Colin Nicholson, Lawyer and jurist, Died at 79

  Dead Famous

Colin Nicholson died on Saturday, October 31,2015, in Hospice North Shore.

Colin completed his Bachelor of Laws in 1960.

He passed the bar as a barrister and solicitor of the Supreme Court of NZ the same year.

Colin was appointed to the Queen’s Counsel in 1979, and from the year 1989 to 1990 he was vice-president of the NZ Law Society.

In 1995 Colin was appointed a district court judge, a youth court judge a year later, and later a judge of the High Court of NZ in 1998, where he stayed until 2009.

Colin was the first judge to prosecute Cook Islanders for DVD piracy in 2011, he recommended an act of parliament be amended after a drafting error nearly saw a cultivation of cannabis charge dismissed in the year 2009, and in the year 2010 conducted the longest-running criminal case in Cook Islands history, called Operation Slush.

Colin also presided over former CICC minister Tea O Tangaroa Tekeu Uea’s trial for indecently assaulting three teenage girls.

At the trial Nicholson told the jury it was never an easy matter to judge a fellow human being and although it was difficult not to act in an emotional way, ”you are acting as judges and a judge should never allow feelings of prejudice or sympathy to influence his or her decision.“

He also served time as the chairman of the Cook Islands Media Council.

Colin passed away at age 79 in October 2015.