Former Lake Alice Hospital nurse John Corkran is dying and will not face trial on charges of cruelty to children in the 1970s.

Corkran, 91, has stage four metastatic prostate cancer, according to a decision released on Wednesday by High Court Justice Andru Isac, who ordered a stay in the prosecution.

Corkran also has a second form of cancer which may have spread to lymph nodes in his groin and has been given months, rather than years, to live.

His cancer is not being treated and he has been referred by his doctor to a hospice for further management.

Corkran, of Marton, was a charge nurse at the former psychiatric hospital, which closed in the 1990s.

He had previously pleaded not guilty to eight charges related to seven patients laid under the 1970s version of the Crimes Act in the Whanganui District Court. He elected trial by jury.

Six named complainants were at Lake Alice’s child and adolescent unit between 1974 and 1977. Another charge related to an unidentified former patient.

The Crown had alleged that Corkran administered paraldehyde injections to children and young people as a form of punishment.

At that time paraldehyde was used as a sedative.

Justice Isac said the evidence before him indicated that its administration caused “very significant pain for hours” and made the limb it was injected into temporarily unusable.

A building at the former Lake Alice pyshciatric hospital. Photo / Mark Mitchell

A damning report on Lake Alice Hospital by Sir Rodney Gallen, released in 2006, said that paraldehyde was used by staff members on their own initiative as a form of punishment and without instruction from medical personnel.

“I should emphasise that we are not talking about adult or physically different patients here, but children,” Gallen said.

Justice Isac said Corkran had made a pre-trial application for a stay of proceedings.

“Mr Corkran has a major depressive order and is experiencing pain and fatigue consistent with stage four metastatic cancer,” the judge said.

“His mental and physical ability to contend with a trial are very significantly impaired.”

The judge said these difficulties were amplified by poor sight and hearing, and this situation would get worse as the cancer progresses.

He said a trial was expected to last between six and eight weeks. The Crown had identified 22 witnesses and the disclosure paperwork ran to 64,000 pages, including hospital records dating back 50 years.

Some of the complainants’ formal written statements and evidential video interviews ran to more than 100 pages.

Justice Isac said the nature of the charges and the evidence left him in little doubt that Corkran would need to give an account of himself in evidence to present a defence.

“Mr Corkran is a 91-year-old man dying of cancer who has serious physical and mental impairments that, in my view, rob him of the ability to give evidence before a jury.

“My assessment of the evidence satisfies me that he is incapable of providing a clear or consistent account of his case should he choose to enter the witness box,” the judge said.

“I do not consider a fair trial can take place if Mr Corkran is incapable of giving evidence in his own defence.”

The judge said he was also satisfied that Corkran was not capable of giving “real time” instruction to counsel and two psychiatrists considered it was unlikely that he could be an active defendant in the trial.

“I was left with the distinct impression that, at best, he would be left as a mere spectator in his own criminal trial.”

The judge said the delay of 47 years since the first official investigation into Lake Alice also affected Corkran’s ability to have a fair trial.

Thirty former employees who might have given evidence for the defence had died. The number of potential witnesses who were no longer available was over 50. The delay also affected Corkran’s ability to recall and relay events.

“For these reasons, I concluded that even with accommodations, Mr Corkran cannot receive a fair trial and the present case is one of those rare instances where it is necessary to stay the prosecution. Given there is no prospect of Mr Corkran’s condition improving the stay must be permanent.

“I have no doubt my decision will cause further distress to those who have endured grave injustices without voice or acknowledgement for many decades,” Justice Isac said. “But it would be wrong to allow such considerations to result in a further injustice to the defendant.”

Public concern about the mistreatment of patients at Lake Alice was first voiced in the 1970s and between 1976 and 2022 there were a number of investigations and reports into the psychiatric hospital.

These included investigations by the police, the Ombudsman, medical bodies, the United Nations Committee Against Torture and most recently, the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Historical Abuse in State Care.

A Royal Commission report late last year found the use of electric shocks and paraldehyde injections to punish children amounted to torture.

“It is a shameful episode in the history of care in New Zealand,” the then Internal Affairs Minister Jan Tinetti said last December.

“They were subject to terrible abuse and neglect.”

The former lead psychiatrist at the Lake Alice psychiatric hospital’s child and adolescent unit, Dr Selwyn Leeks, died in January 2022 without facing justice or action from a professional body despite allegations made against him.

Leeks was investigated three times by police but was deemed unfit to stand trial.

Ric Stevens spent many years working for the former New Zealand Press Association news agency, including as a political reporter at Parliament, before holding senior positions at various daily newspapers. He joined NZME’s Open Justice team in 2022 and is based in Hawke’s Bay. His writing in the crime and justice sphere is informed by four years of front-line experience as a probation officer.