Andrew L. Urban.
With the example of three current cases on foot across Australia, the legal system is shown to be dangerously flawed. In each of the three examples, the accused was convicted by a jury – without durable evidence. This is astonishing in law and catastrophic for democracy. And it raises the ever-present question of accountability for the legal profession. Continue reading
Andrew L. Urban.
Do NOT be cool, calm, stoic and collected. From the moment you are interviewed by police, innocents even suspected of a serious crime should be indignant and emotional, otherwise you may not be believed. And if you are charged and facing trial, be sure to emote when declaring your innocence. That’s the lesson of lived experience.
Andrew L. Urban.
The following note was sent to me on Saturday, March 2, 2019, by a man whose life has been damaged in much the same way as have the lives of Justice Kavanaugh and Cardinal Pell, by allegations of sexual abuse without supporting evidence.
Andrew L. Urban.
At around 6 minutes from the start of the final episode of Undercurrent (7 Network, Wednesday, March 6, 2019), a nervy Meaghan Vass arrives for a crucial tell-all interview with Colin McLaren in a Hobart hotel room, cameras rolling. She almost immediately turns round and tells McLaren she’s going out to her ‘family’ for 10 minutes “just so I can get a quick thing to calm me down.” In a nutshell, this moment captures the essential drama at the heart of the documentary series investigating the 2009 Bob Chappell murder – of which Sue Neill-Fraser has been convicted: getting a terrified Vass to tell the whole truth.
Andrew L. Urban
Death on the Derwent – by Robin Bowles
Scribe Publications, February 19, 2019, 384 pp, $32.99
ISBN:9781925713176
Robin Bowles has been writing crime books for 20 years. She lived and worked in Tasmania from 1977 to 1987; her parents lived there and children & grandchildren still live there. Her connection to the place is deep. And the man for whose 2009 Australia Day murder Sue Neill-Fraser was jailed for 23 years, Bob Chappell, once saved Robin’s widowed mother’s life after a bad fall at her home. So her connection to this story about the case is also deep.
Andrew L. Urban.
In the view of some, it seems the ‘defence’ perspective of the murder conviction of Sue Neill-Fraser is a ‘tainted view’. Tainted with the facts, perhaps? One reader has articulated this in the comments thread under my recent article, Who killed Bob Chappell? The cops don’t know but we do…
Andrew L. Urban.
This past week saw nearly the end (finally) of the seeking leave to appeal process for Hobart’s Sue Neill-Fraser; whether Justice Brett grants her leave to appeal pivots on how the court regards the DNA evidence found at the crime scene. The prosecution has always downplayed it as ‘a red herring’ and repeatedly proposed to the jury and the High Court that it was not a direct deposit but probably transferred on a policeman’s boot. Only if BigFoot is a Tasmanian cop …
In our February 12, 2019 report (Abuse of Power – Tasmania style), we exposed a tendency by Tasmania’s legal system to frustrate the process in which Sue Neill-Fraser is seeking leave to appeal her murder conviction. And how frustrating were the delays that have stretched the process over three years.
Andrew L. Urban’s ‘troubling expose’ (as Margaret Cunneen SC put it) Murder by the Prosecution is now available digitally from the Kindle store, at A$8.55.
Writing in The Spectator Australia (Sept. 22, 2018), Cunneen says: ‘Murder by the Prosecution is engrossing and troubling. Back and forth, the reader is propelled, much as a jury is during the ‘test match’ that a murder trial resembles.
The later stand-alone chapters on other murder trials which have been found to have been unjust stand as sentinels fortifying Urban’s impassioned premise that Susan Neill-Fraser is serving a 23 year sentence for a murder she did not commit. The ethical prosecutor works not for a particular verdict, but for justice to be done. This must be the hope for Susan Neill-Fraser.”
Andrew L. Urban.
With great power comes great responsibility, no? No. Not in Tasmania, it seems, where through the example of the Sue Neill-Fraser case, we see the State’s legal apparatus shown up to be anything but responsible. Police abuse their powers, the DPP dismisses DNA evidence and the leaders of the Government ignore vital new information.