George Pell’s legal team accuses top prosecutor of improper response to appeal bid
George Pell’s legal team has accused Victoria’s top prosecutor of failing to properly grasp his High Court appeal bid, as the disgraced cardinal prepares his last-ditch bid for freedom.
VIC News
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George Pell’s legal team has accused the state’s top prosecutor of failing to properly respond to his High Court appeal bid.
Pell is fighting to overturn his convictions for the abuse of two choirboys and has lodged an application with the High Court seeking special leave to appeal.
He has argued the Victorian Court of Appeal was wrong to dismiss his appeal in a 2-1 majority decision.
Director of Public Prosecutions Kerri Judd, QC, last week responded to his application arguing there was no basis for a High Court challenge.
In her summary of argument Ms Judd submitted there was “no error” in the approach taken by the Court of Appeal.
But in Pell’s response, filed with the court late on Monday, his legal team say Ms Judd “has not engaged with the fundamental legal error” in Pell’s application.
It further submits Ms Judd “mischaracterises (Pell’s) complaints as assertions of factual as opposed to legal error”.
The five page response also accuses the DPP of dealing with topics “in a non-responsive and incomplete manner”, and distracting from the proper focus of the majority’s reasoning.
Pell is serving a minimum three year and eight month jail term for the abuse of two choir boys at St Patrick’s Cathedral while he was archbishop of Melbourne in the mid 1990s.
He has been in maximum security 23-hour lockdown since being taken into custody in February.
His lawyers have argued that:
1. The majority of the Court of Appeal erred by finding their belief in the complainant required Pell’s team to establish the offending was impossible in order to raise and leave a doubt.
2. The majority erred in not finding the guilty verdicts unreasonable because there remained a reasonable doubt as to the existence of any opportunity for the offending to have occurred.
They instead argue that dissenting appeal justice Mark Weinberg correctly found the case couldn’t be proven beyond reasonable doubt.
The Catholic world leader is the most senior church figure to be jailed for such serious offending after being convicted by unanimous guilty verdicts of one count of sexual penetration of a child and four indecent act charges.
He has vehemently denied any wrongdoing.
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One of his key defences was that as Archbishop he was never left alone inside the Cathedral.
His master of ceremonies Monsignor Charles Portelli testified that he escorted the then Archbishop from the moment he arrived at the cathedral, until the moment he left.
Mons Portelli gave alibi evidence for Pell at trial, which Ms Judd told the High Court was “inherently weak”.
But Pell’s lawyers have argued “the alibi was not, on proper application of the law, anywhere near eliminated.”
A date for an oral hearing for Pell’s special leave application has not yet been set.
If leave is granted, a substantial hearing will follow.
Sources close to Pell anticipate he could serve more than half of his minimum term before the appeal is determined.