COMMENTARY:"Keogh trial ends: major inquiry needed," by Bill Rowlings, Civil Liberties Australia, published o November 16, 2015.
SUB-HEADING: "Finally, the inexplicable attempt to re-try Henry Keogh for a ‘murder’ that was an accident is over. But the real inquisition in SA, a Royal Commission, has yet to begin."
GIST: "The SA Director of Public Prosecutions, Adam Kimber, claims “illness” of a “key witness” as the reason for abandoning another trial of Henry Keogh for the alleged 1994 murder of his fiancee, Anna-Jane Cheney. Keogh spent nearly 20 years in jail, but was freed after a special appeal under a new law in SA in late-2014. ABC Radio has reported that the DPP said he had reviewed the case after “witness” Dr Colin Manock fell ill: Kimber said he believed “it was not appropriate to proceed without the witness giving evidence and being cross-examined”. Manock is no ordinary “witness”. He was the state’s former head forensic pathologist for nearly three decades. His indisposition may well be most convenient illness for a DPP in the state’s history. The SA Supreme Court found in December 2014 that Manock had presented flawed evidence at Keogh’s original trial in 1995, causing him to spend nearly 20 years in jail wrongly convicted. Manock’s repute is such – after trials, medical tribunal hearings, appeals, defamation cases, media interviews and the like – that it is incomprehensible that DPP Kimber could suggest Manock would have had credibility in court. If the SA DPP believes Manock was a potentially viable “key” witness, Kimber’s own judgement is seriously in question. Any DPP misjudgement would simply be continuing the sorry performance over decades by the SA legal system that must now be examined by an open and transparent Royal Commission.........Civil Liberties Australia says the Crown in SA knew the likelihood that there was no murder – that the death was possibly, even probably an accident – as early as 2004. At least, if the justice system in SA had been functioning properly, the state’s Solicitors-General and Attorneys-General since 2004 should have known: an expert forensic report they themselves commissioned told them so. The report described a forensic test they could run to prove death was not deliberate by a handgrip, as described by Manock. The Crown failed to undertake that test. The Crown also failed to give a copy of the report to Keogh, as legal rules required them to do. He languished in jail for a further 10 years, innocent, desperately trying to get his case back before an appeals court.........Keogh’s release in December 2014 was Australia’s first case under a new Right To Appeal law enacted in SA in mid-2013 and mirrored in Tasmania in November 2015. The same law should be passed in every state and territory, Civil Liberties Australia believes, to bring hidden injustices into the light of day..........The state government should now launch a Royal Commission into the state of justice in SA, covering: matters surrounding the Keogh and other questionable cases, including the non-charging of possible murderers, resulting from findings and evidence provided by Forensic Science SA and its predecessors; forensic science examinations, findings and evidence given in courts, tribunals and the like by Dr Colin Manock and state forensic science staff from 1968 to the present (including cases interstate where the SA forensic science services undertook examinations for external bodies, such as the NT government and its agencies, the Australian Federal Police, etc); actions, and inactions, by the Solicitors-General of SA, the Attorneys-General of SA, and other state entities involved in handling the legal appeals and petitions for mercy made by Henry Keogh and others between 1968 and the present; the ability or otherwise of professional tribunals, such as (but not only) those in forensics, medicine and law, to adequately “police” their professions and the members of them, including their speedy ability to prevent members continuing to operate in the profession, to protect the public, if adverse findings arise; the actions and inactions of the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions in relation to the Keogh case and any other relevant cases; and any other matters relevant to the above."
BACKGROUND: "Manock headed the forensic science service in SA for about 30 years from 1968 until his retirement in late 1995, originally with no formal forensic pathology qualification, later with a questionable certificate provided by a professional association basically because he was the head man. Over those three decades, forensic science expanded worldwide like no other branch of police or legal work. Manock is believed to have handled more than 10,000 cases: about 400 involved alleged murders, including dozens where convictions were secured. In many other cases, Manock’s findings may have allowed guilty people to go free, including in three cases of possible “battered baby” syndrome. Criticisms of Manock by his peers and lawyers over the years have included words like “unqualified”, “unreliable”, “dogmatic”, and “incompetent”. The High Court has used words like “discredited”, “speculative” and “unsupported by cogent evidence” in relation to him and his findings. A Royal Commission found his approach to an Indigenous death in custody to be “inappropriate” and his explanation “inadequate”. Manock has recanted key evidence he gave in some trials, including in that of Keogh. These facts make it hard to fathom why SA DPP Kimber would ever have perceived Manock as a “key witness” in a proposed re-trial of Keogh. Since about the turn of the century, a lone Adelaide legal academic, Dr Bob Moles, began pointing out that the forensic science and legal system in SA had gone “feral”, using the Keogh case as the prime – but by no means exclusive – example of how bad things were. Dr Moles built on work begun by Valeria Armfield, an Adelaide lawyer who first stood up for Keogh and who paid the price of about $50,000 in slander damages to the then head of the Law Society of SA. To Moles belongs enormous credit for persisting in the face of disinterest and hostility by virtually all peers in academia and the law. If just a handful of them had shown Moles’ courage, the justice system in SA would be in much better shape today than the mess it is in Keogh’s release from jail is also to the great credit of the media, particularly Graham Archer, the producer/presenter on the TodayTonight show on Channel 7 in SA, but also to Sunday Mail for articles in 2000 and 2001, and ABC’s Four Corners, which first highlighted the problems with the SA forensic service in a major investigative program in 2001.
It is ironic that Channel 7 was also forced to pay damages for defamation to Manock over Today Tonight’s reporting of his activities. The payment occurred over a promo item, designed to draw the attention of as many South Australians as possible to the issue of how bad the state’s forensic and justice system might be! The state government took no notice of any of these people who sounded thunderous alarm bells over a decade and a half. Now the taxpayers of the state will have to pay for the sins of omission of the people in high positions who were entrusted to deliver a fair justice system, and failed."
The entire commentary can be found at:
http://www.cla.asn.au/News/keogh-trial-ends-major-inquiry-needed/
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: Dear Reader. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog. We are following this case.
I have added a search box for content in this blog which now encompasses several thousand posts. The search box is located near the bottom of the screen just above the list of links. I am confident that this powerful search tool provided by "Blogger" will help our readers and myself get more out of the site.
The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at:
http://www.thestar.com/topic/
Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at:
http://smithforensic.blogspot.ca/2013/12/the-charles-smith-award-presented-to_28.html
I look forward to hearing from readers at:
hlevy15@gmail.com; Harold Levy: Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog;
