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Joe Karam - Source: ONE News -
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Joe Karam's latest book on the Bain family murders is due for release next month, only weeks before David Bain will speak at an international justice conference in Australia.
Bain was in Dunedin this week visiting friends, one of at least six trips to his home town since being acquitted in a 2009 retrial over the 1994 murder of his family.
He spent 13 years in jail after being convicted in 1995 of shooting his parents, Robin and Margaret, and siblings Arawa, 19, Laniet, 18, and Stephen, 14, in their Dunedin home on June 20, 1994.
Karam's new book, Trial By Ambush: The Prosecutions of David Bain, explores the Privy Council's conclusion in 2007 that a substantial miscarriage of justice had happened and quashed the convictions, ordering the retrial.
"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," publisher HarperCollins says.
"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," its publicity blurb said.
Bain's uncle, Michael Bain, said yesterday that the family were unaware Karam had written another book on the case.
"Goodness gracious, when will this ever finish? We've heard nothing," he said.
Karam said he had helped Bain with his Perth conference speech, which organisers have promoted as the first time he would publicly discuss his experiences.
The pair are jointly billed as keynote speakers and will appear on March 10.
"David has come up with his speech and came to me to go over it with him," Karam said.
He declined to say what Bain would discuss, but said he planned to promote a review of New Zealand's system in handling miscarriages of justice.
"We have no satisfactory way of dealing with these matters," he said.
An independent review commission was set up in Britain after a review of its management of such cases in the wake of the Birmingham Six case, in which six people were acquitted in 1991 after 16 years in jail over the IRA bombing murders of 22 people in 1974.
Since Bain's release from jail, he had been to Dunedin "at least half a dozen times" to visit friends, Karam said.
He had visited his family's graves in the East Taieri Cemetery at least twice, but Karam was unsure whether he had visited them this week.
He said Bain still worked at an Auckland marine engineering company and lived in Kumeu.
"Generally speaking, life is just about as normal as possible for him," Karam said. "I see him most weeks and he keeps in touch."
A retired Canadian Supreme Court judge, Justice Ian Binnie, was appointed last November to assess Bain's claim for compensation for wrongful conviction and imprisonment.
"I suppose it's a wait and see," Karam said.
His book will go on sale on February 15 and is his third on the case.
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