The “court of public opinion”, sometimes referred to as the pub test.
And it doesn’t pass the pub test. That’s the problem. Yes it is true that nobody “outside the jury and the legal officers directly involved in the case comes close to knowing the 'facts of the matter'. That is a fact.” But why? In particular, why was the court closed for a day while evidence was heard in secret? So much lurid detail has been published; what more was there that could be so bad that we were not allowed to hear?
And the evidence was not corroborated. Corroboration of evidence seems to me to have been central to our judicial system for centuries. Why did it not apply in this case?
In fact one writer has claimed to have attended all public sessions of both trials, the first one in which the jury are reported to have been 10 to 2 in favour of acquittal, and the second one where the Cardinal was convicted, and is reported in this article SPECIAL EDITORIAL Has Cardinal George Pell been wrongly convicted?, by Patrick J. Byrne, as follows:Peter Westmore – former president of the National Civic Council, publisher and regular contributor to the NCC’s News Weekly – attended all public hearings of the two trials of Cardinal Pell. He was interviewed on Andrew Bolt’s Sky News program, The Bolt Report, and on American EWTN television.
Pardon? Not one of the 25 witnesses for the prosecution corroborated the statements of the complainant? If this is true, how did he get convicted? That is what has people worried, Faz – who will be next to be accused, by a single person, without corroboration, in a seemingly implausible scenario? That doesn’t seem to pass the pub test.
Having twice heard the evidence of 25 people brought as witnesses by the Prosecution, Mr Westmore said that not one corroborated the statements of the complainant. He said he was shocked by the guilty verdict and concluded that the “well of public opinion” had been so poisoned that it was not possible for the Cardinal to get a fair trial.
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