Hearing into George Pell’s sexual abuse convictions continues
George Pell faces a tense wait to learn the outcome of his bid to overturn a string of convictions for child sex crimes. In a dramatic day in court, a shock slip-up by a prosecutor nearly saw a key piece of top-secret information broadcast to the world.
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George Pell faces a tense wait to learn the outcome of his bid to overturn a string of convictions for child sex crimes.
The Court of Appeal today reserved its decision following two days of submissions in which Pell’s legal team dissected the grounds on which it says the jury’s verdict was unsafe.
The fallen cardinal is appealing to overturn his convictions on five assault charges against two choirboys at St Patrick’s cathedral in the 1990s.
Pell will now spend his 78th birthday on Saturday in solitary confinement as the appeal judges wade through thousands of pages of submissions, transcript and other documents.
If his bid fails, it is likely he will also spend his 79th, 80th and 81st birthday behind bars waiting for his three and a half year non parole period to expire.
However, sources close to both parties have already mooted a High Court challenge regardless of the outcome.
Leading counsel Christopher Boyce, QC, came out firing, jumping to his feet almost before Pell had taken his seat in court.
“The complainant was a very compelling witness. He was clearly not a liar. He was not a fantasist. He was a witness of truth,” he said with force.
He said the complainant, who gave evidence over nine hours in a closed court, endured searing cross-examination but emerged reliable and credible.
It was directly put to the complainant at trial that he was a fantasist, prompting him to respond: “I don’t fantasise about these things.”
But it was a moving address by the complainant, which Mr Boyce chose not to detail, that he argued removed any doubt that the claims were true.
But if Mr Boyce had Chief Justice Anne Ferguson, Court of Appeal president Chris Maxwell, and Justice Mark Weinberg, on side at that point, it didn’t last long.
STUNNED SILENCE AFTER HORROR SLIP-UP
In a disastrous slip-up, Chris Boyce, QC, inadvertently named the complainant, sparking a frenzied response to ensure it didn’t get broadcast via the court’s live stream.
The hearing was being streamed live via the Supreme Court’s website.
The identity of Pell’s two victims have been a tightly kept secret because of strict Victorian laws that ban revealing the identity of sexual assault victims.
The court fell silent as the appellate judges looked for assurance from a video operator that a 15-second stream delay stopped the name being made public.
Chief Justice Anne Ferguson assured the court that the name had not gone to air, but it did little to calm a visibly shaken Mr Boyce, who took moments to recompose himself, and did so only after significant encouragement and reassurance from the bench.
He appeared not to recover from that error.
During hours of submissions he was frequently unable to answer questions from the judges or succinctly explain the prosecution’s appeal submissions.
While Pell’s lawyer was free to talk at length during his submissions, questions were fired at Mr Boyce from the bench as the judges tried to clarify his argument.
At one point, Mr Boyce conceded the prosecution case could have significant issues if parts of evidence of key witness Monsignor Charles Portelli, Pell’s master of ceremonies while he was Melbourne Archbishop, was accepted.
But he argued Mons Portelli was an unreliable witness.
He also appeared unsure of key parts of the prosecution case including the clothes Pell was said to be wearing at the time of the offending and whether or not that made the complaints possible.
Every time Weinberg opens his mouth he gets directly and succinctly to the point. In layman’s terms. A relief - the rest so often speak in riddles.
— Shannon Deery (@s_deery) June 6, 2019
While Pell’s legal team argued the jury must have had reasonable doubt about the offending, Mr Boyce argued the evidence couldn’t exclude the reasonable possibility of it happening.
Within Pell’s three grounds of appeal his team listed 13 reasons they said made the offending impossible, or should have given such a reasonable doubt to the jury that they couldn’t reasonably convict him.
Justice Weinberg said if prosecutors “fall at the hurdle of one or more of those matters, depending upon what it is, that can have a significant impact upon whether the Crown has established its case beyond reasonable doubt.”
A decision will be handed down at a later date.
PELL’S APPEAL HEARING
The Court of Appeal heard from Pell’s defence team yesterday which is trying to get the 77-year-old acquitted of five charges.
He’s serving a minimum three years and eight months behind bars after being sentenced to up to six years in prison in March.
Barrister Bret Walker SC told the court in the first day of the appeal application and hearing that it was “impossible” for Pell to have abused the boys at St Patrick’s Cathedral in 1996, and have molested one of them again in early 1997.
The jury’s verdicts were “unsafe and unsatisfactory” on the basis of evidence from one surviving complainant in the face of exculpatory evidence from 20 others called by prosecutors, he said.
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Among the evidence was an alibi in Pell’s practice of greeting parishioners outside the cathedral after mass, he told Supreme Court Chief Justice Anne Ferguson, Court of Appeal President Chris Maxwell and Justice Mark Weinberg, who are hearing the case.
“If (Pell) was at the western door, then the law of physics tells us this is literally, logically impossible for the offending to have occurred according to the complainant’s account, and there is no other account,” Mr Walker said.
Pell appeared in court in person, once again wearing his clerical collar. He wore an open shirt when sentenced.