Killer’s family awarded cash payout

The family of a man convicted of murder after a controversial police investigation have been awarded some money from a payout he won due to police errors dragging his case out for five years.

David Owen Lyttle is serving life imprisonment for the murder of Brett Hall.

Hall’s body has never been found after he vanished from his rural Whanganui property in May 2011.

Lyttle was building Hall’s house and police suspected he was the murderer after allegedly spending building material money on day-to-day expenses.

He won a $75,000 payout from police in March after they illegally failed to properly disclose evidence, which resulted in his trial not happening until 51⁄

2 years after his arrest.

Two possible trial dates were vacated due to police inaction, while his first trial in 2018 was called off in the second week because police only disclosed key information then.

When awarding the payout Justice Jill Mallon ordered that almost all of it should be used to pay Lyttle’s legal aid bill. But she gave Lyttle’s family leave to apply for some money to cover costs created by the delay.

In a recently released decision, his family were awarded $3042 – well below the $65,112 they claimed for.

They tried to claim for visiting Lyttle in jail while he was on remand for two years, his travel to report as part of his bail, travel to Wellington for pre-trial hearings, travel to his 2018 trial in Palmerston North, lost income, and travel to and meals during last year’s trial in Wellington. The judge said everything aside from lost income, travel to Wellington and meals in the city had nothing to do with the trial being moved.

The lost income came about because Lyttle had been working 40 hours a week before the 2018 trial and turned away work for the nine weeks it was supposed to run.

He was then able to get work after the aborted trial.

But the delay just meant his conviction and life sentence were delayed, the judge said. ‘‘Had that delay not occurred, Mr Lyttle would not have been able to work in any event.’’

Police had made an ex gratia payment for travel to the Wellington trial and the Lyttle family would have needed to eat no matter where the trial was heard. But the judge agreed a payment should be made.