Drug trafficker suing parole board after being extradited from interstate and jailed illegally
A DRUG trafficker stands to win a substantial payout after being extradited from interstate and jailed in a Melbourne prison without reason.
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A DRUG trafficker stands to win a substantial payout after being extradited from interstate and jailed without reason.
A Supreme Court judge found Nicola Mercorella, 53, was being illegally detained and ordered his immediate release after overruling an Adult Parole Board decision to revoke his bail when the board could not explain why he was being held.
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As a result of being imprisoned against his will for nine days, Mercorella claims he suffered adjustment disorder with mixed anxiety and depression, exacerbated by the parole board’s repeated failures to explain why he was being held.
In a County Court statement of claim he alleges the board’s conduct was insulting, highhanded, arrogant and in contumelious disregard of his rights, entitling him to unspecified aggravated and exemplary damages.
The saga began when the Caroline Springs crook learned days after being paroled in Victoria from a lengthy jail stint for drug trafficking that he was wanted in South Australia on unrelated matters.
Mercorella served more time in South Australia and was due to be paroled there on December 16, 2014.
Instead, he was handed to a Victorian police officer and arrested on a warrant issued by the parole board that stated his Victorian parole had been cancelled three months earlier.
Mercorella was taken to the Adelaide Magistrates Court, remanded in custody and sent back to Victoria the next day.
He remained in custody at the Melbourne Assessment Prison until Christmas Eve, 2014, when Justice Mark Weinberg ordered his release after Mercorella’s lawyer filed a writ of habeas corpus — unlawful imprisonment.
“The board does not have — and so far as I am aware, never has had — an unfettered discretion to cancel parole for any reason, at its whim,” Justice Weinberg ruled.
“Cancellation of parole is a most serious matter. Wrongful cancellation of parole has always been recognised as a basis upon which habeas corpus would lie.”
The judge said Mercorella’s lawyer attempted to clarify her client’s position with the parole board on August 16, 2014, with an email unanswered and then, after calling the board at 4.59pm, being told a number of matters needed attending to and a response would be provided “within seven days”.
On learning the next day that her client had been taken to Melbourne, Mercorella’s lawyer contacted the board three more times but was told only that the operations manager was looking into the matter. She filed the habeas corpus writ six days later.
Justice Weinberg said that “after some prompting” the board claimed Mercorella could have had his bail revoked under a new amendment to the Parole Act that deemed a prisoner’s parole cancelled if they were sentenced to another jail term while on parole.
However, the judge found the amendment could not apply to Mercorella because he had been sentenced in another state for unrelated offences committed long before his crimes in Victoria.