MELBOURNE (VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA)
The Age
April 7, 2020
By John Silvester
[Includes video: Attorney-General Christian Porter says if possible lifting redactions in Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse, should occur.]
Not since Lindy Chamberlain lost her baby to a dingo at Uluru 40 years ago has a criminal case so polarised the community as Cardinal George Pell’s arrest, conviction and acquittal.
Both camps say Pell has been treated differently. His supporters say he was targeted because he was a high profile Catholic while his detractors believe his perceived power influenced the seven judges at the High Court to quash his conviction.
Arrant nonsense. Passion is replacing legal precedent.
The decision to overturn the Pell conviction is not about what happened inside St Patrick’s Cathedral in 1996 but what admissible evidence was available to prove what happened inside St Patrick’s Cathedral in 1996.
The High Court found that on the evidence put to the jury it should have found there was reasonable doubt. It did not find that Pell didn’t do it, nor that the complainant was a liar. It found there was sufficient doubt to demand an acquittal.
To overturn a jury decision is a huge call as it is the basis of the trial system. To do so means the High Court found the conviction a massive miscarriage of justice that had to be righted.
This was not one man’s word against another. In a criminal trial the allegation must be proved and without compelling corroboration it is simply impossible.
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