"The Stafford case suggests the old system of trial and appeal is not always adequate in a world of changing science, public and passionate advocacy and altered states of evidentiary trust. The limitations of our legal system were further demonstrated last month when it was left to the a bunch of law students and lawyers in Griffith University's The Innocence Project to secure the retesting of DNA evidence in the case of Shane Davis, who is serving time for the murder of Michelle Cohn in 1990."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BACKGROUND: (WIKIPEDIA): Graham Stuart Stafford was a sheet metal worker from Goodna, near Ipswich, Queensland who was convicted in 1992 of the murder of twelve-year-old Leanne Sarah Holland. Leanne Holland, the younger sister of Stafford's former partner, Melissa Holland, was murdered in September 1991. Her viciously mutilated body was found three days after she was reported missing in nearby Redbank Plains. It is possible she was also sexually interfered with and tortured with a cigarette lighter. Stafford appealed to the Queensland Court of Appeal, but this appeal was rejected on 25 August 1992. In 1997, the Queensland Court of Appeal re-examined the case after Stafford lodged an application for pardon with the State Governor on the basis of evidence gathered by private detective, Graeme Crowley. The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal again by a two-to-one majority on the grounds that there was still enough evidence to convict. Two applications for special leave to the High Court of Australia subsequently failed. Stafford was released in June 2006 after serving over 14 years in prison. Stafford, who was born in England and does not have Australian citizenship despite having migrated to Australia in 1969, faced deportation in November 2006. Some people, including Professor Paul Wilson of Bond University believe that Stafford is a victim of a miscarriage of justice. The Queensland Attorney-General, Kerry Shine, has agreed to closely consider any request on Stafford's behalf concerning a petition to clear him of the murder conviction. In April 2008, the Queensland Attorney-General referred the case to the Court of Appeal for a very rare second appeal for pardon. On December 24, 2009 the Court of Appeal overturned Graham Stafford's conviction and ordered a retrial by a 2-1 majority. The dissenting judge wanted an immediate acquittal.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BACKGROUND: THE SHANE DAVIS CASE: Shane Davis was convicted by a Supreme Court jury in Brisbane in November 1991 of the murder of South African tourist Michelle Joanne Cohn at a Surfers Paradise apartment block on Boxing Day in 1990. He was sentenced to life in prison, but has always maintained his innocence and has even refused the opportunity of parole several times during the past five years.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"MORE decades back than I care to confess, a cousin and I were wandering through the mirror maze at Sydney's Royal Easter Show when a bloke appeared through a hidden door, grabbed us by the scruff of the neck and threw us out in an alley," the anonymous Courrier Mail opinion piece, published on January 3, 2010, under the heading "Loosening the shackles of injustice" begins.
"No adult believed us, but we had no idea what we were supposed to have done and the injustice so rankled that the moment of bewilderment lives on in a dusty crevice of my mind," the unsigned opinion piece continues. (Publisher's note: Although unsigned I found it a good read.")
"So, how must Graham Stafford have felt when he was accused of a fiendish murder that the evidence increasingly shows he probably didn't commit?
How must he feel after almost 15 years in prison to know that the likely killer of Leanne Holland is well-known to police and many others involved in the case?
For all his public stoicism and forbearance, he must seethe when he thinks back over the years when he was helpless in the face of injustice.
Stafford isn't out of the woods yet as director of public prosecutions Tony Moynihan reviews the Court of Appeal judgment and decides whether to put him on trial again.
Stranger things have happened but there probably won't be a retrial because a reading of the Court of Appeal judgment suggests it could be throwing good money after bad.
With two judges ruling for a retrial and one for an acquittal, there's not a lot of encouragement for the prosecution.
Bizarrely, the quashing of his conviction and the prospective retrial restores Stafford's presumption of innocence, which must be of faint comfort after all these years.
Yet, some people will still think of him as a killer, a taint he will not entirely eradicate until he is pardoned or found not guilty. He could be denied both.
Those few who still believe he killed his girlfriend's 12-year-old sister will be gnashing their teeth over his freedom.
Others, like me, who believe he deserves the legal benefit of the doubt will have mixed feelings.
Justice has been delivered but it was a damned long time coming. Stafford was found guilty in March 1992 and unsuccessfully appealed in August.
He was denied special leave to appeal to the High Court in March 1993. In 1997, he again lodged an unsuccessful appeal and a year later was again refused leave to appeal to the High Court.
He was released in 2006 and only last week had his conviction quashed.
The Stafford case suggests the old system of trial and appeal is not always adequate in a world of changing science, public and passionate advocacy and altered states of evidentiary trust.
The limitations of our legal system were further demonstrated last month when it was left to the a bunch of law students and lawyers in Griffith University's The Innocence Project to secure the retesting of DNA evidence in the case of Shane Davis, who is serving time for the murder of Michelle Cohn in 1990.
Life dealt Stafford and Davis dud hands but they won a lot of friends – dogged and clever friends – who backed them all the way. Not everyone and not every case can attract that sort of support, which makes it problematical just who can break the shackles of injustice under our legal system.
It is inescapable that we need a criminal review commission that can assess possible miscarriages by reviewing evidence, embracing developments in forensic science and by putting justice ahead of judicial dignity and legal reputation.
If we accept the old saying that justice delayed is justice denied, it is something Stafford will never truly enjoy.
I can't vouch for its absolute accuracy but there is little comfort in the fact that www.justicedenied.org includes more than 84 Australians in a list of 2880 people wrongly convicted around the world.
And a distressing number of them are from Queensland."
The opinion piece can be found at:
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,26542411-5012447,00.html
Harold Levy...hlevy15@gmail.com
