Two police officers on trial on kidnapping charges are now waiting on a High Court jury verdict at Auckland after a two-and-a-half week trial.
Inspector Hurimoana Dennis and Vaughan Perry are jointly charged with unlawfully detaining a 17-year-old boy in a "mock arrest" in May 2015.
The teenager's family sent him to live in Australia the day after that arrest but a month later as the boy tried to re-enter the country at Auckland International Airport, it’s alleged that Dennis further detained the boy at the airport police station.
The teenager was then sent back to Australia despite there being no legal basis for that to happen.
Dennis became involved in the case after the teenager's family expressed concern about a sexual relationship between the boy and his then 15-year-old girlfriend in 2015.
Justice Wylie instructed the jury that to prove the kidnapping charges the Crown had to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the pair detained the boy deliberately, that it was unlawful, without consent or under duress and that the actions were unreasonable.
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