Freed Faruk Orman’s biggest mistake was trusting Nicola Gobbo
Lawyer Ruth Parker has long said she has met lots of killers, and that Faruk Orman was not one of them. Now it is official. History has been unwritten. His biggest mistake was trusting Nicola Gobbo.
Law & Order
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Faruk Orman had waited 12 years for this moment. But first he would wait another 42 minutes.
He walked in to the Supreme Court’s Court of Appeal at 9.30am on Friday as a convicted killer and walked out as a victim of a miscarriage of justice. His label of murderer was lifted. He was going home.
This was no ordinary “mention hearing”. Orman wasn’t like other prisoners in the dock. No shackles. No scowls. Just a silent prayer mouthed when proceedings began, his upward gaze reminding of a young priest in training.
He looked embarrassed by the clamour of the spilling gallery. His big suit on his thin frame, like a kid who borrowed from an older brother for a big occasion, fed the recurring notion that time stopped when Orman went away.
Orman required tissues, dozens of them, for what he was hearing. He gulped water as he heard about the “fundamental breach” that went “to the very foundations of the system of a criminal trial”. He listened to his unwitting error, back in June, 2007, when he was arrested and the his first call he made was to Nicola Gobbo.
Gobbo dudded Orman from the outset.
She was informing to police about him for more than a year before his arrest, and she would offer advice to police on how to get him to talk.
He was kept in solitary confinement, and dogs were said to run through his room, after Gobbo told police how Orman was a neat freak who couldn’t stand to be alone.
She said she liked him, though her betrayal says otherwise.
He was polite, unlike the misogynists and murderers who filled her client list.
But she was determined to get him. She was also the lawyer for the main witness in the murder case against Orman.
She advised police on convincing this witness to give evidence against Orman after he decided he didn’t want to testify.
Her betrayal of Orman goes to her breadth.
Gobbo didn’t just play cops versus criminals.
In Orman, she lined up a criminal against a suspect, and she didn’t care about the conflicts until she feared that her devilishness would be revealed.
Police information reports show that Orman trusted her so entirely that he confided his fears about a police informer working against him.
The descriptors flowed for Gobbo’s behaviour yesterday, from “improper” to “outrageous”.
The court agreed with the Director of Public Prosecutions, Kerri Judd QC.
Gobbo’s single act of assisting the witness to testify in the prosecution against her own client was enough alone to undo his guilty finding.
Whether other appeals, from the likes of Tony Mokbel and Rob Karam, will be as clear-cut remains to be seen.
Their lawyers have had to wait for the Gobbo documentation from Victoria Police.
Orman’s solicitor Ruth Parker had a better approach.
She went on radio, labelled Orman’s continuing incarceration a “disgrace”, and got a prompter result than the usual legal paper wars ever could.
Orman wasn’t bitter yesterday. He avoided microphones, as did his family.
There was no whooping, but a contained joy that this long overdue outcome had come to pass.
“Thank you, thank you,” Orman said, as he addressed the queue of family members and lawyers awaiting their bear hug.
“I’ll come down in just a minute.”
Orman didn’t want to dwell on the secret subterfuge that scuttled his life for 12 years.
He has been wrongly imprisoned since John Howard was prime minister.
Yet he expressed joy and luck, and he thanked Attorney-General Jill Hennessy for accepting his petition for mercy long after conventional avenues of appeal had gone.
Orman said his partner had stayed with him throughout his prison sentence.
She never missed a weekly visit. She headed the “relentless support” that had sustained him for so long.
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Among them was Parker, who welled up as she and Orman exchanged glances during the hearing. Parker has long said that she has met lots of killers, and that Orman was not one of them.
Now it is official. The history has been unwritten.
The apologies — and likely multimillion-dollar payout — will wait for another day.
Orman is no longer the getaway driver for the shooting death of Victor Peirce in 2002.
He is just another Turkish man who sips chai tea with his family.
Now he has all the time in the world to address the time he cannot get back.