David Bain jury now has the opportunity to smack themselves hard on the forehead (and ordinary New Zealanders) as suppression order is lifted

Another suppression order on a claim David Bain was planning a sex crime in the years before his family was murdered, has also been lifted.

It has been revealed the jury in Bain's retrial was not allowed to hear evidence from a school friend, who says he was told in 1989 or 1990 that he had taken an interest in a female jogger and had worked out a way to commit a sexual offence against her, using his paper round to provide an alibi.

Another friend claims to have had a similar conversation.

The Court of Appeal today lifted suppression on another set of evidence - which suggested that Mr Bain planned, as a 17 or 18-year-old, to commit a sexual offence (presumably rape) against a young female jogger.

The High Court had allowed the evidence but it was knocked out on appeal and was not heard by the jury for the trial that finished in Christchurch last week.

It appeared Mr Bain had put his plan to writing in a notebook, Mr Bain's schoolboy friend Mark Buckley was going to say.

Another friend, Gareth Taylor, who the police also wanted to call as a witness, said he had a similar conversation with Mr Bain in 1989. Mr Bain left Dunedin's Bayfield High School after seventh form in 1990.

The Court of Appeal noted that the neither witness attributed the word "rape" to Mr Bain however the word is used by the Court for ease of reference.

The plan was to free up time for his offending by arriving at the usual time at houses where he would normally see witnesses (suggesting a normal delivery round) but delivering papers at other houses much earlier than usual.

Mr Buckley, who was not interviewed by the police until after the Privy Council decision in 2007, made a statement saying Mr Bain had told him about the plan when they were both 17 or 18 and probably in the 7th form at Bayfield High School.

He did not take the conversation seriously at the time but it concerned Mr Bain's sexual interest in a female jogger he saw early in the morning when he was doing his paper run. Mr Bain had talked about "getting away with it" by relying on his paper round and had referred to a notebook that he produced.

The High Court in Christchurch had a special preliminary hearing on the issue and Mr Buckley was cross-examined about a falling out between him and Mr Bain over a Class of 90 item in their school magazine.

Justice Panckhurst, allowing the evidence, said he certainly did not regard the dispute over the item as "destructive" of Mr Buckley's evidence.

"The relevance of Mr Buckley's evidence is that it indicates that about four or five years earlier the accused had in mind to use his paper round as the means for "getting away with" other criminal behaviour. So viewed the evidence is logically relevant," the Judge said in his ruling.

SHOOT: I think the lesson has got to be again how dangerous and damaging certainty can be. It is always healthy to have an open mind and to consider that one might be wrong. But one can nevertheless form a strong opinion based on common sense. That's different from a failure to think critically or even intelligently, as occured in this case, on a massive scale. Clearly a large number of human beings, even with so much technology and information at their disposal, are capable of impressive stupidity, and of easily infecting others through a sort of mob mentality. Scary.

clipped from tvnz.co.nz Five judges in the Supreme Court have now ruled the public can hear what the jury in the Bain trial was never allowed to, four words so controversial they were ruled inadmissible. The Crown says you can hear the words "I shot the prick" on David Bain's 111 phone call, but even Defence and Crown experts agree, there are no clear words there at all. It seems the Bain court case at the High Court in Christchurch was just the tip of the iceberg. Before the retrial got underway, there were many legal arguments with both the Defence and Crown arguing over what witnesses could give evidence and then what they were allowed to say. Now it can be revealed that there was more to the 111 call Bain made on the day of his family's murder. Fifty-seven seconds of the call was played, but the jury never heard it all, and the contents of it are still hotly disputed. When Bain's retrial was ordered, police relistened to the call on more sophisticated equipment and heard the words.