Cardinal Pell freed

[Esceptico]

The Australian court of appeal has quashed Pell’s conviction for sexual abuse of a child and freed him. It seems they found that the jury shouldn’t have found him guilty because there was sufficient doubt about the credibility of the evidence. Whether he did it or not it seems to me (admittedly not a lawyer) a rather extreme approach to effectively ignore the jury and make the decision themselves. The jury system is far from perfect but has some strengths compared to courts run solely by judges. Should the CoA go back and retry every case? Or is that only saved for influential people?

[sociopath]

I think you'll find the Birmingham 7 (as one example off the top of my head) shows the CoA is for everyone.

And yes I do realise that was the UK not Australia

[Esceptico]

sociopath said:

I think you'll find the Birmingham 7 (as one example off the top of my head) shows the CoA is for everyone.

And yes I do realise that was the UK not Australia

Hardly comparable cases as the confessions and evidence for the Birmingham six was shown to be unsafe.

[sociopath]

Esceptico said:

sociopath said:

I think you'll find the Birmingham 7 (as one example off the top of my head) shows the CoA is for everyone.

And yes I do realise that was the UK not Australia

Hardly comparable cases as the confessions and evidence for the Birmingham six was shown to be unsafe.

It's absolutely comparable, and it answers the question you asked.

And the evidence wasn't shown to be unsafe for years.

I'm no fan of the Catholic church or kiddy fiddling priests, but the CoA has just decided the evidence for this has also been shown to be unsafe/unbalanced

[Jonesy23]

From what I can see they basically decided the testimony wasn't properly considered - you had one person claiming stuff had happened to them, the other alleged victim was dead and had denied anything had happened to them, and a lot of witnesses saying the alleged scenario of the assaults couldn't have happened as described due to timing/location/nature of the clothes being worn at the time (eg. can't pull your dick out through a seamless alb/ four layers of robes).

So basically an uncorroborated claim on one side and a load of counter evidence, and the claim had been believed over everything else, and the appeal court decided this was wrong.

[George Smiley]

He's a catholic priest though so they probably took that into consideration and on the balance of probability found him guilty.

[TwigtheWonderkid]

George Smiley said:

He's a catholic priest though so they probably took that into consideration and on the balance of probability found him guilty.

Beat me to it.