In 1987, Red Fox Tavern publican Christopher Bush was shot dead during an armed robbery at Maramarua.  The crime was brutal. The investigation was extensive. What it was not, at least initially, was sufficient to prosecute anyone.

The original police investigation wound down in 1988 after a decision that there was not enough evidence to prosecute anyone for the murder or aggravated robbery. Police reviewed the case again in 1999 and 2000. Again, the conclusion was that there was insufficient evidence to charge anyone.  Then something changed.

Police reopened the case in 2016. In August 2017, nearly 30 years after the murder, James Wilson and Mark Hoggart were charged. A jury convicted them of murder and aggravated robbery in 2021. The Court of Appeal subsequently upheld those convictions.

Then, in July 2026, the Supreme Court quashed them.

Four of the five Supreme Court judges went considerably further than finding some procedural irregularity or technical error. The majority concluded that the verdicts were unreasonable and ordered judgments of acquittal.  Wilson and Hoggart are now reportedly seeking costs from the Crown.

The obvious question is how much.  The more important question is why.

This Was Not A Technical Acquittal

There is an important distinction between a conviction being overturned because something went wrong during the trial and a conviction being overturned because the evidence itself could not sustain the verdict.  The Red Fox decision falls, by majority, into the latter category.

The Crown case was circumstantial. There was no direct forensic or eyewitness evidence placing Wilson or Hoggart inside the Red Fox Tavern during the robbery. The prosecution relied on a collection of strands including their movements, their association with one another, a shotgun, descriptions of the offenders, their financial circumstances and their conduct after the robbery.

Some of those matters undoubtedly generated suspicion.  Suspicion, however, is not the criminal standard of proof.

The Supreme Court majority concluded that the evidence established that Wilson and Hoggart had the opportunity and means to commit the robbery, but not that they were actually present.

At its highest, the evidence placed them in the wider region. The Court found there was “no reliable evidence that they were at Maramarua” or at the scene of the murder and robbery.  That distinction is enormous.

Lots of people have the opportunity to commit crimes. Lots of people possess objects similar to those used in crimes. Lots of people lie to police, need money, associate with criminals or behave suspiciously.

The Crown had to prove that these two particular men were the two particular offenders inside the Red Fox Tavern.  The majority held that it did not.

Scraps Of Evidence Do Not Become A Rope

One passage in the Supreme Court's judgment deserves particular attention.  In explaining the appellate court's responsibility when reviewing a criminal conviction, the majority warned that a court cannot simply retreat behind the proposition that weighing evidence is the jury's job.

Where someone's liberty is at stake, an appellate court must determine whether the verdict actually has a sufficient evidential foundation.  The Court put the point memorably: an appellate court cannot simply “stitch together scraps of evidence and declare them a rope.”

That metaphor describes one of the great dangers of circumstantial prosecutions.  Each weak fact begins to acquire strength from its neighbours.  A man had a gun.  He needed money.  He knew another man.  They were somewhere in the region.

Someone remembered a vehicle.  Someone remembered a conversation.  Someone behaved suspiciously afterwards.

Viewed individually, none proves presence at a murder scene. Viewed together, however, the accumulation can create a psychological impression of guilt.

The law permits circumstantial cases for good reason. Many crimes could never be prosecuted otherwise.  But multiplication is not magic. Ten weak pieces of evidence do not necessarily become one strong piece of evidence merely because they are presented together.

That is substantially what the Supreme Court majority concluded here.

Twice, Police Had Already Reached The Same Basic Problem

This is where the latest costs application becomes particularly uncomfortable.  The insufficiency of the evidence was not discovered for the first time in 2026.

Police investigated the case extensively after the murder and decided in 1988 that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute anyone. They reviewed the evidence again in 1999 and 2000 and reached the same conclusion.  Operation Lion reopened the investigation in 2016.

The Supreme Court judgment records that the officer responsible for the reinvestigation said that the eventual decision to charge followed further investigation and the obtaining of some new evidence. However, he did not specify what that evidence was or how it altered the charging decision.

Justice Glazebrook considered that some of the apparent new material may have involved witnesses who emerged following publicity about the case. Critically, several proposed witnesses apparently associated with this later material did not ultimately give evidence at trial.

The Crown also argued that an important change was a legal assessment that evidence of an earlier aggravated robbery committed by Wilson could be admitted as propensity evidence.  Justice Glazebrook accepted that the reasons advanced for the eventual decision to prosecute were “not necessarily convincing”, but nevertheless concluded that there was sufficient evidence to charge Wilson and Hoggart. 

She also considered that a reasonable jury could have convicted on the admissible evidence, although she would ultimately have quashed the convictions because of evidential errors and ordered a retrial.  That qualification stands out.

The Supreme Court did not hold that police acted unlawfully by charging Wilson and Hoggart. It did not hold that prosecutors acted dishonestly or negligently. Nor does an unreasonable verdict automatically mean that the prosecution itself was unreasonable.

But four judges ultimately concluded that the Crown's evidence was incapable of proving guilt beyond reasonable doubt.

Against the history of two earlier decisions that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute, asking what changed is hardly unreasonable.  It is unavoidable.

Costs Are Not Just A Consolation Prize

An acquitted defendant is not automatically entitled to have the Crown pay every dollar spent defending the prosecution.  The Costs in Criminal Cases Act 1967 provides separate mechanisms relating to successful defendants and appeals.

For appeals, s 8 gives the court determining the appeal a broad power to make such order as to costs as it thinks fit. Success alone does not create an entitlement to costs.

Section 5, which deals with costs for successful defendants, is particularly revealing about the matters Parliament regards as relevant when the criminal justice system has prosecuted somebody unsuccessfully.  Among other things, a court may consider:

• whether the prosecution acted in good faith;

• whether sufficient evidence existed when proceedings began;

• whether prosecutors properly investigated material suggesting the defendant might not be guilty;

• whether the investigation was generally conducted reasonably and properly; and

• the overall evidential circumstances surrounding the acquittal.

The precise statutory basis and scope of Wilson and Hoggart's current costs applications will determine which provisions directly apply.  But the questions identified by Parliament are difficult to miss.

Did the prosecution have sufficient evidence?  Was exculpatory material properly investigated?  Was the investigation reasonable?

And, perhaps most importantly in this extraordinary case, what happened between the two earlier determinations that there was insufficient evidence and the decision, decades later, to prosecute?

At What Point Was Somebody Supposed To Notice?

Consider the institutional journey:

1. Police investigated and declined to prosecute.

2. Police reviewed the case and again declined to prosecute.

3. The case was reopened.

4. Wilson and Hoggart were charged.

5. The prosecution proceeded.

6. A High Court jury convicted them.

7. The Court of Appeal upheld those convictions.

Finally, four judges of the Supreme Court concluded that the Crown had failed to establish either of the two things necessary to sustain them.  It had not proved Wilson and Hoggart were at the crime scene beyond reasonable doubt.  It had also failed to exclude the reasonable possibility that another suspect, Lester Hamilton, was one of the offenders.

There is an understandable institutional temptation to treat the Supreme Court decision as evidence that the system ultimately worked.

There was an appeal. The convictions were examined. The highest court intervened.  But that is a remarkably forgiving definition of success.

An appellate court correcting a wrongful conviction is undoubtedly better than leaving it untouched. It does not follow that everything preceding the correction should escape scrutiny.  The purpose of an appeal system is to catch errors.  Its existence does not make those errors harmless.

Costs And Compensation Are Different Questions

There is another distinction likely to become important as public discussion of the case continues:  Costs are not the same thing as compensation for wrongful imprisonment.

Wilson and Hoggart have judgments of acquittal. That means the criminal proceedings ended in their favour.  It does not automatically mean the Government must compensate them for imprisonment.

New Zealand does not provide a legal right to compensation simply because a conviction has been quashed. Compensation is an ex gratia payment made at the Government's discretion under Cabinet guidelines.

An applicant ordinarily has to establish innocence on the balance of probabilities, as well as qualifying losses and that compensation would be in the interests of justice.  That creates a distinction which can seem peculiar outside the law.

A person may be entitled to an acquittal because the Crown cannot prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt while still being unable to prove, on the balance of probabilities, that they are innocent.

The two standards answer different questions.  The criminal prosecution asks whether the state can prove guilt.  The compensation process effectively asks the acquitted person to prove innocence.

Wilson and Hoggart's costs applications therefore should not be confused with a declaration that either man has proved factual innocence, nor with a claim for compensation for wrongful conviction.

Sympathy Is Irrelevant

Wilson in particular is unlikely to become an attractive poster child for criminal justice reform.  That should not matter.  A justice system whose safeguards operate only for sympathetic defendants does not possess safeguards at all. It possesses discretion dressed as principle.

The requirement that the Crown prove its case beyond reasonable doubt applies to saints, career criminals, gang members, unpleasant people and people whom police 'sincerely believe' to be dangerous.  Especially those people.  The more somebody's character encourages us to assume guilt, the more important the evidential standard becomes.

The question in the Red Fox prosecution was never whether Wilson or Hoggart were good men.  It was whether they murdered Christopher Bush.

Four Supreme Court judges concluded that the evidence could not rationally establish that they did beyond reasonable doubt.  That conclusion deserves examination without qualification based on whether we happen to like the defendants.

The Costs Decision Should Tell Us More Than A Number

The courts need not find misconduct before awarding costs, and an award of costs should not itself be reported as proof that police or Crown prosecutors behaved improperly.  Equally, whatever happens to the costs application should not end the conversation.

Christopher Bush was murdered in 1987.  His family deserved a competent investigation and a reliable prosecution of the people responsible.  Wilson and Hoggart were entitled not to be convicted unless the Crown could prove that they were those people.

Those interests are not opposed.  They are the same interest.  A criminal justice system serves victims badly when it convicts the wrong person just as surely as it serves defendants badly. Every misplaced prosecution risks leaving the actual offender unidentified while creating the illusion that the case has been solved.

The Red Fox case began with police deciding there was insufficient evidence to prosecute.  Nearly three decades later that decision changed.  Two men were convicted.  The Court of Appeal affirmed those convictions.

Then the Supreme Court majority concluded that the evidence could not establish their presence at the crime beyond reasonable doubt and entered acquittals.  Now comes the bill.

The important question is not merely whether the Crown should pay it.  It is whether the process of deciding who pays will finally require somebody to explain how the prosecution got that far in the first place.

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References And Further Reading

• Wilson v R [2026] NZSC 88, Supreme Court of New Zealand, 7 July 2026.

• Hoggart v R and W v R, Supreme Court Media Release [2026] NZSC 88.

• Costs in Criminal Cases Act 1967, ss 5 and 8.

• Ministry of Justice, Compensation for Wrongful Conviction and Detention.

• RNZ, “Red Fox Tavern murder pair whose convictions were quashed seek costs from Crown”.

• RNZ, reporting on the Supreme Court's July 2026 decision quashing the Red Fox Tavern convictions.

Note: High Court suppression orders concerning certain witnesses and connected persons remain in force. The Justice Times has therefore avoided identifying persons unnecessary to this analysis.