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The fight to stop David Bain receiving compensation for his years spent in jail is heating up with the launch of a petition The online petition has been organised by supporters of Robin Bain Mr Bain s father who also plan to run advertisements in newspapers calling for people to sign up The petition calls on Justice Minister Simon Power to deny Mr Bain s application for compensation for the time he spent in prison after being convicted in 1995 of the murders of five members of his family in Dunedin By 7pm yesterday more than 750 people had signed the petition Mr Bain s legal team is preparing an application for compensa

ion after he was acquitted in June following a retrial of killing his parents Robin and Margaret and three siblings Arawa Laniet and Stephen at their Dunedin home in June 1994 He spent 13 years in prison Theoretically he could be eligible for about 1 3 million as Cabinet guidelines state about 100 000 a year is available for people wrongfully imprisoned Mr Bain who recently returned from a three month European holiday would have to prove on the balance of probabilities that he was innocent Petition organiser Vic Purkiss of Tairua said he and other Robin Bain supporters did not want to go down without a fight We don t want it compensation to just sneak through Mr Purkiss said the planned advertisements were carefully worded so as not to run foul of the law We re not going to say he s guilty or not guilty David Bain supporter Joe Karam said his legal team was right in the middle of its application for compensation which was time consuming He said Mr Bain was staying with him and his partner for a few weeks at their Waikato property He s been considering his options looking into studying classics and drama and thinking about different job opportunities nbsp