“Bureaucratic madness” is denying a dying man his legal rights to an appeal so he can clear his name of a murder conviction. By Andrew L. Urban.
On December 19, 2014, it’ll be 35 years since the day David Szach received the then mandatory life sentence for the murder of his lover, 44 year old Adelaide criminal lawyer Derrance Stevenson, which he vehemently denies.
Symposium on Miscarriages of Justice, Flinders University, Adelaide, South Australia, Nov. 7 & 8, 2014. Andrew L. Urban reports.
Pursuing convictions at the expense of catching the actual culprits of serious crimes, grave errors at trial by prosecutors and judges alike, shocking failures of forensic evidence and a failure to learn from historic cases (such as the wrongful Lindy Chamberlain conviction 30 years ago) are some of the issues that brought together Australia’s pre-eminent lawyers and legal academics in the field (and international guest Prof. Kent Roach from the University of Toronto), wanting to improve Australia’s inadequate criminal appeals system and reduce the number of innocents sent to jail for lengthy – unjust – sentences.
By Andrew L. Urban
It is only with full confidence in our police and the courts that a democracy remains healthy and strong; that’s obvious. In a democracy, neither of these institutions should behave like their counterparts in a police state, where citizens far from being protected by the State, are endangered by it. This is why even a single miscarriage of justice in a serious crime such as murder – with its heavy penalty on the accused – must be avoided at all costs, or urgently corrected if it occurs.
[ The Neill-Fraser case: In 2010, Sue Neill-Fraser was tried and convicted of the 2009 Australia Day murder of her partner Bob Chappell on board their yacht, Four Winds, anchored in Sandy Bay, Hobart. Chappell’s body has never been found, no murder weapon was produced at her trial, there were no eyewitnesses and there is no forensic evidence linking Neill-Fraser to the murder. ]
By Andrew L. Urban
Several serious legal errors were made at the 2010 trial of Sue Neill-Fraser, any one of which warrants the murder conviction being set aside, according to a legal expert in miscarriages of justice, Dr Bob Moles.
“The evidence given to the court by the forensic scientist was totally inadmissible. This error warrants the conviction being set aside.”
By Andrew L. Urban
By Andrew L. Urban
Tunnel vision by police investigators is one of the leading causes of wrongful convictions, according to a respected former Detective Inspector, when alternative theories to the crime are not considered and potential suspects are eliminated from the investigation. ‘Improper forensic science’ is another.
By Andrew L. Urban
Tasmanian MPs have been invited to attend a special Parliamentary briefing (August 19, 2014) by Adelaide based law expert Dr Bob Moles, canvassing the errors and flaws Dr Moles has identified in relation to the (arguably unsafe) murder conviction of Sue Neill Fraser, who is serving 23 years in Risdon prison for the 2009 murder of her partner Bob Chappell, whose body has never been found.
By Andrew L. Urban
August 20, 2014, marks 5 years to the day since the arrest of Hobart grandmother Sue Neill Fraser, for the murder of her partner Bob Chappell. She has been in custody ever since, without pre-trial bail allowed; she is now in Hobart’s Risdon Prison. This is nothing to celebrate, since it is not a case of bringing a murderer to justice, but a catastrophic failure of the Tasmanian legal system to produce a fair trial. A failure that is so blatant and shocking hardly anyone who hears of the case can believe it really happened the way it did.
The way it really happened has been denounced by lawyers as respected and informed about the system as Chester Porter QC, no stranger to miscarriages of justice (refer Lindy Chamberlain Royal Commission). Likewise Dr Bob Moles, an authority – and literally an author – on the subject (refer his pivotal role in South Australia introducing new laws to allow further appeals in serious cases where the verdict is in doubt).
By Andrew L. Urban
Sue Neill-Fraser will celebrate – if that’s the word – her 60th birthday on March 3, 2014 inside Hobart’s Risdon prison, shut away from her daughters and grandchildren, serving a 23 year sentence for the murder of her partner Bob Chappell, which she vehemently denies. The case is destined to be a cause célèbre because, in the absence of hard evidence, the prosecutor literally manufactured a murder scenario by speculation, unsupported by any physical evidence.
The DPP, Mr Tim Ellis, speculated that Neill-Fraser had murdered Chappell with a wrench (no wrench was produced in evidence yet it was mentioned 27 times, and there is no body to check for injuries). He went on to speculate that afterwards, she used a latex glove to ‘cover up’ what she had done. But the DNA that was found in the glove, on which Mr Ellis relied to convince the jury of this speculation, actually belonged to Tim Chappell, Bob’s son. It was well after the trial – well after the jury had delivered their verdict – that Mr Ellis admitted this mistake.
By Andrew L. Urban
Alan Turing (1912 – 1954), some readers will remember, is the man from Manchester who broke the German’s Enigma code and doing so, probably helped shorten WWII by two years or more, saving hundreds of thousands of lives.
Just seven years after the war ended, in 1952, Turing underwent chemical castration after pleading guilty to a homosexual act. No, I’m not making this up. It came about when he admitted to sexual relations with a man while reporting a burglary.