George Pell is guilty. Guilty of heinous crimes against two young boys. And suggestions by his merry band of blinkered supporters that he deserves the presumption of innocence until a Court of Appeal verdict is as doltish as it is erroneous.
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Just consider the outcry each time a paedophile is released into a suburban area; it is always about his guilt, not the possibility that could be over turned later on appeal!
Imagine if an underworld figure is found guilty of multiple murders today; would the presumption of innocence extend until the verdict was tested by a higher court?
Of course not. In the same way GEORGE PELL IS GUILTY.
His supporters can cling to a slight hope that, maybe, down the track, that verdict will change, even over a technicality.
But it is rare indeed for judges to overturn a jury verdict, and that’s been lost in the current Pell palaver.
Queensland learnt this in recent times, with the celebrated Gerard Baden-Clay case; one we should all remember this International Women’s Day.
Baden-Clay was found guilty in 2014 of murdering his wife Allison but Queensland’s Court of Appeal later downgraded that sentence to manslaughter. That was in response to his defence team arguing that he could have unintentionally killed her during a dispute.
But the High Court put the Court of Appeal in its place in 2016, arguing that it had “erred in concluding the jury’s verdict of guilty of murder was unreasonable’’.
It’s worth reading what the High Court said in relation to the role of the jury.
"It is fundamental to our system of criminal justice in relation to allegations of serious crimes tried by jury that the jury is "the constitutional tribunal for deciding issues of fact," the High Court judgement read.
"Given the central place of the jury trial in the administration of criminal justice over the centuries, and the abiding importance of the role of the jury as representative of the community in that respect, the setting aside of a jury's verdict on the ground that it is "unreasonable" within the meaning of s 668E(1) of the Criminal Code is a serious step, not to be taken without particular regard to the advantage enjoyed by the jury over a court of appeal which has not seen or heard the witnesses called at trial.
“Further, the boundaries of reasonableness within which the jury's function is to be performed should not be narrowed in a hard and fast way by the considerations expressed in the passages from the reasons of the Court of Appeal explaining its disposition of the appeal.
“With those considerations in mind, a court of criminal appeal is not to substitute trial by an appeal court for trial by jury. Where there is an appeal against conviction on the ground that the verdict was unreasonable, the ultimate question for the appeal court "must always be whether the [appeal] court thinks that upon the whole of the evidence it was open to the jury to be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the accused was guilty.”
This is no fresh insight. The jury is the most precious part of our legal system. It relies on 12 peers having at their disposal all the relevant evidence and hearing the arguments for and against from highly skilled advocates.
Pell’s jurors were obviously a different group from Baden-Clay - but the principle remains the same.
The wife murderer was as arrogant as Pell. He was a local big-wig, with a big head and a pride you couldn’t jump over. Behind closed doors, he was a monster.
It was a jury that caught up with him.
Pell’s supporters should read that judgement, and remind themselves that the view of the common man or woman matters.
