George Pell verdict: Victoria’s flawed justice system must be fixed

Court of Appeal president Chris Maxwell, left, Chief Justice Anne Ferguson and Justice Mark Weinberg deliver their verdict in the Supreme Court last year. Picture: Supplied by the Supreme Court of Victoria

The exoneration of George Pell has revealed institutional flaws in Victoria that will tarnish Australian justice in the eyes of the world. Those shortcomings must be remedied.

The baseless conviction of Cardinal Pell is an international scandal that will rank alongside the jailing of Lindy Chamberlain for the murder of her baby, who was actually taken by a dingo.

Just like the Chamberlain case, the Pell disaster will inevitably find its way into a movie that will do no favours for the standing of Australian justice.

The nation that jailed Chamberlain after a media-driven frenzy has been shown to have jailed a sick, old cardinal after another media frenzy, another botched trial and a botched ruling by the majority of the Victorian Court of Appeal.

Read the Supreme Court of Victoria’s original judgment, including Justice Mark Weinberg’s dissent, here

Two of the state’s most senior judges — Chief Justice Anne Ferguson and Court of Appeal president Chris Maxwell — have been shown to have made a fundamental error; the reliability of the state’s jury system has been left in doubt; and the wisdom of the state’s police in effectively advertising for complaints about the cardinal is open to question.

The immediate blame will inevitably rest with the Court of Appeal. But that court also boasts the real hero in this affair: judge Mark Weinberg, who defied the state’s anti-Pell frenzy and delivered a powerful, 204-page dissent whose reasoning has now been vindicated.

The High Court’s 44-page unanimous judgment amounts to a primer for the judiciary, particularly in Victoria, on how criminal justice is supposed to work. That primer was needed: if an innocent man can be jailed without a proper basis in law, nobody is safe.

The pain for Victoria does not end there. Pell’s tormentors in the media will need to re-examine the way they engaged in years of character assassination that has left them looking foolish.

The state government cannot escape the fallout. Victoria should join NSW by allowing high-profile criminal matters to be heard by a judge alone — without the assistance of a potentially biased jury.

The worst aspect of this case is that Victorian legislation meant the Pell jury was denied the full story about the man who claimed to have been assaulted by the cardinal.

Relevant evidence about the complainant was kept from the jury by virtue of legislation that was put in place with the clear intention of protecting those who claim to be victims of sexual assault.

The Pell jury was never told that the complainant had a history of psychological problems that required treatment. Nor were they told that Pell’s legal team was rebuffed in court — in the absence of the jury — when they attempted to gain access to records showing the extent of this man’s psychological problems.

That episode is outlined in the special leave application that was filed in the High Court by Pell’s legal team, led by Bret Walker SC. During the trial, it would have been a contempt of court for anyone to reveal this incident.

That application, which is a public document on file with the High Court, says “the applicant (Pell) could not tell the jury that the complainant had had psychological treatment and the applicant had been denied the ability to obtain records of it”.

That needs to change.