Court scathing about ‘failure’ of justice after lying key witness in swimming pool murder | Crime

The court in Leeuwarden is scathing about the role that justice played in the conclusion of the crown witness agreement. It leads to the unique decision to declare the deal illegal.

The statement was prematurely posted online on Thursday, April 25, and came during research for the podcast The Swimming Pool Murder owned by NU.nl. The earlier release of the ruling led to the court’s justices being challenged. If the request for recusal is granted, the trial will have to be repeated and a new ruling will be issued.

It does not make the content of this statement any less relevant. Especially considering the fact that the court concludes that the Public Prosecution Service (OM) in no way appears to understand the seriousness of the numerous mistakes that have been made.

The mistakes in this case at a glance: failing to properly investigate statements made by the key witness, deleting a recording of an interrogation, not sharing all information with an investigating judge and violating the privacy of the suspects through an investigation to start based on lies. According to the court, it has not appeared “that efforts have been made to prevent the recurrence of similar procedural errors (errors, ed.).”

That attitude is worrying. Especially because both the Public Prosecution Service and outgoing Minister of Justice and Security Dilan Yesilgöz would like to see the current crown witness scheme expanded.

In March last year, Yesilgöz promised improvements after the mistakes surrounding the protection of people involved around the key witness in the Marengo trial. The Dutch Safety Board concluded that the government made serious shortcomings in the protection of Peter R. de Vries, Derk Wiersum and Reduan, the brother of key witness Nabil B.

The court calls the course of events in the trial of the swimming pool murder “undermining” for the use of key witnesses.

The swimming pool murder revolves around the death of Jan Elzinga. He was shot dead in front of the swimming pool in Marum on July 10, 2012 at the age of forty. The shooter and the client, Willem P., were quickly arrested and irrevocably sentenced to prison terms of almost twenty years.

Four years later, P. reported to the judiciary with the message that he wanted to become a key witness. After years of silence, he admitted to playing a role in Jan’s murder. But not as a client; he was ‘just’ an intermediary. It was Jan’s in-laws who were behind the order for the murder.

P. claimed that he could prove this. In his first statement in 2017, which was deleted by the judiciary for unknown reasons, he said he was in contact with one of the members of Jan’s in-laws. Marcel H., Jan’s brother-in-law, would admit to P. in text messages that he was involved in the murder.

At least that’s how P. wanted it to come across, because the text messages are fake. P. had put them together himself and hoped to make a deal with the law in this way. And with success.

During the police investigation into text messages, it was only examined whether the text messages were actually on P.’s phone and whether the number with which they were sent could be linked to Marcel. The latter was not the case, by the way.

It is not that there were no doubts within the police and judiciary about the reliability of the messages, but simply nothing was done with them. This meant that “the lies that could be discovered in a relatively simple manner” – in the words of the court – remained in existence for five years. In exchange for his statements, P. would be released six years earlier.

It is hard to imagine, “especially since this concerns a key witness who has nothing to lose in his own criminal case, but only something to gain by obtaining a pardon,” the court noted in surprise. “In such a case, the police and the judiciary have a duty to be extra critical and to make every effort to verify all possible aspects of the information provided by the witness. They have failed in this disappointingly.”

The court also very much blames the judiciary for the fact that a judge was incompletely informed. In 2020, this examining magistrate tested whether the deal met all legal requirements at that time and ruled on the reliability of key witness P., who even then continued to lie.

But instead of sharing their internal doubts, the justice department argued that the key witness was reliable, precisely because of the text messages. The examining magistrate agreed with this.

“In this case, the examining magistrate was prevented from exercising this crucial review option due to culpable actions by the police and the judiciary,” the court is clear.

As a result, the statements were used as the basis for a new investigation into Jan’s death. “Which has led to the use of far-reaching investigative powers, intruding on the freedom and privacy of suspects.”

However, all this does not lead to the court’s decision that the Public Prosecution Service has forfeited the right to prosecute. This is because there are no indications that the judiciary and police made all these mistakes deliberately. There would also still have been a fair trial overall.

The key witness’s lies came to light in 2022, after lawyers in the case requested all telephone data. The lawyers immediately noticed that there were things wrong with the text messages. In October 2023, P. was sentenced to a year and a half in prison for perjury.

After the key witness admitted his lies in 2022, the court believes there has been sufficient time to conduct additional investigation and for the defense to ask questions. Apart from the key witness, there is more evidence against the four suspects in this case.

NU.nl already reported that if the verdict had gone ahead on April 25, all suspects would have been convicted. Johan L. for supplying the murder weapon and Jan’s partner Monique H., her brother Marcel H. and their mother Coby van der L. for ordering the murder. However, they do receive a significant reduction in their sentences in the published verdict.

The statements made by the key witness between October 2017 and February 2022 are also excluded from the evidence. The court hopes that this will prevent the police and the judiciary from “such extremely careless, negligent and unlawful actions and similar mistakes in the future”.

Especially when it comes to the use of a key witness, “who is after all not a sweetheart”, it is even more important that attention is paid to his reliability, according to the court. “It is not without reason that the arrangement surrounding key witnesses is surrounded by additional and strict safeguards.”

The court sees the importance of key witnesses, but “the possibility of this use is undermined if it is not handled with great restraint and the Public Prosecution Service does not at least conduct extensive research into the reliability of such witnesses.”