After a month of deliberation the NSW Appeal court has quashed Kathleen Folbigg’s convictions for three counts of murder, one count of manslaughter, and one count of maliciously inflicting grievous bodily harm. She has spent 20 years in jail and has been released after a pardon in the wake of the second inquiry into her case. The news comes on the day the High Court dismissed the appeal against his murder conviction by Derek Bromley.
Folbigg’s case was the subject of UNSW Law & Justice Legal Hour panel discussion just a few weeks prior to the Appeal court’s decision.
“The appeal process being focused on error, if you pick the wrong error as an appeal lawyer, you often don’t get a second chance. Judge Andrew Haesler SC, District Court of NSW – UNSW Law & Justice Legal Hour
Next Sue Neill Fraser
If we had an Aussie CCRC, then yes, there would be a solution to Tasmania’s disgraceful failure to quash Sue’s conviction, where the powers-that-be hope they can get away with freeing Sue without doing the right thing of quashing Sue’s conviction.
But we don’t. So, without both (1) a CCRC and (2) influential forces such as the Australian Academy of Sciences swaying public opinion by stating facts, so that Folbigg was freed AND Folbigg’s conviction was quashed, I think Sue is stuck. Free but not cleared. I can’t see any Tasmanian political motivation to do the right thing for Sue. I hope I’m wrong.
The Tasmania Club is loath to do the right thing because doing so would expose its utter culpability.