Cardinal George Pell has been freed from prison after Australia's High Court unanimously overturned his conviction on five counts of historical child sex abuse.
The momentous decision, handed down Tuesday by Chief Justice Susan Kiefel, ends a five-year legal battle that started when a man in his 30s approached police alleging Pell had abused him as a child in the mid-1990s. ... In its two-page summary of the ruling, the High Court said that the jury "ought to have entertained a doubt as to the applicant's guilt with respect to each of the offenses for which he was convicted, and ordered that the convictions be quashed and that verdicts of acquittal be entered in their place."
This marked the fourth court proceeding for Pell in facing these charges. The original criminal trial was dismissed because of a hung jury. When Pell was retried, a different jury convicted him. Last year, the Victoria Court of Appeals upheld the conviction on a 2-1 vote. This week's unanimous decision by the national High Court reverses Pell's previous convictions and overturns the appellate decision. His name also has been removed from the list of sex offenders. Pell still faces civil litigation related to the original accusations.
In the wake of the reversal, both Pell and the Catholic bishops in Australia have taken care to emphasize that, while they view this as a just outcome for Pell personally, it should not be seen as a repudiation of the shameful history of clerical sex abuse of minors in Australia, documented in a report released several years ago by a government commission.
Voice of the Faithful came right out of the starting gate with a claim that, as in the U.S, Australian law can let "technicalities" overrule juries. But in the Pell case, the high court didn't find problems with how the trial was conducted (what laymen call "technicalities"); it simply ruled the jury didn't think straight. That kind of a ruling, in theory anyway, can't happen in American law.
ReplyDeleteWhat you see in these cases depends a lot on what you expect to see. I've never seen a bishop without an entourage to -- among other things -- protect him from the church ladies whom one usually sees hovering wherever a bishop goes. Especially when the bishop is in a sacristy. And Pell's reputation suggests he'd probably want a bigger entourage than most. So I always had my own doubts about the site of his alleged crime. These are usually going to be close calls. Other evidence the prosecutor is said to have had available isn't evidence if it isn't presented. That is not a technicality; it is simple fairness. Looking at what was reported about the second trial, I felt like quoting what my lawyer son usually says to me: Is that all you have Counselor?
In reading the account of the crime Pell was accused of, I never did see how events could have happened as they were alleged to have. Especially given the place and available time. What Tom said about the entourage is true. Even with no bishop present, in our parish sacristy prior to a weekend Mass, there'd be the priest, a deacon, 3 EMHCs, 2 lectors, and 3 or 4 servers getting ready to go around to the back to process in. If the bishop was there for Confirmation, forget it, the place would be swarming with people.
ReplyDeleteWhether one likes Pell or not, the burden of proof wasn't sufficiently demonstrated in the original trials.
I'm not a fan of Pell. He represents so much of what I dislike about the resurgence of authoritarianism under JPII. But I get no schadenfreude from a conviction for that sort of thing or that it ever happens at all anytime anywhere. I like Tom's rationale for the improbability of it.
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