Survivors Guide to Prison – a movie as a movement

Posted on February 19, 2018 by andrew

By Andrew L. Urban.

American filmmaker Matthew Cooke says of his 2018 film Survivors Guide to Prison: “This is not just a film, but also a movement. We hope to swing the pendulum on legislation. We want prison reform, specifically prosecutorial reform and accountability on all levels of law enforcement, bail reform, mandatory sentencing, and solitary confinement and restorative justice programs.”

Americans are the most imprisoned citizens in the world, according to the film, which reports that there are over 14 million arrested each year, “with total discretion given to police officers”. There are over 5,000 prisons in the US – more than colleges and universities.

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The costs of injustice

Posted on February 18, 2018 by andrew

By Andrew L. Urban

She is wheeled into the clinical surrounds of the Supreme Court in Hobart in a wheelchair and positioned in front of the empty jury benches, facing the witness box. Sue Neill-Fraser’s demeanour is low key, her little smile vague. It’s October 2017 and she’s been in prison since her arrest more than eight years earlier, in August 2009, when she was a healthy 55 year old. Two prison officers escort her.

The public gallery is full of her supporters and the media. In front of them are the two costly barristers and their two expensive associates, the two instructing solicitors – and scattered around the court, the wage-earning court staff. Sitting in his elevated isolation is Judge Michael Brett, presiding over Neill-Fraser’s appeal. Well, not her actual appeal, her request for leave to appeal.

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Gordon Wood – convicted of murder in 2008, acquitted in 2012, suing the State in 2017/18

Posted on February 17, 2018 by andrew

By Andrew L. Urban.

Gordon Wood is suing the State of NSW and the DPP for malicious prosecution. The trial was held in March 2017, before Justice Elizabeth Fullerton. Judgement is still awaited at time of writing (February 17, 2018)

Background :
Gordon Wood was convicted in 2008 of the murder of Caroline Byrne, whose body was found early morning on June 8, 1995, on the rocks at The Gap, a notorious suicide spot on Sydney’s Eastern coast. In 2012 the Court of Criminal Appeal set aside his conviction and entered a verdict of acquittal. The Chief Justice made it clear in his judgement that even the most basic elements of the case had failed to be established. “I am not persuaded that Wood was at The Gap at the relevant time.” He concluded that the verdict of the jury could not be supported having regard to the evidence.

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Lloyd Rayney & how tunnel vision blinds police

Posted on January 31, 2018 by andrew

By Andrew L. Urban

The WA police defamed an innocent man by publicly naming him soon after starting their investigation as the only suspect in his wife’s murder. He was eventually (three years later) charged, tried and acquitted. Twice. He has now sued the State – and won. The killer is still at large. That’s what comes from pursuing a conviction instead of searching for the truth.

It is rare that a defamation case shines so strongly and tellingly on the infamous police investigation failures generated by what is known as ‘tunnel vision’. The clarity of the examination of tunnel vision in this case is the valuable by-product of the successful defamation action brought by Lloyd Rayney against the WA Government, which concluded in December 2017 with damages of over $2.6 million awarded to Rayney, who had been arrested for the murder of his wife, Corryn.

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Bare faced lawyers: confessions of the legal profession

Posted on January 13, 2018 by andrew

Innocent people – at least 71 known*, the total unknowable – have been held or are stuck in Australian jails on lengthy sentences for murders or rapes they did not commit. This comes as no surprise to those who, like multi award winning journalist and legal historian Evan Whitton, consider the adversarial system Australia has imported from Britain a disaster for justice, nothing more than a permit for lawyers to operate as a cartel, in which truth is not the ultimate objective. Winning is.

Here, in a selection of extracts from Whitton’s infinitely researched and damning work, Our Corrupt Legal System (Book Pal, 2009), is the evidence – often in their own words: lawyers are trained liars.

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Securing murder convictions without evidence

Posted on November 20, 2017 by andrew

By Andrew L. Urban.

As Gordon Wood, acquitted in 2014 of murdering his girlfriend Caroline Byrne in 1995, awaits the decision (expected by end of 2017) on his recently concluded malicious prosecution case against the State of NSW, at least two other murder convictions deserve scrutiny.

Many people find it difficult to believe that our criminal justice system is capable of repeated and gross errors. But the example of just three cases show how the prosecution (protected by professional immunity) sought and secured a conviction by applying three ‘imperatives’ in each case.

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The wrong arm of the law

Posted on November 20, 2017 by andrew

By Andrew L. Urban

A man convicted of murder is still in jail after 33 years, 11 years after he was eligible for parole, because he will not relent on his claim of innocence. He has always maintained that he was wrongly convicted so he is not in a position to apologise (show remorse) or state that he won’t do it again. The prison authorities take the view that he is in denial, because he has been convicted.

The key evidence against him is an eyewitness account which was given by a person suffering psychosis and hallucinations at the time, and forensic evidence that has been totally discredited. His previous appeals failed and he is now appealing again, under new legislation.

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Sue Neill-Fraser’s final appeal – Part 1

Posted on November 4, 2017 by andrew

By Andrew L. Urban.

Shortly after 10 am on Monday October 30, 2017, a slight young woman with blonde hair up in a bun and breathing nervously, took the witness stand in the packed Court 1 of Hobart’s Supreme Court. She was the first and the most dramatic witness to give evidence in three days of hearings before Justice Michael Brett, Tasmania’s then newest Supreme Court judge, in the latest appeal by Sue Neill-Fraser against her murder conviction. Across the plaza of the court in Court 2, Justice Alan Blow was hearing a different matter, but the proximity was symbolic. Blow J, now the Chief Justice, was the trial judge at Neill-Fraser’s 2010 trial.

The 24 year old blonde was Meaghan Vass, who seven years earlier gave evidence at that trial to the effect that she had never set foot on the Four Winds, in contradiction of the evidence that her DNA had been found on the deck.

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Not Guilty Exoneration Project launched in Sydney

Posted on February 26, 2016 by andrew

By Andrew L. Urban.

Not Guilty: The Sydney Exoneration Project is a new psychology and law research program at The University of Sydney that reviews cases of possible wrongful convictions, founded by Dr Celine Van Golde in the Faculty of Science (Forensic Psychology).

“Our research team consists of psychology and law students supervised by academic staff. The ultimate aim of Not Guilty is to seek justice for wrongfully convicted inmates while providing a unique educational experience where students can apply the knowledge acquired during their courses.

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Keogh murder trial abandoned – as was justice

Posted on November 17, 2015 by andrew

By Andrew L. Urban.

South Australian DPP Adam Kimber has abandoned his attempt to re-try Henry Keogh for the 1994 murder of Keogh’s late girlfriend Anna-Jane Cheney, claiming his reason that a key witness is too ill. At first he didn’t name the witness; later the witness was named as Dr Colin Manock, the disgraced former head of forensic pathology in SA. A little later still, Dr Manock is reported to have told a friend by phone that he was ‘fit as a fiddle’.

Kimber said in a statement, issued in the afternoon of Friday 13, November: “I concluded that essential matters would not be able to be proved unless the witness was called. I came to the view that there was no reasonable prospect of conviction without the witness.”

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