I wonder if you can help me?

I have a rich:picklist that won't render the right hand side on load, and will only render the values if it fails validation and I add a Facesmessage and fail validation('Validation.instance().fail();')

The jsf code is as follows:

<rich:pickList onclick="javascript: documentWarningChecker();"
    id="documentshuttle" listsHeight="200" sourceListWidth="400"
    fastMoveControlsVisible="false" targetListWidth="400"
    value="#{newsEntryAction.news.downloads}">
    <s:selectItems value="#{newsEntryAction.liveDownloads}"
    var="doc" label="#{doc.displayName} - #{doc.fileSize}" />
    <s:convertEntity />
</rich:pickList>

Both the selectItems and the value are using the same entity type, that overrides hashcode and equals.
The newsEntryAction is a stateful bean:

@Stateful
@Name("newsEntryAction")
@Restrict("#{identity.loggedIn}")
@Scope(ScopeType.CONVERSATION)
public class NewsEntryAction implements NewsEntryI {...}

What can the problem be?

thanks in advance,

Dave