Speaker 1: The public has had a long held fascination with detectives.
Speaker 1: Detective see aside of life the average person is never
Speaker 1: exposed to. I spent thirty four years as a cop.
Speaker 1: For twenty five of those years I was catching killers.
Speaker 1: That's what I did for a living. I was a
Speaker 1: homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead,
Speaker 1: I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated.
Speaker 1: The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories
Speaker 1: from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw
Speaker 1: and honest, just like the people I talk to. Some
Speaker 1: of the content and language might be confronting. That's because
Speaker 1: no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged.
Speaker 1: Join me now as I take you into this world. Today,
Speaker 1: I had the privilege of sitting down having a chat
Speaker 1: with former New South Wales Deputy State Coroner Hugh Dylon.
Speaker 1: I say privilege because Hugh shares a passion very much
Speaker 1: aligned with what I considered the most important I had
Speaker 1: as a homicide detective. That was looking after the families
Speaker 1: of people who have died in the tragic, violent and
Speaker 1: unusual circumstances, bringing whatever comfort possible to the deceased. Families
Speaker 1: by providing answers as to what happened to their loved
Speaker 1: ones and where possible prevent unnecessary deaths. Throughout his career,
Speaker 1: Hugh presided over more than three hundred inquests, including the
Speaker 1: horrific School of Happiness case where one man hunted police
Speaker 1: with a crossbow in the middle of the night during
Speaker 1: the Hippie festival. He also oversaw murders, suicides, and tragic
Speaker 1: accidental deaths.
Speaker 2: As you'll find.
Speaker 1: Out in our discussion, the coroner's court is filled with sadness.
Speaker 1: In the motion, Hugh takes us through the cases of
Speaker 1: the oversaw, how the system can be improved, and the
Speaker 1: personal impact of dealing with death on a daily basis.
Speaker 1: Hugh Dylan, thanks for coming on I Catch Killers.
Speaker 3: It's a great pleasure. Gren very nice to see you again.
Speaker 1: Well, it is good to see you, and I always
Speaker 1: I had a lot of respect for the role that
Speaker 1: you did as a coroner, and you were the deputy
Speaker 1: state coroner or is a coroner for nine years. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's right, and in prepping for it, I believe that
Speaker 1: you oversaw probably three hundred roughly three hundred question.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a bit hard to work. It out exactly,
Speaker 3: but a round about three hundred, I'd.
Speaker 2: Say, yeah, it's a lot.
Speaker 1: And I don't think people fully appreciate the impact that
Speaker 1: the coroner's court has. I found it in all the
Speaker 1: areas of policing I work. That's when I saw the
Speaker 1: most emotion at coroner's courts, because you're talking about someone's died.
Speaker 1: That's generally what the inquest is about. And you've got
Speaker 1: the families and loved ones there holding on to hope
Speaker 1: or trying to get answers.
Speaker 2: Is that how you felt?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Look, it's a surprising place. It's a surprising niche
Speaker 3: in the legal system, and most people in the law,
Speaker 3: most people in society have no idea. But I can
Speaker 3: remember the first day I went to the coroner's court.
Speaker 3: I was a new magistrate and I was really surprised
Speaker 3: by it. Apart from anything else. The coroners were doing this,
Speaker 3: this kind of work that no other lawyers in our
Speaker 3: society do. And also they're working in teams and as
Speaker 3: you say, their concern is or who has died, how
Speaker 3: they've died, why they've died, but also what can we
Speaker 3: say to the families and the families My father was
Speaker 3: a coroner's case himself around about forty years ago, and
Speaker 3: I remember, I remember very very well getting the news
Speaker 3: that he died suddenly, and the shock and the confusion
Speaker 3: that that throws you into. So to walk into this
Speaker 3: place as a coroner, and to try and grapple with
Speaker 3: that confusion, the bewilderment, and of course the sadness was
Speaker 3: somewhat bewildering to me as well. But Garry I really
Speaker 3: liked being a coroner, and some people would be astonished
Speaker 3: to hear me say that, I guess, because of course
Speaker 3: you're right. It is a very sad place in lots
Speaker 3: of ways. Families are devastated, they're confused, one answers. Sometimes
Speaker 3: they have interesting theories about how someone they love has died.
Speaker 3: Some of those theories are right, but some of them
Speaker 3: are wrong. And it's very difficult to walk people into
Speaker 3: the evidence and through it and then bring them to
Speaker 3: some sort of understanding, some sense of what happened. I
Speaker 3: think some people might call this sense making, you know,
Speaker 3: how do we make sense of these terrible events.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of expectation when people get to the
Speaker 1: coroner's court. I saw that over the years with families
Speaker 1: and it's almost like, Okay, the answer is going to
Speaker 1: be forthcoming when the matter gets to the coroner's court,
Speaker 1: and I think meeting the family's expectation or that's a
Speaker 1: difficult part too, because sometimes the facts don't present the
Speaker 1: way the family expected it to, and quite often the
Speaker 1: evidence that is given at a coronial inquest is quite
Speaker 1: confronting to the families and loved ones of the deceased person.
Speaker 3: Well, that's right, And although you're always very glad as
Speaker 3: a coroner if you have found the answers, there are
Speaker 3: lots of cases where you don't, and you, as a
Speaker 3: homicide or an ex homicide detective, would be very familiar
Speaker 3: with some of those cases. You know, there are unsolved
Speaker 3: homicides as well as you know all the I want
Speaker 3: to call them happy endings, but they're cases in which
Speaker 3: there is an answer for people. And to leave people
Speaker 3: without answers is it's not only very frustrating, but it's
Speaker 3: also very sad because you can't help empathizing and feeling
Speaker 3: for them but also with them. You know, if you
Speaker 3: lose a daughter, you know, I'm thinking about my daughter
Speaker 3: as I'm talking to you about you losing yours. What
Speaker 3: a shattering and incomplete kind of sense of life you
Speaker 3: might have. So, as I say, sometimes you can provide
Speaker 3: answers and that can give people a sense of resolution.
Speaker 3: I don't believe there's any such thing as closure. I
Speaker 3: think that's a false hope.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you say that, and that tells me you
Speaker 1: understand the situation that families go through. And I got
Speaker 1: clipped very early in my career when use the word
Speaker 1: closure to a family and they pointed out very very
Speaker 1: clear to me, it's not the closure. You never get
Speaker 1: closure from that. And that's what happens when and it's
Speaker 1: not always homicide. If someone's I would find that in
Speaker 1: the courrner's court. Those tragic accidents are hard to deal
Speaker 1: with too, because I look at homicide and often the
Speaker 1: families can allocate blame to a particular person. Where there's
Speaker 1: accidents where there's the fault, like there's built up anger
Speaker 1: and sadness and that it's nowhere to channel it.
Speaker 3: That's right, and I think the families of missing people
Speaker 3: have a particularly onerous load to bear. I guess if
Speaker 3: you can bury your your loved ones, you can have
Speaker 3: a sense of not camp or anything like that. But
Speaker 3: you can say goodbye, but all you have is your
Speaker 3: last memories of them, and then they disappear off the
Speaker 3: face of the earth. How do you deal with that?
Speaker 3: I really don't know, and I never really learned how
Speaker 3: to how to give people a sense of peace or
Speaker 3: any sense of forward movement. I think the only thing
Speaker 3: you can do for people where their loved ones disappear
Speaker 3: is respect, recognition. You know, we will do our best
Speaker 3: to find out what happened, but sometimes the answer is
Speaker 3: beyond reach.
Speaker 2: That's not there.
Speaker 1: I saw with families on missing persons cases quite often
Speaker 1: that I felt like it was a step that helped
Speaker 1: them in processing what had happened when the coroner would
Speaker 1: declare the person deceased. Because what I've seen with families
Speaker 1: and friends of people who have just disappeared, they always
Speaker 1: hang on to that smidge and of hope that the
Speaker 1: person's going to walk through the door one day and
Speaker 1: they're going to yell at the person, go what have
Speaker 1: you done? And then they're going to give each other
Speaker 1: a big cuddle and get on with their lives. So
Speaker 1: I think sometimes they hold on to hope, and quite
Speaker 1: often I've seen it in cranial inquest where the coroner's
Speaker 1: declared the person deceased manner and cause might have known,
Speaker 1: but believe that the person is deceased because of checks
Speaker 1: that have been done, and I feel like it's a
Speaker 1: step forward. But the coroner's court I always found the
Speaker 1: expectations were high by the families. It was a lot
Speaker 1: of it's built up like if the investigation into the
Speaker 1: death of someone hasn't revealed the information or the person responsible.
Speaker 1: Quite often the hope is, well, we'll get the answers
Speaker 1: at the coroner's court. But that's not always the way,
Speaker 1: and that must have carried hard on you being a coroner,
Speaker 1: that the family is steering. But where else do we go?
Speaker 1: And the sad part is sometimes there is nowhere else
Speaker 1: to go after the coroner's court.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's very frustrating. And from time to time
Speaker 3: I think coroners I think they fail people by not
Speaker 3: saying what they really think. Sometimes, I think, and I've
Speaker 3: seen this happen, particularly within experienced coroners, they will simply
Speaker 3: because they know how sad people are and how hard
Speaker 3: it will hit them. If you say I think your
Speaker 3: loved one is dead, they say, oh, well, you know
Speaker 3: the evidence isn't quite sufficient, so maybe they're still soften that. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And I to be honest, I think that does not
Speaker 3: help people cope with what has actually happened. If someone
Speaker 3: has disappeared and they've I mean very occasionally people do
Speaker 3: turn up. I know, we all know that, but it
Speaker 3: is so rare. It's just once in many, many blue moons.
Speaker 3: And I think as a coroner you have a duty
Speaker 3: of care both to the dead in respect to them,
Speaker 3: but also to the families to be upfront with families
Speaker 3: and say, the investigation has got this far, we don't
Speaker 3: know precisely what happened, but your loved one more than
Speaker 3: likely is dead. We can't prove it beyond a reasonable doubt,
Speaker 3: aps but it's almost certain. So that's all we can do.
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 1: I think that's kind of false hope. Can be a
Speaker 1: very cruel thing if false hope is offered out. So
Speaker 1: I think roll of a coroner and that is quite
Speaker 1: often the final step for families trying to find out
Speaker 1: what's happened to their loved one, especially with people who disappeared.
Speaker 1: Tell us what was your story into becoming a coroner?
Speaker 2: Ah?
Speaker 3: Well, I obviously did a law degree in Australia, coroners
Speaker 3: are lawyers. In New South Bales, they're all magistrates. I
Speaker 3: did some legal research, I worked for a judge, I
Speaker 3: worked for the New South Bale's ombudsman, and then I
Speaker 3: got a job as a Comwealth prosecutor. So I worked
Speaker 3: for the Commonwealth DPP for a number of years. Then
Speaker 3: I was appointed a magistrate. Did about twelve years as
Speaker 3: a magistrate and I was on the point of leaving
Speaker 3: the magistracy and my friend Mary Durham, who was the
Speaker 3: new state coroner, heard that I was contemplating leaving and
Speaker 3: she got in touch with me and asked me whether
Speaker 3: i'd like to have a go as a coroner. And
Speaker 3: to be honest, I thought, oh my god, this is
Speaker 3: so depressing, this kind of work. But I really liked Mary,
Speaker 3: and she said, well, she said a few flattering things
Speaker 3: about me, so I found it out to say no
Speaker 3: to her, to be me very forthros, very forthright. She
Speaker 3: also is very persuasive, and I thought, okay, well, I've
Speaker 3: put off going to the bar for six months, I'll
Speaker 3: go and see what this is like. You know, all
Speaker 3: experience is good experience, and I really when I got there,
Speaker 3: I really liked the work, partly because I was working
Speaker 3: with really good people like Mary. But one of the
Speaker 3: things i'd really missed as a magistrate was working in
Speaker 3: a team. And Gary, you know what it's like working
Speaker 3: in teams most homicide cases.
Speaker 2: You share the pressure, so the pressure.
Speaker 3: But it's also sharing ideas and a community, a small community,
Speaker 3: a team can generate more ideas than a bunch of
Speaker 3: single individuals, definitely, and so strangely enough, although the work
Speaker 3: could be very confronting and very sad and saddening, I
Speaker 3: really enjoyed working with the team of people I was
Speaker 3: working with. So instead of leaving after six months, I
Speaker 3: stayed and I just stayed on until basically the chief
Speaker 3: magistrate said, well, your time's up. You've had enough time
Speaker 3: here and you're coming back to the local court. And
Speaker 3: I thought, well, no, I'm not. I like being a coroner.
Speaker 3: I don't want to be a magistrate anymore. So that's
Speaker 3: when I.
Speaker 2: Left, decide to leave.
Speaker 1: It's funny that you get rotated, or a tap on
Speaker 1: the shoulder that you've been there too long. I would
Speaker 1: imagine something in the role of a pathway as a coroner,
Speaker 1: you'd be learning all the time. Yeah, yeah, you'd be
Speaker 1: learning how not just the processes in place, but how
Speaker 1: to deal with families and all that. I could imagine
Speaker 1: every day you went to work.
Speaker 3: Look, I think that's absolutely right. And I remember saying too,
Speaker 3: we had this rotation, three year rotation thing, and I
Speaker 3: remember saying to the Chief Magistrate, I don't think I
Speaker 3: was any good at this job until I've been in
Speaker 3: it for two years, that makes sense. And then so
Speaker 3: three years I'm just starting really to get good at it.
Speaker 3: And I thought I wasn't an expert coroner until i'd
Speaker 3: been doing it for five years. But look, after I left,
Speaker 3: I've done further study. I've done a PhD, which is
Speaker 3: a study of then you Saitho's coronial system, and I've
Speaker 3: learned so much more. So I know that you're absolutely right.
Speaker 3: Nine years I was learning all the time, and since
Speaker 3: I left the Coroner's Court, I've been learning even more.
Speaker 3: So you need to stay in these jobs to get
Speaker 3: really good at that.
Speaker 1: Well, it is a specialist field. I would imagine that
Speaker 1: the role of a magistrate as compared to the role
Speaker 1: of a current is vastly different.
Speaker 3: Very very different. A magistrate's job is primarily running small
Speaker 3: summary trials and sentencing. So some days you sit in
Speaker 3: a court and sentence people who are pleading guilty to
Speaker 3: various things. Other days you have hearings. You might do
Speaker 3: bails and apprehended violence applications and that sort of stuff.
Speaker 3: After a while, it becomes very repetitious. You'd become to
Speaker 3: be perfectly honest, I think I was quite a good magistrate.
Speaker 3: But practice makes perfect and you're doing a lot of practice.
Speaker 3: So after a couple of years of that, I think
Speaker 3: I was pretty pretty good at it. After five years
Speaker 3: of it, I really needed a change, and so I
Speaker 3: did civil civil cases mainly. And again, it took me
Speaker 3: about five years before I thought I was experted that,
Speaker 3: and then the coroner's job came on.
Speaker 1: Okay, can you explain what the role of the coroner's
Speaker 1: court is? So I obviously aware of it, but if
Speaker 1: you could explain to the listeners, because I think there's
Speaker 1: a misconception on some of the aspects of coroner's courts
Speaker 1: what their role is.
Speaker 3: If you could explain, it's death investigation, So if someone
Speaker 3: dies suddenly or in an unexplained or difficult to understand way,
Speaker 3: or due to an unnatural cause, accidents, suicide, homicides, these
Speaker 3: sort of things in our society, and since the twelfth
Speaker 3: century actually there have been coroners who investigated these sudden,
Speaker 3: unexplained or unnatural deaths. The coroners are one of the
Speaker 3: oldest legal institutions in the world and so Australia imported
Speaker 3: coroners when first Fleet arrived. The first in quest in
Speaker 3: Australia was in December seventeen eighty eight a convict diet
Speaker 3: and a inquest was held. And so we've had this
Speaker 3: two hundred and fifty odd years of people inquiring into
Speaker 3: how a death came about. And it's a very different
Speaker 3: process from a criminal trial, as you're well aware.
Speaker 1: If you could break that down as well, because I
Speaker 1: think people think sometimes it mata goes to the coroner
Speaker 1: and the coroner could find this person guilty of in
Speaker 1: the fence, but that's not the case at all, and
Speaker 1: that's a whole different set of rules.
Speaker 3: Well, even if you think a person is guilty of
Speaker 3: criminal offense, you have no jurisdiction to decide that. That
Speaker 3: has to be decided elsewhere by that first of all,
Speaker 3: by the DPP and then by a criminal court. But
Speaker 3: to go back, what's the process. Well, first of all,
Speaker 3: I talked about teams. The coroner's seigners work in a system,
Speaker 3: a coronial system, and it's a multidisciplinary system. You were
Speaker 3: part of it. I was part of it. Forensic pathologists
Speaker 3: are part of it. Family counselors, support people, administrators, etc.
Speaker 3: Are part of it. But the first thing that happens,
Speaker 3: of course, is that someone reports a death, and that's
Speaker 3: usually done by police officers. So police might be called
Speaker 3: to a hospital because someone's diet of injuries or something
Speaker 3: like that. The doctors will report to the police, the
Speaker 3: police will report to the coroner, and then there'll be
Speaker 3: a medical examination. The coroners and the forensic pathologists will
Speaker 3: decide how to examine the person's body for evidence of
Speaker 3: the physiological or the medical cause of death. So that's
Speaker 3: the first stage. Of course. Families are notified and there's
Speaker 3: a whole process of informing them, which is a shattering event,
Speaker 3: as I was talking about a little while ago, really
Speaker 3: shattering event for people. So there's a process of talking
Speaker 3: family members into this strange process. They may have heard
Speaker 3: about or may not have heard about, but most of
Speaker 3: them will never have experienced before. So how do you
Speaker 3: bring people into that. That's part of it. So we
Speaker 3: have a team. We had a team at the Corners
Speaker 3: Court family Support team and the forensic pathologists also had
Speaker 3: social workers who are dealing with families. Then we have
Speaker 3: police involved. If the circumstances of a case look like
Speaker 3: they're unnatural, if the cause of death is looks like
Speaker 3: it's unnatural, then the police will do an investigation on
Speaker 3: behalf of the coroners. Sometimes that will look like a
Speaker 3: homicide investigation, and if it is a homicide, it'll be
Speaker 3: a very very thorough investigation. If it's an accident, there
Speaker 3: will also be a police investigation. There may be other
Speaker 3: experts called in aviation experts or all sorts of people.
Speaker 3: If someone takes their own life, there will also be
Speaker 3: a police investigation, and that will be somewhat different from
Speaker 3: a homicide investigation because clearly, not only has a person
Speaker 3: whom other people love died taken their own life or
Speaker 3: apparently so, the family will be so psychologically shaken by
Speaker 3: this that they need real care. And that's difficult because
Speaker 3: the first responders will usually be young. Police office is
Speaker 3: followed by detectives. The detectives are usually much more experienced
Speaker 3: and have seen terrible things usually, but there are lots
Speaker 3: of things going on in those scenarios, the shattered love relatives,
Speaker 3: but also what happens to the young police officers who
Speaker 3: are possibly seeing these sort of scenarios for the first
Speaker 3: time in their lives.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you mentioned you mentioned the police and what we'll
Speaker 1: talk further about that later on, but the impact of
Speaker 1: police because we mentioned at the start the full range
Speaker 1: of emotions and the heavy emotional toll inquest take. But
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people that are affected by it.
Speaker 1: On the issue of suicides too, they're difficult ones. And
Speaker 1: I know from earlier because quite often the family don't
Speaker 1: want to accept that someone's taken their own life, so
Speaker 1: their minds.
Speaker 2: Sticking over it.
Speaker 1: You know, there must be something more to this, so
Speaker 1: you're dealing with that aspect of it as well.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it's.
Speaker 1: Confronting the whole range of things. And then accidents. The
Speaker 1: purpose of investigating an accident is to find out ways
Speaker 1: of preventing that accident from occurring. Again, that's something that
Speaker 1: the coronial process is involved in as well.
Speaker 3: That's rightight, And although I think we do that quite
Speaker 3: well in in a lot of cases we only hold
Speaker 3: about it one hundred inquests a year in the South Bales,
Speaker 3: but there are eight thousand or roughly eight thousand deaths
Speaker 3: reported every year, so and around about forty percent of
Speaker 3: the reported deaths to unnatural causes. So we don't really
Speaker 3: investigate enough enough accidents, I think to learn all the
Speaker 3: lessons that could be learned. Ideally, a cronial system should
Speaker 3: really thoroughly investigate all the accidents that occurred, that fatalities
Speaker 3: and try and put them into patterns or identify trends
Speaker 3: so that we can we can pull out life saving lessons.
Speaker 3: One thing that people don't often think about, and frankly
Speaker 3: I didn't think about when I was a coroner, but
Speaker 3: I have thought about since is the economic value of
Speaker 3: a human life. The Australian government puts an economic value
Speaker 3: on an Australian life. It's called the value of a
Speaker 3: statistical life, and that in twenty twenty four it was
Speaker 3: estimated to be five point seven million dollars and a
Speaker 3: life year is valued by actuaries at around about two
Speaker 3: hundred and forty or two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
Speaker 3: So investigating thoroughly the causes of accidents should be regarded
Speaker 3: as an investment in life saving because if we could
Speaker 3: save more lives, if we could prevent more accidents, then
Speaker 3: it would be obviously good for the families and the
Speaker 3: community in general if this human cost wasn't spent or incurred.
Speaker 3: But there's also a value to the economy. So if
Speaker 3: you think about it, three thousand unnatural deaths a year,
Speaker 3: that's possibly fifteen billion dollars just putting it in dollar terms,
Speaker 3: which is a very crude an unsatisfactory way to put it,
Speaker 3: but it's really worth looking at. This is not just
Speaker 3: a lot of grief and a lot of sadness. It's
Speaker 3: an enormous cost to the society that we live.
Speaker 1: In that we've lost the life these things like I'll
Speaker 1: pluck this as an example because it's fairly topical at
Speaker 1: the moment or current, like eese scooters, when there's a
Speaker 1: death on an new scooter, we see that these scooters
Speaker 1: on long foot paths, or the role of a coronario
Speaker 1: would imagine I'm talking hypothetically here, is if there's a
Speaker 1: series of accidents in quests, Okay, well how did this accident?
Speaker 1: There might be recommendations like the helmet recommendation there is
Speaker 1: an obvious one or not the right on footpaths or
Speaker 1: certain things that might prevent deaths as well.
Speaker 2: That's the role of a corona.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and ideally most in quests would result in recommendations
Speaker 3: to public health and safety officials who would then work
Speaker 3: through the practicalities of their I mean coroners are not
Speaker 3: engineers or those sort of things. But a good in
Speaker 3: quest should bring in experts, experts, that's right. And then
Speaker 3: and very often families also have good ideas about how
Speaker 3: to because they've given a lot of thought to how
Speaker 3: their loved ones have died. They often have good ideas.
Speaker 3: So in New South Wales, if we could increase the
Speaker 3: number of cases in which recommendations were produced, or if
Speaker 3: we could identify more patterns and trends of fatalities and
Speaker 3: serious injury, then we would have a more effective and
Speaker 3: more productive coronial system than we have at the moment.
Speaker 1: Is there any accident you've seen that's really stuck in
Speaker 1: your mind?
Speaker 3: Well, one of them is a terrible collision on Sydney
Speaker 3: Harbor which I spent some weeks inquiring into. Yeah, that
Speaker 3: was very very interesting.
Speaker 1: Is that the one where for people were killed.
Speaker 3: Four people were killed. There were passengers on board a
Speaker 3: pleasure cruiser which was proceeding from west towards towards Circular Key,
Speaker 3: and a river cat ferry came out of Circular Key.
Speaker 3: It was on its way back to the Balmain dockyard.
Speaker 3: Were at Birthed Yep and right under the harbor bridge
Speaker 3: on the on the southern side. The boat was run
Speaker 3: over by the by the ferry.
Speaker 1: How many people were on the boat, I can't quite remember.
Speaker 3: I think it was around about nine people.
Speaker 2: Right, and four.
Speaker 3: People were killed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what was it about that stuck in your mind,
Speaker 1: that that particular matter.
Speaker 3: Well, there were a number of things. Really. My council
Speaker 3: assistant and I and my team went out on Sydney
Speaker 3: Harbor and you know, it took a view as it were,
Speaker 3: and we went up that the river with you know,
Speaker 3: in a ferry in a river cat. The father of
Speaker 3: a young dancer who was killed was representing his family.
Speaker 3: He didn't have a lawyer and he was on the
Speaker 3: he was on the ferry trying to talk to me.
Speaker 3: And one of the one of the difficulties you have
Speaker 3: if you're a coroner, as you you can't really talk
Speaker 3: to the lawyers and the families in the course of
Speaker 3: either taking a view or taking evidence of that sort
Speaker 3: of thing. And I could see this poor man really
Speaker 3: trying to understand what the hell are these lawyers up to?
Speaker 3: You know, why can't I talk to the coroner? And
Speaker 3: my council assistant was trying to say, look, the coroner
Speaker 3: is very, very interested in what you've got to say,
Speaker 3: but we've got certain rules about all of this sort
Speaker 3: of stuff.
Speaker 2: So that was one thing just on that.
Speaker 1: It's difficult, isn't it, Because I know I've seen at
Speaker 1: scenes and locations circumstances like that, and the coroner's there
Speaker 1: and you've got the families there or the people that
Speaker 1: have a vested interest in the situation. Obviously they want
Speaker 1: to speak to speak to the coroner, but you can't.
Speaker 1: You've got to have that independence that you're not speaking
Speaker 1: to them directly or on specifics of the evidence.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Actually, since I've finished as a coroner, I've given more
Speaker 3: thought to this, and I wonder whether sometimes coroners might
Speaker 3: not be better off at least having a meeting with
Speaker 3: the family with representatives or you know, someone to ensure
Speaker 3: that you don't make any false promises or cuddle up
Speaker 3: if you like, become biased towards families. But I wonder
Speaker 3: sometimes whether we could do more to show the family
Speaker 3: is that we actually care about them as well as
Speaker 3: care about finding out what the answer to the question
Speaker 3: about how their loved ones died.
Speaker 2: It carries a lot, doesn't it.
Speaker 1: If the families know that you care, whether that's a
Speaker 1: police officer or a coroner, a legal person or anyone
Speaker 1: that gets caught up in these situations. If there's you're
Speaker 1: showing that you care, that can help the family so much.
Speaker 3: Well, I think so, And sometimes not always, but sometimes
Speaker 3: after an inquest I would step down from the bench
Speaker 3: and I talk to the family. That's after I've given
Speaker 3: the decision. And I remember a particular case, I was
Speaker 3: doing an inquiry into an inquest into a murder suicide case.
Speaker 3: A father who had separated from his wife had taken
Speaker 3: his three children off in a car and put a
Speaker 3: I won't describe what happened, but anyway, he killed himself
Speaker 3: and the three kids. The mother came to the court
Speaker 3: and this was I think three years after the murder suicide,
Speaker 3: and she was pregnant. She had repartnered since and after that,
Speaker 3: and she spoke about how much she missed her children,
Speaker 3: and so on and so forth, and I just admired
Speaker 3: this woman so much, her courage in not only putting
Speaker 3: up with what had happened. And as I said, I
Speaker 3: don't think there's any such scene as closure. That she'd
Speaker 3: managed somehow to face the world and go forward, and
Speaker 3: now she'd repartnered, and now she was bringing new life
Speaker 3: into the world. And I just thought, respect, and I
Speaker 3: spoke to her and I said, how do you do this?
Speaker 3: And she said, look, I'm not going to let this
Speaker 3: guy get away with killing my kids. I'm not going
Speaker 3: to be crushed by it. I'm not going to allow
Speaker 3: him to destroy the life that I had. I'm going
Speaker 3: to give new life. And I just thought, Wow, she's amazing.
Speaker 3: And very often I saw things like that happen in court.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you took strength and the inspiration from the
Speaker 1: way some of the families conduct themselves. So that's what
Speaker 1: I saw, and I thought where I would often think,
Speaker 1: where do you get that strength, whether you get that
Speaker 1: strength to carry on? And also they can even see
Speaker 1: joy in life, like the ability to get through as
Speaker 1: you just described with the mother there, that she's going
Speaker 1: to live a life despite what's happened.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: And some people are obviously very angry and they never
Speaker 3: really get over their anger. But some people can be
Speaker 3: remarkably forgiving. People can make mistakes, and sometimes those mistakes
Speaker 3: cause deaths by a mission or commission. So sometimes you know,
Speaker 3: for example, nurses or doctors miss clues. Let's suggest a
Speaker 3: child is very, very sick and needs some sort of
Speaker 3: virgent intervention, and by the time there is an intervention,
Speaker 3: it's too late. I remember a case involving a little
Speaker 3: boy who died and he'd been seen by well by
Speaker 3: the time he died, he had been seen by six doctors.
Speaker 3: The last two doctors realized what was happening and tried
Speaker 3: to give emergent care, but the four previous doctors thought
Speaker 3: he was sick but had a flu or some sort
Speaker 3: of viral thing, but he'd get over it anyway. In
Speaker 3: the inquest, some of the medical and health practitioners, once
Speaker 3: they had finished their evidence, turned and faced the family
Speaker 3: and said how sorry they were. But there was one doctor,
Speaker 3: young doctor, and I still feel quite sorry for her,
Speaker 3: but she couldn't bring herself to apologize. And I don't
Speaker 3: know why not, but I really feel that she lost
Speaker 3: an opportunity because the family were very willing to forgive
Speaker 3: all these other people who did apologize, and I just thought, gosh,
Speaker 3: if you turned and said you were sorry, that this
Speaker 3: had really affected you as well. And I'm sure she
Speaker 3: was affected, but maybe she got legal advised. You know,
Speaker 3: I don't speak. Who knows. Maybe she just couldn't bring
Speaker 3: herself to say anything. But I just thought, if you
Speaker 3: could turn around and talk to them, I think it
Speaker 3: would make both of you, the family and this doctor
Speaker 3: so much happier than they were.
Speaker 1: I think you've just encapsulated when they talk about the
Speaker 1: emotion that comes in the corner's court, just with that
Speaker 1: one story that's on the thing that lives are shattered,
Speaker 1: and it's about how people move forward. But I think
Speaker 1: you might be right, And yeah, saying sorry can often
Speaker 1: be the thing that helps people move forward.
Speaker 3: Can I tell you another story ago?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, this one had a happier ending. Really a young woman,
Speaker 3: she was nineteen years old. She got very sick. She
Speaker 3: was working on a sharing team somewhere in the southwest
Speaker 3: of New South Wales and it looked like she had
Speaker 3: a flu. So her boyfriend, who was on the team said,
Speaker 3: go to bed. The sharing team boss was this marry guy.
Speaker 3: Little murry guy said, going like and she just got
Speaker 3: sicker and sicker though, and at some point in one
Speaker 3: of the breaks, her boyfriend went in and saw him
Speaker 3: and thought, oh my god, she's really sick. So they
Speaker 3: called an ambulance, but it took nearly an hour for
Speaker 3: the ambulance to get there. It was way out somewhere.
Speaker 3: They got it to the hospital, but she was very,
Speaker 3: very sick, and despite getting urgent attention, she died. We
Speaker 3: held an inquest because one of the difficulties was there
Speaker 3: wasn't a clear diagnosis of what was killing her, and
Speaker 3: we still don't really have an absolute diagnosis actually, but
Speaker 3: in any event, we held the inquest and her father,
Speaker 3: who was a Victorian farmer, very big man, six foot
Speaker 3: four or something, came in and we went through the evidence.
Speaker 3: The family was represented by a very good arrister from Victoria,
Speaker 3: and I had a very good counsel assistant. You may
Speaker 3: know her, Peggy dwy a Silk or so. It's the Victorian.
Speaker 3: And one of the great things about this inquest I
Speaker 3: thought was that there was no bitterness, and at the
Speaker 3: end of the case, I gave my decision and my reasons,
Speaker 3: and I explained how you know, what had happened, and
Speaker 3: as best we could what the diagnosis we thought was
Speaker 3: most likely to be. Give my decision. I walk off
Speaker 3: the bench. I'm sitting in my chambers, and Peggy comes
Speaker 3: out and says, Hugh, he come to the come to
Speaker 3: the door of the court. So I got up and
Speaker 3: I went to the door of the court and we
Speaker 3: pulled it out in a little bit and there was
Speaker 3: this enormous Victorian farmer with his arms around the little
Speaker 3: Marory shearing boss, both in tears, both embracing, and both
Speaker 3: so sad, but so happy to have this moment with
Speaker 3: one another. They were both they both loved this girl, the.
Speaker 2: Mary.
Speaker 3: Boss was so devastated by her death. I mean when
Speaker 3: he gave evidence, he was just weeping, pouring tears pouring
Speaker 3: out of him, very very emotional, as was her dad.
Speaker 3: And so there was this moment of cathasis. It doesn't
Speaker 3: always happened some you know, some people walk away still
Speaker 3: feeling angry or whatever. But this was one of those
Speaker 3: moments where thought, today we did something good. And having
Speaker 3: spent a lot of time in criminal courts, I can say,
Speaker 3: I don't think on a lot of days I ever
Speaker 3: walked out of a criminal court thinking today we did
Speaker 3: something good.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, there's not not many people walk out happy
Speaker 1: out of the criminal court. That if the person's convicted,
Speaker 1: he or she's angry. If the person gets off, that's
Speaker 1: the police or the prosecution angry.
Speaker 2: But the way you've.
Speaker 1: Described that, I can picture it, and that is doing
Speaker 1: something good, like.
Speaker 2: True.
Speaker 3: And it was a moment of grace really, you know,
Speaker 3: there's there's very generous hearted men were embracing each other
Speaker 3: and owning the loss that they both felt.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you could imagine the types that you're describing,
Speaker 1: they could bottle it up. But the fact that they
Speaker 1: let the emotion go, and you see that quite often
Speaker 1: in the coroner's court. It is it is that emotional place.
Speaker 1: The breakdown of the adversarial system for the criminal courts
Speaker 1: and inquisitorial for the inquest. What's the difference in the
Speaker 1: way that evidence is allowed into those courts.
Speaker 3: Well, the two things rely on different ways of thinking.
Speaker 3: So in a criminal trial, one party the prosecutions as
Speaker 3: a theory a hypothesis. The hypothesis is you Gary have
Speaker 3: murdered me Hugh, you deny that allegation, and either prosecutor
Speaker 3: have to try to prove my hypothesis. And I do
Speaker 3: that by producing proof which I hope will satisfy people
Speaker 3: in the jury beyond a resumal doubt that this is
Speaker 3: the only reasonable answer you could come up with. That's
Speaker 3: deductive thinking. The other way of thinking is inductive thinking,
Speaker 3: which is to say, we look at all this evidence,
Speaker 3: which may be scattered and fragmented in different ways, and
Speaker 3: we try and come up with a theory. What theory
Speaker 3: may sense of all this stuff that we have collected.
Speaker 3: So that's theory building or inductive thinking. Now, of course
Speaker 3: the adversarial side. There is an adversarial side to inquest
Speaker 3: and you've experienced that, and that's where people who have
Speaker 3: a different theory or have a particular theory challenge the
Speaker 3: range of theories that have been developed. So current might thinking, okay, well,
Speaker 3: the possibilities available for me are suicide, homicide, jumped off
Speaker 3: a cliff, fell off a cliff, accidentally, was kidding up
Speaker 3: by by by martians and assaulted who knows what. So
Speaker 3: there might be a range of possible theories, and some
Speaker 3: of the people who have an interest in this it
Speaker 3: might be police, or it might be persons of interest
Speaker 3: as we call suspects might want to challenge some of
Speaker 3: these theories because they don't want the coroner to ultimately
Speaker 3: settle on a particular theory that blames them. So there
Speaker 3: is a degree of adversarialism in it in it or
Speaker 3: can be in an inquest. But it's all about really
Speaker 3: this inductive thinking. What is the most satisfactory theory we
Speaker 3: can come up with that explains this death and the
Speaker 3: circumstances that surrounded it, And that means you have to
Speaker 3: look as carefully as you can at the surrounding circumstances,
Speaker 3: and that might mean that you take a wide look.
Speaker 1: Does that allow for opinions to come in? Yes, because
Speaker 1: rare in the criminal court that you get off your opinion,
Speaker 1: but in the coroner's court, quite often opinions the coroner
Speaker 1: takes that account.
Speaker 3: Opinions can be very important and they can be quite persuasive.
Speaker 3: And also hearsay evidence. So here's some heresay evidence. Obviously
Speaker 3: can get into a criminal trial, but only under very
Speaker 3: limited circumstances because there are questions about the reliability of
Speaker 3: hearsay and of opinions. Juries have to come up with
Speaker 3: their own opinion about whether someone's guilty or not. That's
Speaker 3: the idea about opinion evidence unless it relates to some
Speaker 3: sort of area of X that's beyond common knowledge, etc.
Speaker 3: But coroners are running an inquiry, not a trial, and
Speaker 3: that's the fundamental difference. And that's what I'm saying inductive thinking,
Speaker 3: that's I'm thinking about, what's the question, How do I
Speaker 3: answer the question? What's the theory I can come up
Speaker 3: with that answer answers the question question is how did
Speaker 3: this person die? How did this death come about? What
Speaker 3: explains it? But if we go to a trial, the
Speaker 3: prosecution thinks it knows the answer to that, then it's
Speaker 3: got to persuade a jury to agree with that answer.
Speaker 1: I'm just reflecting back on my first experience at an inquest,
Speaker 1: and I think it was even in my uniform days,
Speaker 1: where a young child, the mother was in the bathroom
Speaker 1: and the hair dry fell into the bath. The two
Speaker 1: kids in the bath just toddlers, and one died and
Speaker 1: one survived from that. And I remember, and this was
Speaker 1: probably the first sort of situation I've been to like
Speaker 1: that where a brief had to be put together for
Speaker 1: the coroner, So we put together a coronial brief. A
Speaker 1: lot of questions were asked by what sort of system
Speaker 1: did they have in the fuse box with the electrical work,
Speaker 1: wasn't the safety Why didn't the circuit break a trip
Speaker 1: at the time, and think like that long time ago.
Speaker 1: But I think some recommendations came on the back of that.
Speaker 1: That's the type of incident that would be bought before
Speaker 1: the coroner.
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely, And it's the very kind of incident that
Speaker 3: should be brought before the coroner because there's obviously if
Speaker 3: you explore that scenario thoroughly enough, there are there's real
Speaker 3: potential for saving life in future.
Speaker 1: And warning's about electrical appliances near the bath and where
Speaker 1: powerpoints are located near the bath.
Speaker 3: All of that, and yeah, well I would imagine a
Speaker 3: good coroner came up with a number of recommendations, and
Speaker 3: no doubt the police, which might have been you Gary,
Speaker 3: contributed to that thinking process.
Speaker 1: It was I remember it because it was such a tragic,
Speaker 1: tragic accident, and that's what it was.
Speaker 2: It was an accident.
Speaker 1: But whether the accident could have been safeguarded against by
Speaker 1: you know, putting things in place or just letting people
Speaker 1: be more aware of the situation. Another one, and I'm
Speaker 1: just reflecting on all the different experiences I've had in
Speaker 1: a coroner's court. The bower of all matter, you're familiar
Speaker 1: with it, and people that have listened to the podcast
Speaker 1: would be familiar with it. The murder of Evelyn green Up,
Speaker 1: Colin Walker, and Clinton Speedy in nineteen ninety and ninety one.
Speaker 1: Over a five month period, a person had been a
Speaker 1: charge with one of the murders, went to court and
Speaker 1: the person was acquitted. I became involved in a reinvestigation
Speaker 1: and we just saw that we reinvestigated. We thought we
Speaker 1: had enough information for the matter to go back before
Speaker 1: the courts for the other two because the double jeopardy
Speaker 1: legislation wasn't in on the other two matters that a
Speaker 1: person hadn't been charged with, but the DPP knocked it back.
Speaker 1: We then went to an inquest and had an inquest
Speaker 1: where it was the first time witnesses in regards to
Speaker 1: all three matters had provided any form of evidence in
Speaker 1: a court environment because the person that was charged with
Speaker 1: that crime was only dealt with the facts relating to
Speaker 1: the murder of Clinton Speedy. We've gone to the inquest.
Speaker 1: The inquest ran over a number of weeks. Everyone gave
Speaker 1: evidence and there was opportunities for people to be cross examined.
Speaker 1: On the back of that, I think it was John Abernathy,
Speaker 1: was a coroner at the time, made a recommendation to
Speaker 1: the DPP that he has reasonable cause that the known
Speaker 1: persons involved in the matter and that all three matters
Speaker 1: should be looked together. On the back of that, the
Speaker 1: DPP then a little bit down the track, but the
Speaker 1: weight that was carried from the inquest and John Abernathy's
Speaker 1: recommendations decided to exo fishao, indict diet the person. I
Speaker 1: raise that as an example because that's where I see
Speaker 1: the coronial court working in an investigation. In that gave
Speaker 1: the witnesses the opportunity to give evidence in a court
Speaker 1: room environment, and then an assessment could have been was
Speaker 1: made on the weight that could be placed on the evidence.
Speaker 1: Is that how you see a coroner's court can be used. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And in fact, in New South Wales, if a person
Speaker 3: has died and homicide is the suspected cause of that
Speaker 3: and death and inquest is mandatory and so yeah, I
Speaker 3: was thinking about this the other day. I'm quite sure
Speaker 3: how many homicide inquests I did. It's probably I would
Speaker 3: say probably twenty CYCA. In some cases I did refer
Speaker 3: cases to the DPP. In other cases we didn't get
Speaker 3: far enough. And in fact, the very last case I
Speaker 3: did as a coroner was in Newcastle. It was a
Speaker 3: double murder and we we had a person of interest
Speaker 3: who gave evidence, but there simply wasn't enough evidence in
Speaker 3: my opinion, the opinion of my counsel assisting or the
Speaker 3: police investigators to refer to the DPP. An interesting, very
Speaker 3: interesting case. Yeah, And you know, you never know. Sometimes
Speaker 3: people say things or do things which pushes a case
Speaker 3: where the DPP has doubts that the evidence is sufficient
Speaker 3: over the line. And so a couple of a couple
Speaker 3: of times I referred cases to the DPP after they
Speaker 3: had initially decided there wasn't enough evidence. And sometimes they
Speaker 3: put people on trial, sometimes they don't. Sometimes they take it.
Speaker 3: You know, once they have a look at all the evidence,
Speaker 3: they think, ye, that will work or not work.
Speaker 1: And I think that's what perhaps the public caren't fully
Speaker 1: informed on that when the coroner maker makes a recommendation,
Speaker 1: it's still that's not the end of the story. That
Speaker 1: doesn't mean the person's going to trial. The DPP's got
Speaker 1: to assess it from a criminal point of view, whether
Speaker 1: there's sufficient evidence to warrant charges.
Speaker 2: Against a person.
Speaker 1: I suppose I lost my faith and I'm sorry to
Speaker 1: say this when you're seeing here as a coroner, very
Speaker 1: early in my career, but got it back. Naive young
Speaker 1: detective working on a case. It was a brutal case.
Speaker 1: A person had been shot with a shotgun and dumped
Speaker 1: in the boot of his car, and his car was abandoned.
Speaker 1: Locals called the police out. It was a horrendous, horrendous scene.
Speaker 1: It was during the heat wave and the deceased body
Speaker 1: was in the back of the boot for five days.
Speaker 1: I remember the case well, I remember the post mortem.
Speaker 1: It was a horrendous situation. There was what I considered
Speaker 1: evidence a person person of interest. We won't mention the
Speaker 1: names or the case. Young detective thinking, this is frustrating.
Speaker 1: We know this person has done it, and it was
Speaker 1: sort of suggested, let's take the matter to the coroner
Speaker 1: and maybe further evidence will be forthcoming. What and I
Speaker 1: knew this was a possibility, but it shocked me when
Speaker 1: I saw it actually work. In the process, the person
Speaker 1: of interest got in the witness box. We had presented
Speaker 1: the brief to the coroner. I was excited as a
Speaker 1: naive young detective, thinking, Okay, well this is We're going
Speaker 1: to watch this person get carved up. He got in
Speaker 1: the witness box and he was said, I declined to
Speaker 1: answer any questions on the ground I might incriminate myself.
Speaker 1: He got thanked by the coroner and left the court,
Speaker 1: and it was sort of my expectations were high, the
Speaker 1: family's expectations were. My expectations were high because I was
Speaker 1: naive as the workings of the court. But I thought
Speaker 1: there I just lost a little bit of faith in
Speaker 1: that that write the silence. I fully understand the concept
Speaker 1: of the silence, but a coronial inquest is to find
Speaker 1: out what's happened to a person, and this person clearly
Speaker 1: had relevant information about about how this person died, but
Speaker 1: was allowed to just say I'm not going to say anything.
Speaker 2: What's your thoughts on that?
Speaker 3: I have mixed feelings about that from a purely coronial
Speaker 3: point of view, Like everybody else, I would like to
Speaker 3: hear the story from the person who probably knows most
Speaker 3: about it. On the other hand, if there is a
Speaker 3: strong case against a known person, I'd be quite reluctant
Speaker 3: to force them to give evidence. The reason being that
Speaker 3: if you force them to give evidence, they object, and
Speaker 3: then you say no, no, no, you're going to give evidence.
Speaker 3: They have to give evidence, and then they talk, but
Speaker 3: whatever they say can be used, and it can't be
Speaker 3: used in any way at all. So you can't be
Speaker 3: used directly against them or indirectly against them, which is
Speaker 3: even worse. So if you force someone to speak, my
Speaker 3: view was that you run the real risk of jeopardizing
Speaker 3: what may be a strong case at trial, because they'll
Speaker 3: be able to say, oh, well, the cops went and
Speaker 3: got this evidence.
Speaker 1: It's not just the evidence that provided can't be used.
Speaker 1: It's a flow on, that's right.
Speaker 3: All the evidence that is obtained indirectly as a result
Speaker 3: of them speaking is inadmissible.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm sure you are for me with the Matthew
Speaker 1: Levison cases and that was an interesting I found that
Speaker 1: an interesting case for a whole range of reasons. But basically,
Speaker 1: and we've had Mark and Faye on the podcast, so
Speaker 1: people have probably heard talk about the situation. Matthew disappeared.
Speaker 1: He'd been out Saturday night at Oxford Street in Sydney
Speaker 1: with his partner and disappeared. The partner was eventually circumstances
Speaker 1: around the disappearance was a bit strange. They've waken up
Speaker 1: and that Matthew's gone and the partner got on with
Speaker 1: his life. And then Mark and fayr initi when they
Speaker 1: were contacted by Matthew's employer he hadn't turned up for work.
Speaker 1: They went to the police and reported that Matthew missing.
Speaker 1: There was an investigation and I can say the name
Speaker 1: that he hasn't been convicted of the murder, but it's
Speaker 1: all public record. Michael Atkins, he's partner at the time,
Speaker 1: was charged with murder. A murder trial was conducted, and
Speaker 1: we should note that Michael Atkins was acquitted of murder
Speaker 1: and manslaughter in two thousand and nine. So Mark and
Speaker 1: Fayer left in and I'm sure you'd understand the situation.
Speaker 1: Left in this horrible situation where they've okay, they've put
Speaker 1: their faith in the justice system, it's gone the court
Speaker 1: and then what have we got. Well, we've got no
Speaker 1: answers because we've been told that this person wasn't responsible
Speaker 1: for son's son's murder by the court during the trial
Speaker 1: I became involved in it. They spoke to me and
Speaker 1: we looked at okay, we could go to a cranial
Speaker 1: inquest because and I think the representations they made to
Speaker 1: the coroner were we put our faith in the justice
Speaker 1: system as in the court system. We still don't have
Speaker 1: answers for our son. Can we have a corannial inquest?
Speaker 1: And on the back of that, there was a decision
Speaker 1: that an inquest would be held. There was a lot
Speaker 1: of layers to it, but it got to the point
Speaker 1: where I was satisfied from a homicide to take this
Speaker 1: point of view that we'd taken the investigation as far
Speaker 1: as we possibly could. There was not going to We'd
Speaker 1: gathered all the evidence of available evidence, so there wasn't
Speaker 1: an opportunity because double jeopardy legislation had come in by
Speaker 1: that stage. There wasn't going to be an opportunity to
Speaker 1: reach uge because we hadn't gathered fresh and compelling evidence.
Speaker 1: So then a bit of a conundrum. And you know,
Speaker 1: Mark and Fay would on weekends go look for Matt's body.
Speaker 1: They were desperate to get Matt's body back. And I
Speaker 1: still remember having the conversation with them about what do
Speaker 1: you hope to achieve from the inquest? And I think
Speaker 1: it was Elaine Truscott was the coroner and very very
Speaker 1: considerate of everyone's feelings and the appropriateness of the whole
Speaker 1: way the matter has been run. And the decision was
Speaker 1: made to give Michael Atkins a Section sixty one certificate
Speaker 1: so that he could and when the listeners hear this,
Speaker 1: they think this is ridiculous. But he could have got
Speaker 1: in the witness box and said, yes, I murdered Matthew
Speaker 1: Levison and this is how I did it, and that
Speaker 1: we couldn't use that evidence.
Speaker 2: But that's the.
Speaker 1: Deal that we made a lot of processes that we
Speaker 1: had to go through to do that, and it was
Speaker 1: contested at court and Michael Atkins's defense were doing a
Speaker 1: great job in protecting them. Eventually a decision was made
Speaker 1: that he could give evidence with a section sixty one certificate.
Speaker 1: He purjured himself whilst giving evidence in the witness box
Speaker 1: for a week trying to answer questions and dodge around,
Speaker 1: and then he was given the indemnity from the Attorney
Speaker 1: General if he took us to Matthew Levison's body, which
Speaker 1: he did. That's using an inquest in a way that
Speaker 1: I don't think those said the circumstances would present themselves
Speaker 1: very often. I know there was some sort of pushback
Speaker 1: on people thinking, oh, well, are we really usurping the
Speaker 1: person's right to silence? To me, I felt that it
Speaker 1: was the right thing to do. I think Mark and
Speaker 1: Fay have got their son's remains back. No one's been
Speaker 1: charged with the murder. I'm just interested in to getting
Speaker 1: your thoughts because I know it caused some different opinions.
Speaker 1: I won't say controversy. Everyone wanted to see it resolved
Speaker 1: in some way. What's your feelings on that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, and I've talked to various people about this.
Speaker 3: Some people I know and respect, some lawyers I know
Speaker 3: and respect very much don't like it at all, for
Speaker 3: the very reasons you've just explained that it seems to
Speaker 3: run against the ethos of our criminal justice system. On
Speaker 3: the other hand, I couldn't help feeling for the Leveson
Speaker 3: family to be honest, to get their son's body back,
Speaker 3: to be able to bury him, to at least get
Speaker 3: some idea of what actually happened to him. I think
Speaker 3: was worth the cost. In that particular case. There's are
Speaker 3: very rare circumstances, and I don't think the principle that
Speaker 3: people are concerned about of protecting people's right to silence
Speaker 3: is in any way undermined, and in fact, in some
Speaker 3: ways it's strengthened, I suppose, because it's shown that if
Speaker 3: you if you force someone to speak against the against
Speaker 3: their own interests, to tell the truth, in other words,
Speaker 3: then there is a price to pay for that. And
Speaker 3: you know, when you when you go back and think
Speaker 3: about the right to silence, it goes back to the
Speaker 3: days when if you were found guilty of an offense,
Speaker 3: you were hung for it. So obviously there had to
Speaker 3: be some protection against people being hung on the evidence
Speaker 3: that came out of their own mouths. You know, that's
Speaker 3: torturing people, really, one way or the other. So I
Speaker 3: fully support the right to silence, and you know, would
Speaker 3: always do that, but I think in this particular case,
Speaker 3: and I really respect Elane, trust God as well as
Speaker 3: a human being, as well as as well as a coroner,
Speaker 3: I think she made the right decision.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a difficult one.
Speaker 1: I suppose even though a precedent has been set like that,
Speaker 1: it hasn't opened the floodgates because it was such a
Speaker 1: rare combination of circumstances requiely and it's one that yeah,
Speaker 1: I won't say sleepless nights, but there was a lot
Speaker 1: of thought that went into that, and there was a
Speaker 1: lot of counterviews and different things. But the safeguards were
Speaker 1: put in two and his defense team pushed it as
Speaker 1: hard as they could on defending his right to avoid
Speaker 1: giving evidence in those circumstances. But look, I feel satisfied
Speaker 1: by it. I think the system worked. It was a
Speaker 1: different way of approaching the system, but the system worked
Speaker 1: in that regards.
Speaker 3: And you'd know from your general career as a police
Speaker 3: officer too that sometimes for the law to work, you
Speaker 3: have to give people who have done bad things and
Speaker 3: indemnine tea for the greater good. Yeah, it's a utilitarian concept,
Speaker 3: I know. But you know, when I was at the
Speaker 3: come of DVP, we're quite often we did indemnify people
Speaker 3: who would give up major drug importers and so forth.
Speaker 3: So you know that was that was the price you
Speaker 3: paid for the evidence.
Speaker 1: It's a necessary tool, and I break when there's a
Speaker 1: different narrative or different discussions on what should be done.
Speaker 1: And with the leves and matter I said, okay, well
Speaker 1: the option is we don't do that, but we're not
Speaker 1: going to find out where Matt's bodies, So.
Speaker 2: What are we risking here?
Speaker 1: Like it's we ever just just pack up our tools
Speaker 1: and go home.
Speaker 3: But you're right anyway, Gary, that the floodgates have not opened.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well I saw.
Speaker 1: I saw that and many a debate and discussion in
Speaker 1: parliament with the double jeopardy legislation when that came in,
Speaker 1: and that was on the back of the bearable thing.
Speaker 1: People we know about it. In summary, if you'd been
Speaker 1: acquitted of a crime before the double jeopardy legislation came in,
Speaker 1: you couldn't be retried. So again the analogy at the extreme,
Speaker 1: you could be acquitted of murder, walk out on the
Speaker 1: steps of court and say I did it, I got
Speaker 1: a way of it, and we couldn't charge that person.
Speaker 1: The double jeopardy legislation came in, and there was a
Speaker 1: lot of pushback about that. I was involved from the
Speaker 1: Bowable point of view, using it sort of as a
Speaker 1: test case and the world the sky was.
Speaker 2: Going to fall.
Speaker 1: The naysayers that didn't want the want this legislation come in.
Speaker 1: If this comes in, it's going to turn our legal
Speaker 1: justice system upside down. I think to this day the
Speaker 1: legislation still hasn't been acted upon, but it's in there
Speaker 1: as a safeguard if circumstances happened in bearable so.
Speaker 3: And the you would hope would be very careful in
Speaker 3: any event. Yeah, you know, you wouldn't want people being
Speaker 3: dragged up from years and years and years ago with
Speaker 3: some sort of weak evidence. You're right, it has to
Speaker 3: be very compelling. Is compelling, it's a very high state.
Speaker 2: It's a high high standard.
Speaker 1: And look, I understood there was an argument there that
Speaker 1: it would allow and it was fresh and compelling evidence,
Speaker 1: and it's got to be in the interest of justice,
Speaker 1: and it had to be an offense that carries a
Speaker 1: minimum of twenty years. There was a lot of things
Speaker 1: that went into it, but I understood. One of the
Speaker 1: arguments I understood was it would allow police or investigators
Speaker 1: to do a half hearted job the first time, and
Speaker 1: if they lost the trial, I will do it properly
Speaker 1: this time. And I could understand that concept that that sloppiness,
Speaker 1: but it clearly hasn't come into play. But yeah, they're
Speaker 1: interesting thoughts on the way justice can be approached.
Speaker 2: When we get back.
Speaker 1: We might take a break now, but when we get back,
Speaker 1: I want to talk about some of the cases that
Speaker 1: you've overseen, some very seen cases and your reflections on
Speaker 1: those cases and something that you're very passionate about, and
Speaker 1: full credit to you.
Speaker 2: I support what you're.
Speaker 1: Trying to do in how we could make the crannial
Speaker 1: process or the Coroni's court a better place, because I
Speaker 1: know you've been doing a lot of work on that
Speaker 1: since you've left.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I have Okay, great
Speaker 2: Okay, we'll be back soon.