In Dark Places

THE CROWN vs TEINA ANTHONY PORA is without question, the worst miscarriage of justice in New Zealand history. A 17-year-old kid lost half his life to a wrongful conviction. 

This is the gripping true story of an innocent man, imprisoned for two decades for a crime he did not commit, and an ex-cop's heroic battle to win him his freedom. There are heroes; Tim McKinnel the ex-cop who won justice for Teina, and the biggest hero of all; the young man wrongly incarcerated for nearly 22 years, who emerged two decades later not angry or bitter, but with an extraordinary capacity for hope and forgiveness. 

And there are villains. 

The legal system that condemned an innocent man to prison; the deeply flawed criminal investigation and prosecution; the family members who accepted money to testify against one of their own; and the vicious serial sex offender who unquestionably raped Susan Burdett. Teina Pora and Tim McKinnel were two strangers from different worlds – the car thief from Otara and the ex-cop raised in middle-class Manawatu. Two people, who would have never met, forever bonded on a quest for true justice. Both men had life sentences – for Teina, a literal life sentence. For Tim, a diagnosis of cancer that left him profoundly conflicted about how much he could give to Teina's case. Then Tim uncovered the final piece of the jigsaw that led to Teina's eventual exoneration and the freedom both men had been waiting so long for.