

### Conviction overturned

In March 2021, the Court of Appeal quashed Lyttle's conviction. The Court agreed the Mr Big operation was "particularly manipulative" and that the so-called evidence from it should never have been heard by the jury, including Lyttle's confession.
The Court said that virtually nothing David Lyttle had told Scott (Mr Big) carried any credibility and that it was “striking that no forensic evidence was found that corroborated Mr Lyttle's admissions.” Two pathologists who testified said that cutting Hall's body in half would have left blood everywhere, and Lyttle would have got blood on him. But no trace of Hall's blood or DNA was found on Lyttle's clothes, or in his vehicle where he claimed he put the body for two days before he disposed of it.
Lyttle also told Mr Big it only took him 30 seconds to cut Hall's body in half. One of the pathologists estimated such a procedure would take at least 20-30 minutes. He said Lyttle's version of how he cut the body in half was “the figment of an uneducated and unsophisticated mind, nothing more.” In addition, a doctor told the court that Lyttle was recovering from shoulder surgery, and suffered ongoing pain. He was in poor health and physically unfit. Brett Hall weighed about 90kg. The doctor said David Lyttle couldn't lift more than 2kg without pain - which also undermined his story about what he did with the body.
The Court of Appeal concluded: “The inherent implausibility of Mr Lyttle's assertions, and their lack of congruence with the objective evidence, lead us to the conclusion his admissions were, in all likelihood, made in order to convince Scott (Mr Big) to allow him into the organisation so that he could reap the rewards he expected to receive.”

## Subsequent events
### Prosecutor's attempt to relitigate

Despite the Court of Appeal's clear-cut decision, crown prosecutor Michele Wilkinson-Smith said she intended to make Lyttle stand trial a third time. At a two-day hearing in November 2021, defence lawyers, Christopher Stevenson and Elizabeth Hall, pointed out there was no longer anything which implicated Lyttle. There was no body, no witnesses, and no forensics linking Lyttle to a crime. They said the alleged motive was preposterous, just “an elaborate theory without proof”. Elizabeth Hall pointed out that it made no sense that Lyttle would kill Brett Hall when he was just days away from being paid around $40,000 by Hall for building his house. Two weeks later, Justice Simon France dismissed all charges against Lyttle, and the case was finally concluded.

### Fight over costs

Due to the multiple problems caused by the police and prosecution, Lyttle's defence team applied to the High Court for $150,000 in costs against the prosecution. The court made an order of $75,000 against the police, rather than the Crown. The Court of Appeal upheld this decision ruling that the female prosecutor was not to blame for the repeated failures of the police to disclose information.
On behalf of the police, the Crown appealed against having to pay the $75,000, claiming they should only pay $15,000. However, the Court of Appeal endorsed the award of $75,000. It said the “litany of significant failures” by police in failing to disclose material to the defence was "egregious and an affront to the administration of justice".

## Responses to the outcome
### Police response

Even though Justice Simon France suggested the police had got the wrong man and pointed out that Hall's murder was more likely related to his criminal contacts related to drug dealing, the police still seem to think Lyttle was guilty. They issued a statement which said: “Police do not intend to relaunch an investigation into Mr Hall's disappearance.”

### Defence response

Christopher Stevenson said the detectives in Lyttle's case were victims of classic tunnel-vision – a cognitive bias that occurs when law enforcement becomes overly focused on a single suspect or theory, and ignores other evidence or suspects. Stevenson believes there should be consequences for the kind of egregious non-disclosure by the police which occurred in this case. He added that the police attitude meant the real killers are still out and about in the community.

### Brett Hall's mother

Brett's mother, Lee Hall, thinks that all her murdered son wanted was to have his house finished and lead a quiet life. The police convinced her that David Lyttle killed him, and she blames Lyttle's “cunning lawyers” for getting him off.

### David Lyttle's family

Three weeks after David was convicted, his youngest brother, Dion, committed suicide. His mother died a year later, so neither lived to see David's conviction overturned. David said the whole family fell apart after he went to prison and thinks they would still be alive if he had been found not guilty.
In 2022, David and his wife, Helen had been together for 35 years. She never doubted his innocence. When David was first accused of murder in 2011, their children were 6, 8, and 15. She said the children watched while the police searched their house, and their 8-year-old daughter even had to give them the password to her diary. She subsequently spent much of her childhood visiting her father in prison, and was traumatised by everything that happened. Officers twice visited their 15-year-old son to ask him questions, but never asked his mother for permission. Helen said: "We’ve seen our kids suffer, beyond what any child should ever have to go through.”