Speaker 1: The jury of the jailhouse has its own opinion. Very
Speaker 1: interesting lot inside. They can be fairly uncompromising when it
Speaker 1: comes to crime and punishment.
Speaker 2: A guy who stole a cat flat from Bunnings was
Speaker 2: up on a charge of theft because he stole a
Speaker 2: cat flap and then tried to get a refund.
Speaker 1: The cash is master. Cruinal ice has not improved things, hasn't.
Speaker 2: No, It's made the life a whole lot worse for
Speaker 2: police and judges in the country.
Speaker 1: I'm Andrew. Rule is life in crimes. We have a
Speaker 1: lot of interesting people come to our studios or sometimes
Speaker 1: call in, and today we've got one of the best.
Speaker 1: Our back court reporter is the name of her book.
Speaker 1: It's also a description of what she used to do.
Speaker 1: This is Jamel Wells Jammel. I noticed a year agol
Speaker 1: from Cooba way back in the day, and that you
Speaker 1: used to write at shows like Sydney Royal and other
Speaker 1: places where I think your dad used to take you
Speaker 1: with your favorite pony. How does a girl from Coba
Speaker 1: Pony Club, I imagine, end up reporting on courts all
Speaker 1: around the nation? Tell us about that journey.
Speaker 2: I think by accident. Andrew I had always wanted to
Speaker 2: be a journalist when I was at school at Koba
Speaker 2: High School where I went to school, it was public school.
Speaker 2: I think they were only about eight or nine people
Speaker 2: who did their HC. And for a lot of my subjects,
Speaker 2: I didn't actually have a teacher. I had to do
Speaker 2: them almost by correspondents. And then I left school and
Speaker 2: went to work as a journalist in commercial media, and
Speaker 2: I read and worked in radio and commercial radio newsrooms
Speaker 2: for quite a while, and then eventually down my way
Speaker 2: to the ABC and one of the court reporters left,
Speaker 2: one of the Sydney court reporters moved into State and
Speaker 2: one of my bosses said, oh, do you want to
Speaker 2: do the court round? And I had covered an ICAC
Speaker 2: inquiry before that, which was a lot of fun, and
Speaker 2: I thought, oh, yeah, courts can't be too different from
Speaker 2: ICQ inquiries, and then if very different, And then I
Speaker 2: was petrified because I thought, oh, no, what have I done.
Speaker 2: The thing about court reporting is, as you would know,
Speaker 2: no one can actually teach you how to do it.
Speaker 2: They can suggest things and tell you about some of
Speaker 2: the protocols, but it's very much a job where you
Speaker 2: have to learn on the job, and you have to
Speaker 2: follow other people around and learn as you go, and
Speaker 2: no day in court is the same, and there are
Speaker 2: hundreds of different courts, you know, there are local court,
Speaker 2: district court, Supreme courts, federal court, high cords. And it
Speaker 2: was trial by error, and I was certainly thrown into
Speaker 2: this whole new world of legal jargon. And I think
Speaker 2: what appealed to me most was the theater of court
Speaker 2: rooms and the fact that every damut of human emotions
Speaker 2: comes out in a court room and it can be
Speaker 2: really sad and disturbing, but highly entertaining as well. So
Speaker 2: I did the court and I still do. You do
Speaker 2: some court reporting that I did do the court round
Speaker 2: for about a decade for the ABC, so it's a
Speaker 2: long time.
Speaker 1: In that time, you've covered probably hundreds of cases and
Speaker 1: in dozens of courtrooms. But I note that you've covered
Speaker 1: some cases that are of national renown. One of them
Speaker 1: is the Gordon Wood trial, which was a long running,
Speaker 1: very messy affair, and that of course takes us back
Speaker 1: to the untimely death of his girlfriend, Carolyn Byrne. You know,
Speaker 1: of course, Gordon Wood, our listeners might recall, was a tall, blonde,
Speaker 1: handsome young man that used to be Rene Rivcny the
Speaker 1: late millionaires private assistant and chauffeur. Interesting job description and
Speaker 1: so on and so forth. It was an interesting case
Speaker 1: because it sort of picked up on a lot of
Speaker 1: people in Sydney cafe society for one of a better phrase.
Speaker 1: You of course will remember the facts of the matter,
Speaker 1: but just run a bit of it past us.
Speaker 2: Well. That was one of the first murder trial like
Speaker 2: covered and it was very high profile. Gordon Wood was
Speaker 2: accused of throwing his model girlfriend Caroline Burne over the Gap,
Speaker 2: a well known suicide spot in Sydney's eastern suburbs. It's
Speaker 2: out in Watson's Bay, and he was accused of doing
Speaker 2: so because he was jealous and obsessed with her, And
Speaker 2: the crown case was that he went out there with
Speaker 2: her late at night, they had an argument and he
Speaker 2: somehow pushed her over the gap. Now, his defense was
Speaker 2: that she had had suicidal thoughts, she had mental health issues,
Speaker 2: and that she had committed suicide. After a very long
Speaker 2: running trial, he was convicted, found guilty of murder and jailed,
Speaker 2: and then he won an appeal and that he was
Speaker 2: acquitted and then walked free and then started to sue
Speaker 2: the State of New South Wales for malicious prosecution.
Speaker 1: He was acquitted.
Speaker 2: As he mentioned, it had high profile witnesses such as
Speaker 2: Jim Dally Watkins, the modeling agency entrepreneur who had trained
Speaker 2: and managed Carolyn Burne at some stage. It had very
Speaker 2: high profile magazine editors and celebrity psychologists and very high
Speaker 2: profile Sydney business people who all created in and out
Speaker 2: of the Supreme Court at down at Taylor Square in
Speaker 2: Sydney giving evidence. And of course Gordon would was very
Speaker 2: very tall, blonde, detractive man, had a whole lot of
Speaker 2: glamorous people he hung out with, but he had always
Speaker 2: maintained his innocence. There was an inquest into her death
Speaker 2: and it didn't conclude that anyone should be charged, and
Speaker 2: Carolyn Burn's father believed all along that she had been murdered,
Speaker 2: so he pushed very very hard, and her former employer,
Speaker 2: Jean Dally Watkins did that too, And before this matter
Speaker 2: actually got to trial, they went around a lot of
Speaker 2: businesses around the gap around Watson's Bay where this well
Speaker 2: known suicide cliff was, and they handed out grocers and
Speaker 2: photos of Caroline and set as anyone seen her, and
Speaker 2: they gathered witness statements, and they really pushed hard. The
Speaker 2: police had a bit of a setback in the case.
Speaker 2: One of the detectives who was at first investigating it
Speaker 2: actually got hit by a bus halfway through the investigations.
Speaker 2: So the police said all along that they were very
Speaker 2: under resourced. They mixed up some of the evidence. For example,
Speaker 2: we found out at the trial that they had posted
Speaker 2: a place where her body had been found, but it
Speaker 2: was actually the wrong place, and they'd got some of
Speaker 2: the evidence mixed up and changed around. So there are
Speaker 2: all sorts of setbacks and complications. And I remember at
Speaker 2: the start of the trial, I think that the jury
Speaker 2: had to be discharged because one of the jurors had
Speaker 2: decided to go out to the gap themselves and their
Speaker 2: own investigation, which jurors are told by judges not to do.
Speaker 2: So there are all sorts of twists in turn on
Speaker 2: the way. And the day he was found guilty, it
Speaker 2: was early on a weekday morning and the jury had
Speaker 2: been out for some time and the jury foreman called
Speaker 2: the court staff, whom they came in. It was about
Speaker 2: nine point thirty in the morning, and it was a
Speaker 2: very very quick quick decision, and it was quite shocking
Speaker 2: when the guilty verdict was read out and Gordon, who'd
Speaker 2: been free on bail and walking in and out of
Speaker 2: the courtroom, was suddenly taken into custody.
Speaker 1: Now your reaction your a veteran court reported, Well, I
Speaker 1: don't know if you have veteran then, but you've certainly
Speaker 1: become one since. I guess you've seen a lot of
Speaker 1: trials and a lot of accused, and a lot of
Speaker 1: people found guilty and a lot found not guilty. Were
Speaker 1: you shocked yourself when that happened, and did you think
Speaker 1: that's a miscarriage of justice or were you happy to
Speaker 1: sort of go along with it.
Speaker 2: Look, that was one of the very first murder trials
Speaker 2: i'd covered, and there were compelling cases on both sides.
Speaker 2: You had the then Chief Crown Prosecutor in New South Wales,
Speaker 2: Mark Tedeski, who was very articulate and a great performer
Speaker 2: in a court room and presented this compelling case. And
Speaker 2: Gordon Wood also had a top defense barrister, Winston Terracini,
Speaker 2: who I think he was nicknamed Terror or something. He
Speaker 2: was quite short of stature, but highly articulate and a
Speaker 2: fantastic defense barrister. So there were two very very compelling cases,
Speaker 2: and there were a lot of witnesses and everybody, well,
Speaker 2: I mean, as reporters, we do this all the time.
Speaker 2: We all say, oh, I think I know what happened,
Speaker 2: or I think it's going this way. But the truth is,
Speaker 2: I've found that you never really know which way jury's
Speaker 2: going to go. You can be quite surprised by the chamblin.
Speaker 1: But what was your reaction? You're the jury for me.
Speaker 2: Shopped because it was one of the first trials I'd covered,
Speaker 2: and it was so dramatic, and the guilty verdict was
Speaker 2: read out and he was taken into custody in suddenly
Speaker 2: it was this just this mad flurry of you know,
Speaker 2: as as it always his reporters gathering at said the court,
Speaker 2: trying to get grabs from all the people involved. And
Speaker 2: then everybody came out and made a statement. Carol and
Speaker 2: Burne's father came out and made a statement, and then
Speaker 2: Miss jin Dally Watkins came out and made a statement.
Speaker 2: I think Winston spoke at the time.
Speaker 1: But were you surprised at the verdict? And then were
Speaker 1: you surprised when he appealed and won over time?
Speaker 2: No, No, I thought there were some perhaps holes in
Speaker 2: the crown pace, but if it had gone either way,
Speaker 2: it was a really big, dramatic day in the cortand
Speaker 2: it was quite overwhelming.
Speaker 1: You were day You weren't personally invested in one way
Speaker 1: or the other.
Speaker 2: No, No, because it was one of the first trials
Speaker 2: I'd covered, and it was a how do I say? Yes?
Speaker 2: It was important in that this was someone's future being determined,
Speaker 2: and there are a lot of grieving family members wanting
Speaker 2: justice for car and burn, but it had been a big, celebrity,
Speaker 2: high profile trial. There hadn't been any Some of the
Speaker 2: trials that have really stayed with me over the years
Speaker 2: have been murder trials involving children, for example, or whole
Speaker 2: families who've been murdered by someone in their own time.
Speaker 1: That leads us to at least two others and money
Speaker 1: is the very well known case because there has been
Speaker 1: a lot of coverage with television programs. The murder trial
Speaker 1: of Kelly Lane, the young woman water polo player, big, strong, fit,
Speaker 1: athletic young woman who was accused and convicted and jailed
Speaker 1: over the death and disappearance of a newborn baby. Is
Speaker 1: that right? Can you take us back over that? Yeah?
Speaker 2: That's right. Kelly Lane was a very very good water
Speaker 2: polo player. She'd been chosen as to being in Australian
Speaker 2: teams for very high profile competitions, including the Olympics. And
Speaker 2: she had a baby daughter called Tigan, who mysteriously disappeared,
Speaker 2: and she has argued all along that the child's father
Speaker 2: took her and that man has never been found. So
Speaker 2: that was the evidence presented to the court at her trial,
Speaker 2: that she gave the child up to its biological father.
Speaker 2: But the crown case was that she somehow murdered the
Speaker 2: child and disposed of the child's body. But Tiggan's body
Speaker 2: has never been found. That that is really important, and
Speaker 2: Kelly Lane was asked repeatedly to identify this man. A
Speaker 2: few people were presented as the possible father of the child,
Speaker 2: but she argued that she wanted to maintain his secrecy
Speaker 2: and you know, she didn't have to reveal it or
Speaker 2: reveal his identity. So it's interesting though she was jailed
Speaker 2: for murder after being found guilt. But the trial judge
Speaker 2: who presided over that case, he's now retired just as.
Speaker 1: He actually he's over his shyness problem. He doesn't mind a.
Speaker 2: Chat He said in retrospect that it troubled him at
Speaker 2: times that the jury wasn't given the alternative charge of
Speaker 2: manslaughter to consider. And I can't quite recall why that
Speaker 2: happened at the time, but he has said that that
Speaker 2: that verdict troubled him for some time, partly because of
Speaker 2: that reason. She's lost new recipeals as we know, and
Speaker 2: we've heard various reports over the years of her fate
Speaker 2: in jail. You know that she has had issues of
Speaker 2: being assaulted by other inmates and whatnot, but she has
Speaker 2: maintained her innocence all along.
Speaker 1: The jury of the jail house has its own opinion.
Speaker 1: Very interesting lot inside. They can be fairly uncompromising when
Speaker 1: it comes to crime and punishment. They throw boiling water
Speaker 1: around all sorts of things. It does seem a strange
Speaker 1: defense that she gave it to unknown man who vanished.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the evidence presented at the trial was that
Speaker 2: soon after getting birds, she went to a wedding and
Speaker 2: was filmed. You know that she snuck out of Auban
Speaker 2: hospital in Sydney's West and then was videoed dancing at
Speaker 2: someone's wedding. Quite remarkable, and the other evidence presented at
Speaker 2: her trial was that she had had several pregnancies and
Speaker 2: that she'd hidden them from her various partners, so that
Speaker 2: was quite quite profound as well.
Speaker 1: She's a complicated character. No matter what the truth is
Speaker 1: of this baby's disappearance, she's got a very strange background.
Speaker 1: There's another one now. I wasn't very familiar with this
Speaker 1: until I had a look at it. It's very much
Speaker 1: in your South Wales case, but it was a very
Speaker 1: big case in your South Wales and as where really
Speaker 1: a national podcast, I think we should have a look
Speaker 1: at it. That is the trial of Jeffrey Gillham, who
Speaker 1: was accused tell me if I'm wrong of killing not
Speaker 1: only his brother Christopher, who which I think he admits,
Speaker 1: but killing his parents, which he strongly denies. He appeals
Speaker 1: and on appeal he was acquitted. This is one of
Speaker 1: those peculiar family murders where you know one person is
Speaker 1: accused of wiping out the rest of the family. Tell
Speaker 1: us a bit about that.
Speaker 2: That's right, he was accused of murdering his parents and
Speaker 2: his brother. And that was a trial that was heard
Speaker 2: very very early on in my career, when I wasn't
Speaker 2: quite covering the court round and I think I inherited
Speaker 2: that trial from the prenecess at various appeals along the way,
Speaker 2: but from memory. He was accused of starting a fire
Speaker 2: or something that wiped out his parents, and the crown
Speaker 2: case was that he was motivated by greed. He wanted money,
Speaker 2: as is the motivation of many people have worked out people,
Speaker 2: and we hear this a lot in murder trials, and
Speaker 2: we hear money as been the center of much conflict
Speaker 2: in courtrooms, not only in the city but also in
Speaker 2: the country. If I might talk about a story very
Speaker 2: close to me, in my little home town of Cooba,
Speaker 2: there was a very well known family, the Setries, Margaret
Speaker 2: and In Setri, and they were good community people. They
Speaker 2: did a lot of volunteer work. They were loved in
Speaker 2: the town. And their son, Scott Setri, who we can
Speaker 2: name now stood trial for murdering them, and he had
Speaker 2: a lot of mental health issues. And at his trial,
Speaker 2: it was a judge alone trial, the court heard that
Speaker 2: he had an argument with them over a bottle of wine.
Speaker 2: So he took a gun from the cupboard and shot
Speaker 2: them both get at point black range in their Coba
Speaker 2: home and then covered in blood, he walked into the
Speaker 2: local pub and there are retired police officer recognized him
Speaker 2: and said, mate, it covered in blood. What's wrong And
Speaker 2: he said, I think I've done something bad. So this
Speaker 2: ex cock phoned police and that all unfolded. Now, why
Speaker 2: this turned out to be a really significant trial for
Speaker 2: my hometown was that he was actually found not guilty
Speaker 2: by reason of mental illness. And so you know that
Speaker 2: means that the judge says, okay, you had to go
Speaker 2: to a prison hospital until you are deemed well enough
Speaker 2: to be let out in the community, and there's no
Speaker 2: conviction record. Now, his sister, Wendy Robinson lobbied the new
Speaker 2: South Wales Attorney General for years to try to change
Speaker 2: that because it really upset her that people could murder
Speaker 2: their parents or murder a family member and then be
Speaker 2: found not guilty by reason of mental illness. So she's
Speaker 2: still lobbying away at that. But it ended up in
Speaker 2: court over money because he stood to inherit despite murdering
Speaker 2: his parents. He stood to inherit something like a million
Speaker 2: dollars from their estate having killed them. So Wendy applied
Speaker 2: to the court to have something called a forfeiture rule
Speaker 2: forced by the judge and the judge you heard that case,
Speaker 2: said look, I'm going to enforce that rule. I'm not
Speaker 2: going to give you you a million dollars, but I
Speaker 2: am going to give you one hundred thousand dollars because
Speaker 2: at some stage you're going to get out of jail
Speaker 2: and you're going to be a burden on society. You know,
Speaker 2: someone's going to have to pay for your upkeeps. So
Speaker 2: I'm going to give you some money for your care.
Speaker 2: From what I understand, he has been I think he's
Speaker 2: due for paroles soon or some sort of day release.
Speaker 2: So I know this because Wendy's been contacting the media
Speaker 2: and saying that A she's concerned about that, and B
Speaker 2: she still wants these laws changed where people can just
Speaker 2: be found not guilty by reason of mental illness. She
Speaker 2: wants it varied somehow so that there is some sort
Speaker 2: of conviction recorded even though there's a mental illness finding.
Speaker 1: She thinks that it's not mental illness, that it is staged.
Speaker 1: That even going to the pub covered in blood, some
Speaker 1: might say, is a good way to stage mental illness.
Speaker 1: You know, why would you do that? If you were
Speaker 1: just a genuine murderer, you wouldn't dub yourself in like that, etc. Etc.
Speaker 1: What's your thoughts.
Speaker 2: I think he did have a history of mental illness,
Speaker 2: and the issue is that being out in the country,
Speaker 2: there's very poor health care and no mental health care
Speaker 2: at all, and he had not been taking his medication
Speaker 2: according to the family, but there was no backup and
Speaker 2: no follow up. So few years they had tried to
Speaker 2: get him mental health care, but the truth is there's
Speaker 2: none and so at that time he wasn't able to
Speaker 2: see a psychologist, psychiatrist, counselor wasn't even able to get
Speaker 2: into a GP. So that's another big issue in the
Speaker 2: country and I see a lot of that in the
Speaker 2: time I've spent in country courtrooms, not just in my
Speaker 2: hometown but all over Australia. The law and the health
Speaker 2: system are really closely linked because a lot of the
Speaker 2: judges and magistrates in the country say, Okay, I want
Speaker 2: to send this person to a drug rehead program. I
Speaker 2: want a few different bail options for them, but they
Speaker 2: can't because there's no rehab. You know, A lot of
Speaker 2: magistrates say, look, you know, I want you to go
Speaker 2: and get go and see a GP and get a
Speaker 2: mental health care plan and get some counseling and you know,
Speaker 2: get your life back on track. And I've actually seen
Speaker 2: young people in the court go your honor. You know,
Speaker 2: I can't get into a GP for three months. And
Speaker 2: they're not exaggerating that the health is so bad in
Speaker 2: some regional areas, the health care, I should say, it's
Speaker 2: just nonexistent. So the magistrates are limited in the sentences
Speaker 2: they hand down and in the way they release people
Speaker 2: on mail and run their courtroom a lot of the time.
Speaker 1: Ah, I see. It's interesting in that case, had there
Speaker 1: been a little more enforcement about locking up guns, he
Speaker 1: couldn't have just reached into a cupboard and pulled one out.
Speaker 1: If his parents were concerned about his mental health all
Speaker 1: those years, perhaps locking up guns might have been a
Speaker 1: good trick.
Speaker 2: Look, it might have, Andrew, But I think they were
Speaker 2: very trusting country people who tried to do the best
Speaker 2: for him. You know, we heard in court that they'd
Speaker 2: lent him money, they'd paid his bills, that they made
Speaker 2: excuses for his violent outbursts, as parents do to protect
Speaker 2: their children. But you make a really good point. At
Speaker 2: a lot of the courts I've sat in in the country.
Speaker 2: You know, gun crime and gun violence is big because
Speaker 2: farmers have guns, they need them for part of what
Speaker 2: they do. And especially in a lot of domestic violence cases,
Speaker 2: there are a lot of you know, men who have
Speaker 2: access to guns and use them to threaten women. Women
Speaker 2: who access have access to guns use them to threaten men.
Speaker 2: A lot of kids get come before the courts because
Speaker 2: they shot animals on someone's property or just gone and
Speaker 2: shot up the tires of someone's car out of boredom,
Speaker 2: because they have happen to do so. Guns and weapons
Speaker 2: feature a lot in country courtrooms.
Speaker 1: Country courts here now, I think you covered a terrorism trial.
Speaker 1: Which one was that, Oh, there were a few. What's
Speaker 1: your favorite or your least favorite?
Speaker 2: There was a very long running one and it went
Speaker 2: for over a year. It was a number of young men,
Speaker 2: I think there were about half a dozen of them,
Speaker 2: and they were all charged over with terrorism offenses after
Speaker 2: a series of plots were uncovered to do things like
Speaker 2: blow up the Harbor Bridge and behead the Prime Minister
Speaker 2: and all sorts of other atrocities. And they purposely built
Speaker 2: a court room out at Parramatta in Sydney's West for
Speaker 2: this trial because they thought that the courtrooms in the
Speaker 2: city weren't secure enough. So this trial courtroom was built.
Speaker 2: It was high security, and these young men stood trial
Speaker 2: and the judge who jailed them, I think most of
Speaker 2: them are on parole now. The judge who actually jailed them,
Speaker 2: he said, you've shown no remorse, and they were doing
Speaker 2: things like standing up and yelling at the judge in court,
Speaker 2: and their supporters in the public gallery were quite aggressive
Speaker 2: towards members of the public. And the judge said, if
Speaker 2: I could jail you some longer, I would, but the
Speaker 2: legislation as such as I can only give you this
Speaker 2: genial term. And they all got various jail sentences, but
Speaker 2: they were essentially jailed for plotting terrorist attacks. And what
Speaker 2: we heard at that trial were allegations that they'd been
Speaker 2: out in the country around places like Burking Country, New
Speaker 2: South Wales, learning how to fly planes and training out
Speaker 2: in the bush, learning how to use gardens and things
Speaker 2: like that. So it was quite scary. It was quite
Speaker 2: that very confronting.
Speaker 1: Is a question. It'd be intriguing to know whether those
Speaker 1: people approached to teach those people to fly planes. Wonder
Speaker 1: they're an unusual cohort and maybe I'll mention this to
Speaker 1: some did that happen.
Speaker 2: No, they didn't at the time. That there have been
Speaker 2: cases since then of people. I think there's once before
Speaker 2: the courts as we speak, people accused of training overseas
Speaker 2: pilots to do things that they shouldn't be doing and whatnot.
Speaker 2: There as an American fellow before the court. Yes, yes,
Speaker 2: so that that is an interesting one. I think at
Speaker 2: the time it was the start of a lot of
Speaker 2: the terrorism related crime we have in Australia now and
Speaker 2: it was the first really big trial for it, and
Speaker 2: there was one running in Melbourne. I think. Concurrently there
Speaker 2: was run all the year before the year after Benbrika
Speaker 2: begin so there was just a whole string of trials together,
Speaker 2: but there were all sorts of suppression orders and it
Speaker 2: was only some time after the trials we could talk
Speaker 2: about them. But this one went for over a year.
Speaker 2: It was a long time to sit through a trial
Speaker 2: and I felt for the jury it was a big
Speaker 2: chunk out of them.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's intriguing with big cases and once committed, they've
Speaker 1: really got to stay there. You know, they might put
Speaker 1: fourteen in to allow two to fall by the wayside,
Speaker 1: but it's a big deal, isn't it. For people.
Speaker 2: It really is. And people say that after being on juries,
Speaker 2: they say that it's been life changing, you know, for
Speaker 2: all sorts of reasons. A it's a year out of
Speaker 2: it would have been a year out of their life.
Speaker 2: But be you suddenly, if you're a juror in a
Speaker 2: room with a group of strangers and you suddenly forced
Speaker 2: to work with them, get on with them, you know,
Speaker 2: make decisions with them, I think that would be hard.
Speaker 2: And what we heard at that trial too, was that
Speaker 2: initially some of the jurors had been followed to their
Speaker 2: cars by people. Oh yeah, yeah, So what they had
Speaker 2: to do was then bust them in. Every day as
Speaker 2: extra safety precaution, a bus would pick up the jurors
Speaker 2: to make a secret point and bring them to court.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's wonderful. It really sort of reassures you about
Speaker 1: it the authorities and how the countries run. Really all
Speaker 1: this sort of stuff can happen. Now you've sat through
Speaker 1: a lot of things in court, how do you feel
Speaker 1: for judges, magistrates, perhaps even some lawyers and jurors the
Speaker 1: risk of going to sleep after lunch. Have you found
Speaker 1: that a problem? You know, at two o'clock in the
Speaker 1: afternoon and there you are in and they're droning on
Speaker 1: and the sun's coming through the windows, and you think,
Speaker 1: my head's going to nod and I'm going to go
Speaker 1: to sleep here. Is that not a terrible thing to
Speaker 1: happen in court?
Speaker 2: It's awful if you snore, because you're busted straight away. Look, truthfully,
Speaker 2: I have gone to sleep in some courtrooms. I have
Speaker 2: never seen a judge go to sleep in the court room,
Speaker 2: and especially in some of the country courtrooms I've been in,
Speaker 2: because their workload is so big. They've got this huge
Speaker 2: list to get through, and it's been my experience they're
Speaker 2: just plowing through it all as quickly as they can.
Speaker 2: But a lot of what you see in city courtrooms,
Speaker 2: in long running trials and things is is really boring.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's the dramatic and really interesting stuff, but
Speaker 2: there are whole lots of statistics and re enactments to
Speaker 2: things on video and experts you know, analyzing dark and
Speaker 2: all important stuff. But yeah, ted is for people who
Speaker 2: aren't experts in it themselves. So I really admire judges
Speaker 2: and magistrates for keeping their composure and sitting through it
Speaker 2: and understanding it, yeah, and trying to make and directing
Speaker 2: jurists to consider it properly. That's really important because if
Speaker 2: the judge doesn't give the right sort of directions to
Speaker 2: the jury, you know about how to interpret this stuff,
Speaker 2: and you know that that can have really awful consequences.
Speaker 1: If you were dictator for a day and they said, okay, Jamelle,
Speaker 1: the jury system do we really need it? Or should
Speaker 1: we have trials by judge alone with perhaps two assistant
Speaker 1: experts in their field, or should we have an inquisitorial system?
Speaker 1: What would you say? You're a dictator now, so waiver wand.
Speaker 2: I would say judge alone.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: That's just a very personal thing because I've sat through
Speaker 2: a lot of trials in a lot of different juries.
Speaker 2: But I have spoken to top crown prosecutors who swear
Speaker 2: by the jury's system and they say it's a great system.
Speaker 2: It's not perfect, but it's great. But my personal preference
Speaker 2: would be for judge alone. What I have seen in
Speaker 2: covering a lot of country courts for this latest book
Speaker 2: is that most of the stuff you hear in country
Speaker 2: counts is local court stuff before a magistrate or an
Speaker 2: inquiry or something. It doesn't often involve a jury. And
Speaker 2: what I saw was that country magistrates do a whole
Speaker 2: lot more than these city counterparts. They're like bush doctors.
Speaker 2: You know, they do a bit of everything. So they
Speaker 2: they might do a bit of children's court working in
Speaker 2: their local court, they might do an inquest for a day,
Speaker 2: or you know, they're doing a little bit of everything.
Speaker 2: They might use some family violence matters, whereas in a
Speaker 2: city court room, magistrates have a lot more leeway to
Speaker 2: bat things around to each other. You know, they'll go
Speaker 2: on my list is full for the day, I want
Speaker 2: to move this over to court five or something, or
Speaker 2: I want to find another another person to A country
Speaker 2: magistrate just doesn't have that liberty. And what I saw
Speaker 2: was that they do work. I would argue a lot harder,
Speaker 2: a lot longer hours, and there seems to be a
Speaker 2: very high mental burnout rate. Like one district court judge
Speaker 2: I spoke to you, who'd spend a lot of time
Speaker 2: in the country, said she just used to go home
Speaker 2: and lie on the couch at the end of the day.
Speaker 2: And like coll Up, she said, I was just so
Speaker 2: overwhelmed by the caseload. Another magistrate, for example, this is
Speaker 2: how hard their job can be. She was in the
Speaker 2: sixties and she drove to Burke to preside over Burke
Speaker 2: Court in out New South Wales, and this group of
Speaker 2: children broke into her hotel room and tried to steal
Speaker 2: her handbag and her car keys. One got in through
Speaker 2: the window and let the others in and she fought
Speaker 2: them off, and as she was ringing up for help,
Speaker 2: they came back again and she fought them off again.
Speaker 2: That now, luckily she wasn't badly injured. But that's the
Speaker 2: sort of stuff that can happen. They're often driving around
Speaker 2: long distances. One magistrate who actually retired when he was
Speaker 2: in his fifties because he said that was just so overwhelming,
Speaker 2: had death threats, had you know, spoor stickers painted on
Speaker 2: its garage. This was way back in the eighties nineties,
Speaker 2: and he said, when the drag ice became a big
Speaker 2: problem in country communities, you know, people started jumping the
Speaker 2: dock and swearing at him and trying to attack him.
Speaker 2: And he said, that's when we started to build glass
Speaker 2: walls in country courtrooms. We'd actually just needed them to
Speaker 2: keep people away away from us. And the court staff.
Speaker 1: Ice has not improved things, hasn't.
Speaker 2: No, it's made the life lot worse for police and
Speaker 2: judges in the country. There is a really really bad
Speaker 2: ice problem, and especially in a lot of towns like
Speaker 2: Marie and our New South Wales. One case I wrote
Speaker 2: about it was a judgment against two indigenous teenagers. They
Speaker 2: one was I think twelve, when one was fifteen, and
Speaker 2: they knew that their neighbor was going on a holiday
Speaker 2: with her children, and she was an elderly lady, so
Speaker 2: they assumed she might have some cash in the house.
Speaker 2: She woke up in the middle of the night. She
Speaker 2: could hear all this crashing and banging, and they broke
Speaker 2: into her house with bricks. They smashed windows, smashed the door.
Speaker 2: They bashed her with bricks and left her for dead.
Speaker 2: She was just crawling on the ground and they took
Speaker 2: her handbag, which had just a few hundred dollars in it.
Speaker 2: She somehow survived that and crawled next door alerted. The
Speaker 2: neighbors ended up in hospital. I saw the photos of
Speaker 2: her horrendous injuries, and the really sad thing is Andrew
Speaker 2: she couldn't go back to that house. She was too scared.
Speaker 2: She moved out of town, moved into state with her family,
Speaker 2: and the two kids were picked up pretty quickly because
Speaker 2: they left fingerprints everywhere. So they got charged. They came
Speaker 2: before a district court judge. He said, look, you've got
Speaker 2: no structure in your lives. You don't go to school,
Speaker 2: you don't have proper meals, you don't have parents looking
Speaker 2: after you properly. So he thought that a custodial sentence
Speaker 2: was the only way to maybe make a difference to
Speaker 2: these kids' lives. So he gave them a couple of
Speaker 2: years in juvenile detention. But then they appealed against it,
Speaker 2: and a panel of judges in Sydney overturned it and
Speaker 2: they walked free because they thought it was too severe. Now,
Speaker 2: there were members of that local Maury community really angry
Speaker 2: at that decision because they wanted to try and help
Speaker 2: these kids see what they'd done was wrong. And there
Speaker 2: were prison interviews that are part of the judgment, and
Speaker 2: one of the kids says he's talking to a relative
Speaker 2: and he says to the relative of oh, I'm not
Speaker 2: sorry for what I did. She deserved it. There's a
Speaker 2: twelve year old kid.
Speaker 1: No, it's a wicked business. Well, Jamelle, we could talk
Speaker 1: about this for ours. Is there so many fascinating cases
Speaker 1: I have to say that, like most journals of our
Speaker 1: vintage or my vintage, I've spent a bit of time
Speaker 1: in courts, and I think that it's full of the
Speaker 1: most human stories that if someone said to me, let's
Speaker 1: start a new newspaper tomorrow, or a weekly newspaper, well,
Speaker 1: perhaps an online newspaper, I reckon you could nearly base
Speaker 1: one on courts. I just think it's full of very
Speaker 1: human stories. And every week, somewhere in Australia there's a
Speaker 1: great story unfolding in a courtroom.
Speaker 2: Well that's very true.
Speaker 1: I'm in.
Speaker 2: Is you do that, I'm in, I'll join you.
Speaker 1: Yes, right.
Speaker 2: There's just so much and I would encourage people. People
Speaker 2: say to me, oh, how did you choose the country courtrooms?
Speaker 2: You went into your latest book, And I essentially just
Speaker 2: went on a few road trips and I drove around
Speaker 2: and just dropped into courtrooms, and mostly I was welcome
Speaker 2: because country court staff and magistrates don't get a lot
Speaker 2: of attention. Quite often, the media doesn't report on them
Speaker 2: quite often. I had a hostile reception. They drawed it
Speaker 2: to throw me out, and they're just not used to
Speaker 2: having the media in there and being under that sort
Speaker 2: of scrutiny, and that's important because our system of justice,
Speaker 2: you know, we meant to have open justice in Australia,
Speaker 2: and the truth is, unless it's a closed court, any
Speaker 2: of us can walk.
Speaker 1: Into a court, which persons sort of took it on
Speaker 1: himself to think they could throw you out or even
Speaker 1: discuss it.
Speaker 2: Mostly court officials. However, I did get thrown out of
Speaker 2: Foster Local Court on the Mid North Coast for writing
Speaker 2: because I dropped in there one day and all sorts
Speaker 2: of fun things happened at Foster, like a guy who
Speaker 2: stole a cat flap from Bunnings was up on a
Speaker 2: charge of theft because he stole a cat flap and
Speaker 2: then tried to get a refund at the cashiers could
Speaker 2: master gruner. So I was sitting there and you know,
Speaker 2: writing writing notes, and then the magistrate suddenly looked up
Speaker 2: and he said, madam, stop writing. You know, the noise
Speaker 2: is bothering me. And I was really embarrassed. So I
Speaker 2: was tapping on my iPad, you know, because we're allowed
Speaker 2: to take iPads. So I just said, I'm sorry, you're
Speaker 2: on it, and I rested a notebook on my iPad
Speaker 2: and started writing on the notebook, and he thought that
Speaker 2: I disobeyed him and I was still taping on the iPad.
Speaker 2: So he suddenly stopped and he said, get out, get
Speaker 2: outside now. So these board country court officers, who had
Speaker 2: nothing to do, you know, dived on me taking me outside.
Speaker 2: They were so excited that they had something to do
Speaker 2: and out in the foyer. I had to argue with
Speaker 2: them to be let back in. I said, I'm I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: I didn't mean to disturb the magistrate, but I am
Speaker 2: allowed to take notes in court and here I'm writing
Speaker 2: on a notebook. But in the foyer I made a
Speaker 2: whole lot of new friends, all these people who are
Speaker 2: up on dragging and driving churches. But I thought it
Speaker 2: was really cool. And one of them goes, what did
Speaker 2: you get chapped out for? And just said, I it's
Speaker 2: nothing exciting. I just checked out for writing. It's not
Speaker 2: nothings dramatic as you would think. But they thought it.
Speaker 2: They were all rallied around, you know, they suddenly had
Speaker 2: a cause. And one of them is yelling, he'd go on,
Speaker 2: take your camera in there, take your camera in there.
Speaker 2: I get and that wasst.
Speaker 1: Is that magistrate get a bit of an airing in
Speaker 1: your book.
Speaker 2: He does, he definitely does us.
Speaker 1: Yes by name, Oh he gets named. Yes.
Speaker 2: He did apologize because what I did. I googled myself
Speaker 2: on my iPad and I gave it to the court
Speaker 2: officer and I said, look, I am a journalist. I
Speaker 2: am allowed in court. I'm sorry if I disturbed he
Speaker 2: might am allowed to take notes. Please go back in.
Speaker 2: And so about fifteen minutes later the court officers came
Speaker 2: out and they apologized. But when I went back in,
Speaker 2: I was like the elephant in the room because everyone
Speaker 2: kept looking around, and the magistrate was very embarrassed. He said,
Speaker 2: I'm very sorry, madam, there's been a misunderstanding. And then
Speaker 2: at every lull in the proceedings he would look at me,
Speaker 2: and then the staff would turn around and look at me.
Speaker 2: It was was really funny. It was very great.
Speaker 1: And who is that magistrate.
Speaker 2: It's Magistrate Hardson from memory. Yeah, well that's a lot
Speaker 2: of fun, a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: A lot of fun. Well, you don't hold grudges. Good
Speaker 1: on you. It's been a delight to talk to you.
Speaker 1: It's fascinating that somebody's gone to the trouble to go
Speaker 1: around and do that. And it is a very fertile
Speaker 1: field and I look forward to I've started reading your book,
Speaker 1: which I just just got recently, and I was hoping
Speaker 1: to read more of it before we spoke, but I'm
Speaker 1: going to read the rest of it this weekend. Can
Speaker 1: you tell our listeners what it's called and where they
Speaker 1: can get it?
Speaker 2: So it's called out that Court Reporter and ABC Books
Speaker 2: have the Colins and at all good bookstores online and
Speaker 2: in bookshops if you just google out that Court Reporter
Speaker 2: have the Collins, ABC Books. I think it's also in
Speaker 2: the big big small words big W and clam out
Speaker 2: and what not to, so it's pretty easily available.
Speaker 1: It should go very well. Thank you to Melwells. And
Speaker 1: I hope you want to Ripen at Sydney Royal all
Speaker 1: those years ago.
Speaker 2: Did you? Thank you very about joking with you.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. Life and Crimes is a Sunday Herald
Speaker 1: Sun production for true crime Australia. Our producer is Johnny Burton.
Speaker 1: For my columns, features and more, go to Heroldsun dot
Speaker 1: com dot au, forward slash Andrew rule one word. For
Speaker 1: advertising inquiries, go to News Podcasts sold at News dot
Speaker 1: com dot au. That is all one word news podcast's sold.
Speaker 1: And if you want further information about this episode, links
Speaker 1: are in the description.