Day two of Cardinal George Pell’s appeal against conviction gives Crown right of reply

SYDNEY (AUSTRALIA)
News Corp Australia

June 6, 2019

By Rohan Smith

The lawyer on centre stage at one of the biggest appeal hearings in the world has today slipped up, saying the one thing he is not allowed to say.

Lawyer for the Crown, Christopher Boyce QC, told a packed courtroom the name of one of George Pell’s victims.

Victims of sexual abuse cannot be publicly identified.

The slip-up had the potential to be catastrophic because the two-day appeal is being broadcast around the world via the Victoria Supreme Court’s weblink.

The prosecutor’s mistake was thankfully edited out of the live-feed, which has a 15-second delay.

Chief Judge Anne Ferguson said the feed was muted. “There are measures in place,” she said.

Mr Boyce spent the morning outlining all the reasons a jury was right to convict Cardinal George Pell of sexually abusing two choirboys inside the sacristy at Melbourne’s St Patrick’s Cathedral in 1996.

He spent day two of Pell’s appeal rejecting a notion put at trial that the sole witness to testify against Pell was “a liar” and revisiting testimony he said was overwhelmingly credible.

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