Trial by Ambush: The Prosecutions of David Bain

At 7.09 a.m. on 20 June 1994, David Bain called emergency services and reported finding his entire family of five dead. A year later he was convicted of having murdered them in cold blood, with determination and cunning. He was sentenced to life in prison.

However, after 12 years of public controversy, inquiries and appeals, on 10 May 2007 the Privy Council concluded that a substantial miscarriage of justice had occurred and accordingly quashed the convictions and ordered a retrial. For the first time the background to this historic decision is laid bare.

This compelling new book explores why the miscarriage happened, just how substantial it actually was and why it took 12 years to right this dreadful wrong.
When the evidence heard by both juries is on the table and assimilated in logical fashion as Joe Karam has done in this detailed narrative, the so-called controversy posed by the judge in his summing up – ‘Who did it? David Bain? Robin Bain?’ – will be put to rest once and for all.

Author Biography

Never far from the public eye since kicking the All Blacks to victory at Cardiff in 1972 as a 21-year-old, Joe Karam has been a public advocate for David Bain since 1996. Karam was named by the New Zealand Herald in 2007 and TV3 in 2009 as one of their New Zealanders of the Year, and his assertion that the first Bain trial was a travesty was vindicated by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council and David's subsequent acquittal.