George Pell: Court to livestream judgment

The most powerful Catholic in the nation’s history finds out next if his appeal against sex assault charges has been upheld.

Cardinal George Pell. Picture: AAP

George Pell will learn his fate next Wednesday amid one of the largest security operations seen at Melbourne’s court centre.

The Court of Appeal will live-stream the reading of the judgment summary at 9.30am, which will be watched worldwide as the 78-year-old cardinal’s future is determined.

Chief Justice Anne Ferguson will read the summary more than two months after the court sat to hear argument from the defence and the prosecution.

If Pell is acquitted he will likely walk free from the court to be driven away by a member of his entourage. The driver has often been close friend and prominent Sydney Catholic Chris Meaney.

However, there is no certainty Pell will be freed because of the general reluctance of appeal courts to overturn jury verdicts.

The livestreaming of the judgment summary will be aired with a 15-second delay in an attempt to prevent any suppressed information being accidentally beamed to the public.

The judgment will be the subject of saturation media coverage and comes 5½ months after Pell was jailed following his conviction for sexually assaulting two boys in 1996 and then assaulting one of those boys the following year.

Pell, probably the most powerful Catholic in the nation’s history, was — until charged — the Vatican’s No 3, responsible for its multi-billion-dollar finances.

The Court of Appeal deliberations have focused on three grounds of appeal, the most ­important being the verdicts are unreasonable and cannot be supported because it was not open to the jury to be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt. This is on the basis that the evidence of more than 20 crown witnesses that went unchallenged.

If this ground of appeal were to be accepted, Pell would walk free, pending any High Court action.

The three judges have been ­examining the law around how Pell was arraigned when no jury panel members were physically present in the court.

The failure to arraign Pell in front of the jury became one of the three points of appeal lodged by the disgraced cardinal’s ­defence team.

If accepted, this would lead to Pell facing a possible retrial, which would be his third on the so-called cathedral charges.

The third ground of appeal is that the County Court judge erred by preventing the defence from using a computer image of St Patrick’s Cathedral that would show the movements during a solemn mass, after which the ­offending occurred.

The second jury found Pell unanimously guilty, rocking the church worldwide and sending Pell to prison.

Pell was sentenced to six years in jail after being convicted of sexually abusing the two 13-year-old choirboys.

He was handed a non-parole period of three years and eight months, with the judge slamming his behaviour as breathtakingly arrogant because he thought he would get away with the crimes.

The defence was surprised by the verdict, with the jury having heard that it occurred inside a sacristy with the door open.

There were no witnesses other than the sole surviving victim, whose evidence was described as “compelling”.