At the start of the day, problems with the court's evidence-recording system meant Crown and defence lawyers, police officers and more than 20 media representative were left to wait for about 50 minutes before the problem was fixed.
The hearing came to an abrupt end shortly before 5pm, when Justice Graham Panckhurst said he had been informed the server had gone down again. Yesterday was the first day of evidence in the trial of 36-year-old David Bain, who is being retried for the murders of his father, mother, two sisters and younger brother at their Every St home, in Andersons Bay, in 1994.
Three former police photographers gave evidence about recording the scene.
One witness in particular, Trevor Gardener, was repeatedly challenged by defence counsel Helen Cull QC about failing to provide an accurate record of the order in which the various crime scenes in the house were videoed and photographed.
Ms Cull pointed to numerous inconsistencies between photographs where objects had apparently been moved. Mr Gardener said his video camera had a mechanism to record such details but it had not been switched on because the officer in charge was noting the times.
Some brief segments of the video were played. The jurors watched intently as the camera moved through parts of the house.
The excerpt showed the body of Robin Bain lying on the lounge floor, at which point David Bain lowered his head and turned away, The New Zealand Herald reported.
The initial part of the video was dominated by the sound of a dog barking persistently and the noise of a helicopter hovering overheadThe trial David Bain, now 36, denies murdering his father Robin, mother Margaret, sisters Arawa and Laniet and younger brother Stephen at the family's Every St home on June 20, 1994.
He was released in 2007 from a 16-year non-parole term for the murders after the Privy Council overturned the convictions.
His retrial, in front of Justice Graham Panckhurst and a jury of seven women and five men, enters its third day of hearing today.
He is represented by Michael Reed QC, of Auckland, Helen Cull QC, and Paul Morten, both of Wellington, and Matthew Karam, son of long-time Bain campaigner Joe Karam.
Kieran Raftery, of Auckland, Cameron Mander, of Wellington, and Robin Bates, of Dunedin, are prosecuting the Crown case in the hearing expected to take about 12 weeks.
THE accuracy of police photographs and videos as a record of the 1994 Bain family murder scene was challenged strongly in the High Court at Christchurch yesterday when the first Crown witnesses were called in the David Bain retrial.
The first of the Crown's 150 witnesses, former police senior photographic technician Trevor Gardener, took a video and still photographs at the Bain house at 65 Every St, Andersons Bay, on the morning of June 20, 1994.
The video tapes he took were later edited by another police photographer, Mr Gardener told Mr Bates.
Under detailed cross-examination by Helen Cull QC, Mr Gardener agreed that although his video camera had a mechanism to record details of time and date, that mechanism had not been turned on, probably because he did not think it was vital, because the officer directing the photography was making notes.
He said he did not think the camera he used for still photographs could record the time and date pictures were taken.
Mr Gardener was one of three police photographers who took pictures at the Every St house on the day of the killings and during the following week or so.
He agreed with Ms Cull it was important to know the time and date of photographs and videos and the sequence in which scenes were filmed and photographed.
He said he had left the police force about a year after the Bain murders and no longer had his notebooks, which he believed had probably been lost in one of many moves.
If he had access to the negatives, he would be able to say if the pictures in the main book of photographs and on the Jedi system were in the correct sequence.
Without the negatives, he could not be sure the photographs on the Jedi system and in the main book of photographs were in the correct sequence, Mr Gardner said. But the photos would be a true and accurate description of what was present at the various crime scenes, he told Ms Cull.
He agreed the role of the photographer at a crime scene was important for an accurate record of the location of objects which could provide vital clues about what had happened.
Mr Gardener said he had been in and out of the house several times and would have taken "hundreds" of photographs, although none of them showed the time and date. He agreed it was important that the moving of items was accurately recorded.
He accepted that photographs in several of the rooms showed items had clearly been moved, but because the order in which the pictures were taken was not recorded, it was not possible to know which pictures were taken first.
To Mr Bates in re-examination, Mr Gardener said the rolls of film would have been numbered, so there was some order to them. Normally the negatives were cut into fives and fitted into negative sleeves.
"If I saw those, they would show what order the pictures were in because each negative has a number.
"I haven't been asked to do that," Mr Gardener said.
He told Mr Bates it was normal procedure for photographs to be taken at different times and after objects had been moved. Daniel Batchelor, who was also a police photographer in Dunedin in 1994, said he took a series of photographs of David Bain at the request of then Detective Greg Dunne. Bain had bruising and grazing to the right side of his forehead, a small area of skin missing from the left side of his right knee and some injuries to the backs of his hands.
Mr Batchelor said he also took postmortem pictures of all five victims at the direction of the pathologist.
To Ms Cull, the witness said he always took a note of every picture he took. He agreed he had done some editing of the video film but, to the best of his memory, that was limited to removing "fuzzy" bits from the beginning and some blurry bits from other places in the film.
Whoever edited heavily later on "it wasn't me", the witness said. Retired police officer Kenneth Chilton was a relieving photographer in 1994 and was required to take photographs at the Every St house some days after the killings. He took several films over two to three days and recorded the details in his notebook.
