PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "In the words of the Attorney-General of South Australia to the media on 2 July 2018: “Dr Manock’s evidence as an expert was relied upon. It was completely unreliable, in fact manifestly so, for the purposes of making it simply unsustainable to have a conviction be maintained. Clearly, this was a person who for whatever reason had been appointed, you know, decades before who was discredited and dismissed and his evidence wholly, you know, rejected in that way. 'The application for leave to appeal to the High Court in January will require a response from the DPP – Martin Hinton, previously Justice of the Supreme Court of South Australia (2016-2019). Will he abide by the rule of law that requires Bromley to be freed, his wrongful conviction quashed?"
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POST: 'New years hopes for old injustices', by Andrew L. Urban, published on his 'Wrongful Conviction Report' on December 17, 2020;
SUMMARY OF POST: "An application on behalf of Derek Bromley for leave to appeal to the High Court is likely to be submitted in the New Year – probably in January 2021. Bromley’s 37 year old murder conviction (and failed appeals) does not show the SA legal system in a good light; none of these cases reflects well on The System."
GIST: "Derek Bromley – no reliable evidence & a rogue appeal court: Derek Bromley may be entitled to think that the criminal justice system is biased against him; having wrongly convicted him 37 years ago, it still won’t let him go. It has even defied the rule of law to keep him incarcerated.
Derek Bromley was convicted of murder in 1984. It was said that he assaulted a person and drowned him in the river in Adelaide. The eye witness who testified against him was known to be psychotic and suffering from hallucinations and delusions at the time of the incident. The Crown told the jury that his testimony implicating Bromley was nevertheless reliable.
Then came the autopsy report, prepared by Dr Colin Manock, who claimed that Bromley had drowned the victim. Bromley was convicted.
In the latest appeal, the court was provided with three expert reports on the forensic pathology evidence given by Dr Manock. All the experts agreed that the diagnosis of death by drowning was wrong. They also agreed that because Dr Manock’s autopsy had been fundamentally inadequate, the cause of death must be classified as ‘undetermined’. They also agreed that the cause and timing of the injuries which Dr Manock said were consistent with an assault at about the time of death was also wrong.
Just when Derek might have thought he was vindicated in refusing to admit guilt and thus remain in prison well past his parole eligibility (2008), the Appeal Court went rogue, in layman’s terms. In legal terms, it reads like this: South Australia’s appeal court fundamentally failed to pay due regard to the rule of law and to the well-established principles governing criminal appeals,” according to legal academics Dr Bob Moles and Bibi Sangha. “The principles espoused in the Bromley decision are not only contrary to established authority but have never before appeared in any legal judgment in Australia, Britain or Canada.”
The appeal court determined that the ‘interests of justice’ requirement in the new right of appeal meant that the court had to ensure the acquittal of the innocent and the conviction of the guilty. This meant that it should allow the DPP to present additional evidence to the court on the appeal which would be ‘extremely probative of the appellant’s guilt’. Evidence of a prior conviction was then admitted in order to establish that Bromley had a ‘propensity’ to commit the type of crime in the instant case – even though accident, natural causes and suicide, according to the experts, could not be excluded.
The new evidence, the court said, rendered the Crown and the appellant’s expert evidence on the appeal less ‘compelling’ and therefore insufficient for the grant of leave to appeal. The Court of Appeal also said it was ‘quite correct’ for defence counsel not to raise issues ‘critical of Dr Manock in a broader sense’.
Those issues included the following vital facts: the state had given sworn evidence in legal proceedings prior to 1978 to say that Dr Manock was not qualified to certify cause of death, and he had no expert qualifications. That should have disqualified Dr Manock from giving evidence at Derek Bromley’s trial. Or any other trial.
In the words of the Attorney-General of South Australia to the media on 2 July 2018: “Dr Manock’s evidence as an expert was relied upon. It was completely unreliable, in fact manifestly so, for the purposes of making it simply unsustainable to have a conviction be maintained. Clearly, this was a person who for whatever reason had been appointed, you know, decades before who was discredited and dismissed and his evidence wholly, you know, rejected in that way.”
The application for leave to appeal to the High Court in January will require a response from the DPP – Martin Hinton, previously Justice of the Supreme Court of South Australia (2016-2019). Will he abide by the rule of law that requires Bromley to be freed, his wrongful conviction quashed?"
The entire post can be read at:
new-year-hopes-for-old-injustices
