David Bain

The Bain family murders were the deaths by gunshot of Robin and Margaret Bain and three of their four children – Arawa, Laniet and Stephen – in Dunedin, New Zealand, on 20 June 1994. The only suspects were David Cullen Bain, the oldest son and only survivor, and Robin Bain, the father. David Bain, aged 22, was charged with five counts of murder. In May 1995 he was convicted on each of the five counts and sentenced to mandatory life in prison with a minimum non-parole period of 16 years.

Bain's case was taken up by businessman and former All Black Joe Karam. In 2007, Bain's legal team, guided by Karam, successfully appealed to the Privy Council, which declared there had been a 'substantial miscarriage of justice'. He was released on bail in May 2007. The retrial in June 2009 ended with his acquittal on all charges.

Speculation about the case continued long after Bain was acquitted, including whether or not he should receive compensation for the years he spent in prison. Canadian jurist Ian Binnie was appointed in November 2011 to review the circumstances and advise the government on whether compensation should be paid. Binnie concluded that the Dunedin police made 'egregious errors' and that the 'extraordinary circumstances' in the case justified the payment of compensation. This report was rejected by the Minister of Justice, on advice from High Court Judge Robert Fisher.

In March 2015, the government appointed Ian Callinan, a retired justice of the High Court of Australia, to conduct a second review of Bain's compensation claim. Callinan's report, in which he concluded that Bain was not innocent on the balance of probabilities, was delivered to the Minister of Justice on 26 January 2016. The Minister announced that no compensation would be paid, but that Bain would be given an ex gratia payment of $925,000 if he agreed to stop all further legal action.

Robin Irving Bain and Margaret Arawa Cullen were married in 1969 in Dunedin, New Zealand. They had four children: David (born 1972), Arawa (1974), Laniet (1976) and Stephen (1980). In 1974, they moved to Papua New Guinea, where Robin worked as a missionary teacher. The family returned to New Zealand in 1988. Three years after his return, Robin became the principal of Taieri Beach School, a two-teacher school about 50 kilometres down the coast from Dunedin.

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