Advocate struggles to reconstruct 5 to 6 minutes in life of G. Pell

AUSTRALIA
China News

March 16, 2020

By Chris Friel

Before the High Court of Australia Bret Walker used the word “illogic.” He was referring to the failure of the majority appellate judges to properly understand what I have called the “hiatus theory.” In this paper I want to suggest that a similar illogic pervades the misguided approach of prosecutor Kerri Judd, presenting her case on the next day after Walker.

The context, I trust, will be familiar. The allegation was that two choristers endured a five to six minute assault in the sacristy at St. Patrick’s. However, that place was described as a hive of activity after Sunday Mass and so the defence argued that it was impossible for such a thing to happen. There was just no opportunity; other people would have noticed what was going on. To the contrary, the prosecution wrestled with the problem of how to make this scenario possible by postulating a gap or “hiatus” in the activity that would somehow be consistent with the evidence heard in court.

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