Michael McGuire: Recent events will be bewildering for murder victim Anna-Jane Cheney’s family
IN all the argy-bargy this week about the $2.57 million compensation payout given to Henry Keogh, it’s sadly easy to overlook the terrible tragedy at the heart of this awful sequence of events, says Michael McGuire.
- Push for independent Henry Keogh compensation inquiry
- Legal reports ‘will be withheld’ from Henry Keogh inquiry
- Anna Jane Cheney’s family seek answers to Henry Keogh’s payout
- 2015: DPP drops Henry Keogh murder charge
- The Anne-Jane Cheney murder — a crime which stunned the state
IN all the argy-bargy this week about the $2.57 million compensation payout given to Henry Keogh, it’s sadly easy to overlook the terrible tragedy at the heart of this awful sequence of events.
In 1994, the life of Anna-Jane Cheney ended when she was only 29 years old. By all accounts she was a fit, happy, healthy young woman about to be married, who wanted to be a mother and was making her way in the legal profession. When she died she was acting director of professional conduct for the Law Society.
For 24 years now, her family have lived every day with that pain thinking about what has been taken from them. Living the enduring question of ‘what might have been’.
The anguish heightened by the crusade taken by her fiance Keogh who claimed innocence. A first trial resulted in a hung jury, but in 1995 he was convicted of drowning the woman, who was to be his wife in five weeks’ time, in her bath.
He was sentenced to life in jail.
In December that year Keogh’s first appeal was dismissed. In 1997, the Court of Criminal Appeal dismissed an application to re-open that appeal.
The same year the High Court refused to grant special leave to appeal that decision. In 2007, first the Court of Criminal Appeal and High Court both refused to grant special leave to appeal.
Anna-Jane’s family has kept their dignity and counsel over the years, but it’s easy to envisage the shattering impact, the emotional turmoil this brings them on a regular basis.
Then the former Labor government changed the Criminal Law Consolidation Act to allow appeals if “fresh and compelling evidence’’ emerges. It led to Keogh being released in December 2014 following a judgment by the Full Court of the Court of Criminal Appeal that found “In our view, the applicant did not receive a fair trial and there has been a substantial miscarriage of justice’’.
The miscarriage related to the evidence given at the original trial by forensic pathologist Colin Manock who testified that bruising on Anna-Jane’s legs was evidence she had been murdered.
“The inadequacies of Dr Manock’s autopsy had the consequence that important investigations were not conducted and, as a result, other possible causes of death were not properly explored,’’ the Full Court found.
Yet, the Full Court did not direct Keogh should be acquitted of murdering Anna-Jane Cheney, even though that was an option available. What it did was recommend a retrial as there were still factors that pointed to Keogh as the culprit.
“The forensic and medical evidence was only one aspect of the prosecution case,’’ it said. “A conviction is open to a properly directed jury based on the evidence as now understood, though not inevitable. Accordingly, it would not be appropriate to order an acquittal.’’
Director of Public Prosecution Adam Kimber decided not to proceed with a retrial. A decision which leaves both the Cheney family and Keogh in a half-light of neither guilt nor innocence.
In the original trial, the prosecution, according to the Full Court, “had a strong evidentiary basis for establishing, inter alia, motive and opportunity’’.
Some of this was based on Keogh taking out five life-insurance policies on Anna-Jane and forging her signature on them. In his closing address in the 1995 trial, then DPP Paul Rofe summed it up: “Ladies and gentleman, to all intents and purposes Anna-Jane Cheney was worth $1.15 million to Henry Keogh if she died accidentally.’’
Other evidence presented included Keogh having at least one affair, possibly two, five weeks before the wedding and proposed honeymoon he had booked no leave from work, he told others he didn’t want to remarry or have kids, and inconsistent statements to others about the circumstances leading to Anna-Jane’s death in the days following, which the prosecution characterised as lies.
For Anna-Jane’s family the events of the last few weeks must be bewildering. The State Government’s decision to give Keogh $2.57 million despite lodging no formulated claim and admitting himself he was unlikely to go to court adding another layer to an already deep well of grief.