A Case In Which Justice Never Had A Fair Chance

That was the heading in today’s ‘Australian newspaper’ for an article written by Greg Craven, a respected journalist, lawyer, and Vice Chancellor of the Australian Catholic University. You might feel that heading, and Craven’s background, immediately indicates that a bias opinion follows in his writing. I don’t believe so.

It has always been my personal view that George Pell was to be used as a scapegoat for the sins of his church, and for his perceived lack of action and interest in the question of child abuse in his church, and that those who were out to get him, would do so on the basis of ‘something’  –  they would ‘get him’!

In this respect, I note Frank Brennan’s comment, also in the ‘Australian’ that “Pell has been in the public spotlight for a very long time.  There are some who would convict him of all manner of things in the court of public opinion, no matter what the evidence. Others would never convict him of anything, holding him in the highest regard.The criminal justice system is intended to withstand these preconceptions. The system is under serious strain when it comes to Pell’.

Well yesterday, it was revealed that a democratically formed jury [as we would expect to see here in Australia] found Pell guilty as charged. If that is the correct verdict [and I have no personal reason to doubt or disprove that of course], then he fully deserves whatever punishment is coming to him.  And if he is guilty, as lawfully found, I am disappointed that this ‘man of God’ persists in pleading his innocence, and fails to confess to what he has done, and furthermore, in what has obviously  being his style and character throughout his life, is going to keep fighting what he should own up to, by proceeding with the appeal process, and so continuing to add to the anger and hurt of his victims and those victims of other members of the Catholic Church.

However, to those outside the court yesterday who were screaming  vile language, abuse and damnation towards Cardinal Pell –  I simply use the old well worn phrase ‘let he who is without sin, cast the first stone’, and I will leave my comments at that.

Before I share the views of Greg Craven with my readers,  first allow me to share the final paragraph of the ‘Australian’s’ Editorial in today’s paper [with no doubt similar views being expressed throughout the nation’s media], although I imagine that most main-stream readers here in Victoria will simply see the Herald Sun’s front page – ‘Cardinal Sin’!!

From  the ‘Australian Editorial, 27/2/2019’ [part thereof], under the heading ‘Verdict on Pell plunges church into deep crisis’….. “The fact Pell has been found guilty on five counts, however, propels the church in Australia into new territory. If the church is to win back respect and be a credible voice in the national conversation, much will fall on the shoulders of senior bishops. In the event of a successful appeal by Pell, an individual will have suffered a grave injustice. But the hurt and suffering of victims of abuse remains real and the task facing the church will still be formidable.  Many Catholics have become estranged from the church during the past few decades; it will take years of reconciliation and reform for the crisis prone institution to reclaim, trust, support, and public faith. Victims may never heal, many are dead. And however intense the belief in some quarters in Pell’s innocence, he has been found guilty by a jury of his peers in a properly constituted court. He is a convicted pedophile. Living with that reality will be painful for him and for all Catholics”.

That Editorial also referred to another article I referred to above,   by Frank Brennan, a Jesuit priest and lawyer, who noted that ‘Pell may be the victim of a wounded nation in search of a scapegoat’ [ a view of my own, hinted at previously, while at the same time, in agreement that he must be punished for any crimes he has been convicted of].

Meanwhile in Ballarat, one would not expect to hear much sympathy for George Pell, and there wasn’t!! Which was not a surprise, especially in view of Pell’s long association with that city, and the extent of abuse that occurred in Ballarat over many years by a number of priests. And such non-empathy, no doubt, was accentuated by the kind of writing, such as that of Joanne McCarthy in today’s Ballarat Courier, where she noted  that “POPE Francis should have cut George Pell loose back in March, 2016 after the cardinal’s disastrous second appearance at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, when Pell’s “sociopathic  lack of empathy” was on quite shocking display. How more clear do you have to be?  …… Pell’s staggering response, in Rome that year, to questions about a notorious child sex offender priest’s horrific abuse of children. [He answered] “It’s a sad story and it wasn’t of much interest to me,” said Pell, with the words that damned  him as a moral leader, and prompted  me to write an opinion piece saying the Pope had to force Pell out if he wouldn’t leave voluntarily……..”………..watching the coverage of that event in 2016, I was feeling that Pell was performing credibly –  until he made that comment!! It certainly did him no justice at the time.

Anyway, moving on –  to Greg Craven’s views  –  `A case in which justice never had a fair chance’.

‘Speaking as a lawyer, I know we have few appealing qualities. But I do believe in our own justice system.  All my life I have joined in the chorus that our justice system is the best in the world. With the case of Cardinal George Pell, I am not singing quite so loud.

It is not whether you like or loathe Pell, or even whether you think he is innocent or guilty. What matters is whether we have a system of justice that is exposed to extraneous pressure whenever some media outlet or social media alliance decides that someone is or is not innocent.

What the last year has shown is that the justice system can be systematically assaulted from the outside in a conscious attempt to make a fair trial impossible. This should terrify every citizen, because every citizen is a potential defendant.

The problem is, the wider justice system has two parts. The first is the judiciary, the jury and the lawyers who work to produce a fair verdict. Thank God, in this country, directly nobbling any of these functionaries is virtually impossible.

But this formal structure is surrounded by a second ring, not involved in securing a verdict, but ensuring that conditions for reaching a fair verdict do exist. This is where you find rules about fair reporting of cases, not naming persons before they have been formally accused, and so forth.

The main institutions involved here are the media and the police. The media must report cases fairly, abide by the letter and spirit of the law, and not barrack for either side. The police present evidence impartially, working for justice, not conviction. Media and police never combine to form a pro-conviction cheer squad. [as an outsider reading this, I wonder just how accurate this description is in reality??].

This is where the Pell case has gone terribly wrong. Impartial judge and jury accepted, parts of the media – notably the ABC and former Fairfax journalists – have spent years attempting to ensure Pell is the most odious figure in Australia. They seemed to want him in the dock as an ogre, not a defendant.

Worse, elements of Victoria Police, including Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton, co-operated in this. Ashton’s reported announcements of impending charges and references to ‘victims’ rather than ‘alleged victims’ were matched only by the coincidences in timing between police and pronouncements and favoured media exclusives.

The result was that when the trial judge imposed a blanket media order against reporting the trials themselves, it was like a ban on reporting that Vladimir Putin is a rather nasty chap. The damage had already been done in a conscious, timely and thorough way.

Victorian suppression orders being what they are – Victorian – the case was been reported increasingly freely overseas. Foreign reports were all over social media, freely available in Australia. The trial was being ‘protected’ less by a suppression than by a diversion order.

But the most significant challenge to the court’s attempts for due process was ABC journalist Louise Milligan’s book, ‘Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of George Pell’ which was rushed into publication last May by Melbourne University Press, apparently to get it on the streets before any trial and suppression order could commence.

Of course, when the suppression order was made, MUP withdraw the book from sale in Victoria. But it remained available in other states and on the internet.

So what we have witnessed is a combined effort by much of the media, including the public broadcaster, and elements of Victoria’s law enforcement agency, to blacken the name of someone before he went to trial. And remember, Victoria’s prosecutorial authorities never determined to proceed. They returned the police brief three times, before the police forced the case to go forward.

His reputational blackening works in two ways. First, at the most human level, is there any Australian who does not now associate the word ‘Pell’ with ‘child abuse’?  Second, is there any public official in Australia who does not understand that any action, no matter how appropriate, that might tend towards Pell’s acquittal, will meet swift, public retribution?

This is not a story about whether a jury got it right or wrong, or about whether justice is seen to prevail. It’s a story about whether a jury was ever given a fair chance to make a decision, and whether our justice system can be heard above a media mob’…………………[The Australian newspaper, 27 February, 2019, p. 7].