Andrew L. Urban.
Neither the Major Crime Investigation Unit, nor the Attorney General, nor the State’s Director of Public Prosecution want anything to do with it. ‘IT’ is the legal scandal around Dr Colin Manock’s reign as the unqualified forensic pathologist allowed to give evidence in hundreds of trials including that of Derek Bromley. The scandal has been festering on the body of the South Australian justice system for decades – but now it is about to sully the High Court of Australia.
The central issue is the disclosure to the High Court required of the DPP that the evidence given by Dr Manock at Bromley’s trial is inadmissible, as he was not qualified to perform the autopsy and was not qualified to give evidence about it in any criminal trial. Such disclosure would – or should –result in the Court instantly upholding the appeal, quashing the 38 year old murder conviction and setting Bromley free. (Seeking leave hearing is scheduled for September 16, 2022.)
On August 5, 2022, the head of Major Crime in South Australia, Detective Superintendent Des Bray, wrote to Dr Bob Moles to say he didn’t want anything to do with what Moles described in his letter to him as an “abuse of due process and the rule of law”. Moles had previously “written to various Attorneys-General who I believe have both the duty and power to act, but without success.”
The headlines below (and the stories linked to them) trace the sorry history of South Australia’s refusal to come to terms with the greatest forensic scandal in this country’s history, just as it applies to the Bromley case.
Fresh evidence at appeal cannot bolster Crown case
Inadmissible forensic evidence still haunting Bromley conviction 38 years later
South Australian MP accuses Government of ‘wilful blindness’ to the law – ‘a form of corruption’
Calling out the Acting Attorney-General
Bromley conviction based on false and misleading evidence & the State knew it
Derek Bromley & the devil’s presence
More pressure to mitigate Manock harm
South Australia’s appeal court flouts the law
I will get back to you Andrew, we must all be over whelmed and exhausted; me 2 steps forward one step back. It is hard enough just to survive, and thats the way they like it.