Speaker 1: The public has had a long held fascination with detectives.
Speaker 1: Detective sy 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.
Speaker 1: Today we took a deep dive into the world of
Speaker 1: crime and courts. We form a criminal barrister do for them.
Speaker 1: Judith gave us good insight in what goes on when
Speaker 1: someone finds themselves on the wrong side of the law.
Speaker 1: We talked about some of Australis cases, including a man
Speaker 1: who is charged with murder for simply speaking angrily with
Speaker 1: a neighbor, and getting an acquittal for a client who
Speaker 1: stabbed a person. Judith works for both the defense and
Speaker 1: the prosecution, so in that regard, she has a unique perspective.
Speaker 1: An expert in forensic science and law, you'll see why
Speaker 1: she's a good person to have on your side. Now,
Speaker 1: I've never sat down with a criminal barrister who hasn't
Speaker 1: got a crazy story to tell about the world of crime.
Speaker 1: As you'll hear, it was an interesting and fun chat
Speaker 1: with someone who has a very quirky view on life.
Speaker 1: Judith for them, welcome to I Catch Killers.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm very excited about sitting down and speaking to
Speaker 1: a barrister and there's a former cop that's not always away.
Speaker 1: I must admit. Yeah, your type used to terrorize me
Speaker 1: in court many a time in the witness box. But
Speaker 1: it's all part of the justice system, isn't.
Speaker 2: It's called keeping the bastards honest.
Speaker 1: Well that's the I think that's fair enough. Now, you
Speaker 1: worked in both defense and prosecution, so you've got a
Speaker 1: good perspective from both sides. I'm going to ask you
Speaker 1: the obvious question. I know you're sick of this question.
Speaker 1: When you're representing someone that you know or you believe,
Speaker 1: I should say believe is guilty of the crime and
Speaker 1: you're representing defending them. How do you feel how do
Speaker 1: you navigate your way through that.
Speaker 2: I'll give you the long answer. The short answer is,
Speaker 2: I'll give you a short answer. First, is that it's
Speaker 2: not my business. That's the business of the magistrate of
Speaker 2: it's magistrate's court or the jury if it's a jury trial,
Speaker 2: that's what they do. I don't do that. That's not
Speaker 2: my job. I'm a mouthpiece or a voice for whatever
Speaker 2: position there is. The longer answer, though, is that I've
Speaker 2: learned by bitter experience that I'm not always right. I
Speaker 2: know that may come as a surprise to you, but
Speaker 2: actually not.
Speaker 1: That that's a first for former barrister to come and
Speaker 1: come out and say.
Speaker 2: At least you didn't say it's first for a woman,
Speaker 2: because then I would have reached down here and strangled you.
Speaker 1: I'm stupid, but I'm not brave.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, I mean, I've had experiences where I believe
Speaker 2: my client is as guilty as sin, and you know,
Speaker 2: things have unrolled where they're actually not and I was
Speaker 2: completely wrong, And that's taught me a big lesson, that
Speaker 2: is it really isn't my business. I mean, if someone
Speaker 2: if the evidence is stacked against them, I'll say to them, Look,
Speaker 2: you know, don't be stupid. You need to plead guilty
Speaker 2: because if you put everyone through a trial for no
Speaker 2: good reason, you know, you get the books thrown out
Speaker 2: you're basically for doing that, or you won't get your
Speaker 2: brownie points for putting your hand up basically. But no,
Speaker 2: I've learned I'm not always right.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, it's probably a good way to approach it.
Speaker 1: And you've certainly you've certainly had some interesting cases in
Speaker 1: your time. And before I start talking about them, the responsibility,
Speaker 1: whether it be prosecuting or the probably you feel the
Speaker 1: pressure even more when you're defending someone. How do you
Speaker 1: deal with that because your decisions and your strategies and
Speaker 1: the way that you, let's say, defend the case could
Speaker 1: determine this person's the future of this person's life. Literally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, look, it's it's not easy. I remember the things,
Speaker 2: you know, mistakes I've made, and I'll remember them forever.
Speaker 2: I don't sort of, you know, lie back and sort
Speaker 2: of go oh god, I'm good, you know, and feel
Speaker 2: good about my victories, you know, no matter what side
Speaker 2: I'm on. But you know, it's a huge responsibility in
Speaker 2: the day. You know, you kick back and relax and
Speaker 2: believe that you know everything is the day, you probably
Speaker 2: should stop doing it. So, yeah, I still do sleep
Speaker 2: at night, but maybe that's just me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well I suppose. And in talking to you the
Speaker 1: other day you said about the preparation, you don't approach
Speaker 1: it with a flippant attitude that now I can do this,
Speaker 1: it's easy. You put the effort into it.
Speaker 2: Well you have to, and I mean it is all
Speaker 2: in the preparation, but there's also those unknowns that you know,
Speaker 2: you've got to be able to go with the flow.
Speaker 2: You've got to be able to if something changed. You
Speaker 2: can't plan it out and say, all right, these are
Speaker 2: the questions I'm going to ask, this is what I'm
Speaker 2: going to do, this is what the person's going to say.
Speaker 2: You're not in control of what they're going to say back,
Speaker 2: and so you've got to be able to be, you know,
Speaker 2: really flexible. And that's something you've got to trust your gut.
Speaker 2: And it must have been the same in your job.
Speaker 2: You have to trust your gut, but you've got to
Speaker 2: also be able to abandon what you're going to do
Speaker 2: and go huh, this has taken a new turn, right,
Speaker 2: I'm just going to have to go with it. I mean,
Speaker 2: I've had that experience in I remember a particular trial
Speaker 2: which I know we're going to talk about about at
Speaker 2: some point, which is a shaken baby case where something
Speaker 2: happened completely out of the blue, and you know, I
Speaker 2: just sort of waltzed in and asked random questions not
Speaker 2: knowing the answer and saw what developed. And that's frightening there.
Speaker 1: But part of the job, you said, I might have
Speaker 1: an understanding of I suppose it's like the interview room.
Speaker 1: And I was taught and I try. I learned from
Speaker 1: people that mentored me that you've got to be flexible
Speaker 1: in your thinking. Like if you're going with a strategy
Speaker 1: for an interview and then it could take a left
Speaker 1: hand turn that you didn't expect, You've got to think
Speaker 1: on your feet and be flexible in where you take
Speaker 1: the conversation.
Speaker 2: Well, you can miss important stuff if you're stuck to
Speaker 2: a particular line, and if you miss it, it could
Speaker 2: do a really some real damage to finding out the truth.
Speaker 2: And I know that that can sometimes be a flexible concept.
Speaker 2: I suppose, and you know the justice system sadly, isn't
Speaker 2: really about finding out the truth. It's about two sides.
Speaker 2: It a battle, and you know somebody wins on the day.
Speaker 2: But is that the same as getting to the truth?
Speaker 2: And I think that's the same in police interviews. I
Speaker 2: mean I spent a fair bit of time training at
Speaker 2: people at DTS Detective Training School, and you know, I'd
Speaker 2: be saying to them, look, just because you believe, you
Speaker 2: know this person did it or this is how it happened,
Speaker 2: you've got to keep your mind open because you could
Speaker 2: miss something. And that was sometimes hard for people to swallow,
Speaker 2: because you know, we know he did it or we
Speaker 2: know that this is how it unfolded. And sometimes the
Speaker 2: only way I could make that palatable for them would
Speaker 2: be to say, well, some smart ALEC defense lawyer might
Speaker 2: come up with some other idea and you better be prepared.
Speaker 2: So isn't it better to be able to say in
Speaker 2: the witness box? Yeah, yeah, we thought of that. We
Speaker 2: thought of that, but you know we checked it out
Speaker 2: and it didn't pan out, rather than oh I didn't
Speaker 2: think of that, because you know, having that sprung on
Speaker 2: you in court probably isn't very pleasant, and it might get.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, well, I think from a police officer's point
Speaker 1: of view, and I've seen it. I've probably done it
Speaker 1: myself if you get stuck into a narrative in the
Speaker 1: witness box and you're not flexible in your thinking in
Speaker 1: under cross examination. And I've seen some detectives dig holes
Speaker 1: for themselves by just sticking to their narrative and not
Speaker 1: you know, you, as a defense barrister could say, well,
Speaker 1: is it possible such and such could happen, and the
Speaker 1: detective no, well, it is possible, And you've got to
Speaker 1: got to be a little bit considerate of the way
Speaker 1: that you answer and not lock yourself in and just
Speaker 1: be so stubborn that yeh, you're right, they're wrong. And
Speaker 1: it is a theater the court too. I've got to
Speaker 1: say that you've got a jury. The jury are forming,
Speaker 1: and I can't wait till we have the chat in
Speaker 1: this in the podcast about your experiences examining juries. But
Speaker 1: the juries are forming opinions, and they're forming very human
Speaker 1: opinions about the way the witness is holding themselves, how
Speaker 1: they're responding to the answers. So there's a whole range
Speaker 1: of things that come into the mix, isn't it.
Speaker 2: Oh, well, you lose your credibility. You sit there like
Speaker 2: a buffhead and don't accept something which is obviously a
Speaker 2: perfectly resent proposition. But you need to take it back
Speaker 2: too and consider those alternatives in the interview process and
Speaker 2: the investigation process so that you don't end up in
Speaker 2: court going you know, no, that's not possible, when it
Speaker 2: clearly is, because nothing else that comes out of your
Speaker 2: mouth will be believed.
Speaker 1: Then I like your facial expressions there.
Speaker 2: I used to get into trouble and court from judges.
Speaker 2: They used to tell me to stop pulling faces.
Speaker 1: Like I'm just I'm picturing being in the witness box
Speaker 1: and they answering the question. I can see the impact
Speaker 1: it would have. I want to ask about. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of cases I want to talk about. I want
Speaker 1: to talk about the person that was charged with murder
Speaker 1: for basically talking in an angry, angry tone to his neighbor.
Speaker 1: Can you just talk us through that case. I think
Speaker 1: that's an interesting case in it again, it's a lesson
Speaker 1: forever one, isn't it.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, because you know you think it can't happen
Speaker 2: to me or your friend or your mate, or your
Speaker 2: son or your daughter or whatever. You can find yourself
Speaker 2: tied up in the criminal justice system and charged with
Speaker 2: the crime. For example, even though you know you didn't
Speaker 2: think it possibly happened to you. It only happens to
Speaker 2: other people. And this particular case was a guy who
Speaker 2: had a a pretty good party at his place, you know,
Speaker 2: barbie out the back and bit of noise and some
Speaker 2: loud music, and it went on and on and on,
Speaker 2: and the neighbor got very upset about it. Understandably, by
Speaker 2: about four am, the neighbor was pretty unimpressed. I think
Speaker 2: he had worked the next day, and he complained, and
Speaker 2: he called the cops a couple of times, and you know,
Speaker 2: the music will go down the cops or ive and
Speaker 2: go back up as soon as they left. You may
Speaker 2: have attended jobs like that back in the far distant past,
Speaker 2: I don't know. And in the end, seven point thirty
Speaker 2: in the morning, it's still going and the neighbor came
Speaker 2: over and you know, had an argument with this guy
Speaker 2: and it came down to it came down to a
Speaker 2: bit of push and shove. Actually that went both ways.
Speaker 2: And basically after some time of this, you know, argie, bargie,
Speaker 2: that's those are lawyer words. By the way, I hope
Speaker 2: you can follow.
Speaker 1: Me legal terminology.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the guy had a heart attack, as in, the
Speaker 2: neighbor had a heart attack. My client, because he became
Speaker 2: my client, found himself charged with murder. How can that
Speaker 2: be murder? How could that be? And the prosecution theory
Speaker 2: was that the stress had caused this guy to have
Speaker 2: a heart attack, and my client was therefore somehow responsible.
Speaker 2: Now you might sit back and possibly even put your
Speaker 2: own defense hat on there and think, well, hang on
Speaker 2: a minute, how you know, aren't you supposed to actually
Speaker 2: mean to kill somebody if you charged with murder? Isn't
Speaker 2: that sort of basic one?
Speaker 1: Well, definitely that you need that and the proofs of murder.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but they said their attitude was the other side,
Speaker 2: that he should have known and therefore that becomes a murder.
Speaker 2: He should have known this could happen. My argument from
Speaker 2: the defense point of view is, firstly, he couldn't have known.
Speaker 2: The guy wasn't walking under the sign in his chest
Speaker 2: saying if you argue with me, I will have a
Speaker 2: heart attack. And what's more than the important thing for
Speaker 2: me was the medicine aspect of it, and that is,
Speaker 2: did he in fact cause this guy to have a
Speaker 2: heart attack, or was a guy going to have a
Speaker 2: heart attack anyway, even if he'd just woken up in
Speaker 2: the morning and just had his wheaties. And I don't
Speaker 2: mean to make light of someone's death, but you know,
Speaker 2: we're in a situation where the stakes are very high,
Speaker 2: and this chap could be in jail for a very
Speaker 2: very long time. He's got to be, in a sense
Speaker 2: morally guilty as well. In the end, they called a
Speaker 2: cardiologist and to give evidence to say that my chap
Speaker 2: had mediically, scientifically caused the heart attack. And this cardiologist
Speaker 2: did give that evidence, and he'd given this written opinion
Speaker 2: which said, no, without doubt, you know, this chap caused
Speaker 2: the heart attack. And reason he caused it is that
Speaker 2: stress can cause heart attacks. And this guy, the cardiologists
Speaker 2: professor or whatever he was, had cited a whole lot
Speaker 2: of studies. He'd said, look, you know, in New Zealand,
Speaker 2: after the earthquake, a whole lot of people died of
Speaker 2: heart attacks, or after bombings in Iran, a whole lot
Speaker 2: of people died of heart attacks, and that proves that
Speaker 2: stress causes heart attacks. So I started asking him what
Speaker 2: I thought were pretty obvious questions, like in New Zealand
Speaker 2: after the earthquake, somebody comes in dead and they don't
Speaker 2: have a mark on them. Do they actually do a
Speaker 2: post mortem and check if the heart attack or do
Speaker 2: they just tick the box saying heart attack or technically
Speaker 2: myocard you'll infection. I can say the words too, and
Speaker 2: of course they don't. They're too busy saving the living,
Speaker 2: they're not you know, so it's a ticker box thing.
Speaker 2: Do you actually know? And of course the answer that
Speaker 2: has to be no, we don't know. Well that doesn't
Speaker 2: do a lot of good for those studies, does it.
Speaker 2: But we actually got to a point of complete ridiculousness,
Speaker 2: if there's such a word, because all these studies said, look,
Speaker 2: it looks like stress may or cause heart attacks. You know,
Speaker 2: we don't know for sure, and we can't do an experiment.
Speaker 2: We can't take you know, two thousand people, stress them
Speaker 2: all out and find out how many of them die?
Speaker 1: See who dies?
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's certain ethical problems with doing that. So you know,
Speaker 2: all these studies say, we don't really know, it looks
Speaker 2: like it might. I said, how can you then turn
Speaker 2: around and say, in this specif situation, my client caused
Speaker 2: this specific person to die, particularly because we found out
Speaker 2: he had pinpoint diameters in his arteries, in his heart.
Speaker 2: He was basically walking time Bob. Anyway, he could have
Speaker 2: died at any point he had undiagnosed coronary artery disease.
Speaker 2: And this guy says, oh, no, we do know all
Speaker 2: these people who've written these papers. A line said, what
Speaker 2: this is where you have to abandon the script because
Speaker 2: I had no idea he was going to say that.
Speaker 2: I said, In fact, my next question was, you're not serious.
Speaker 1: This was all in front of the jury. It came
Speaker 1: down to a jury decision your client.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they did ac quit him and bluntly, so
Speaker 2: they should have. And I think probably most people would
Speaker 2: agree that really is a bit rough to charge someone
Speaker 2: with murder. They could have charged him with, you know,
Speaker 2: thumping the guy, or although that could have gone both ways,
Speaker 2: or you know, is there such a crime as public disturbance?
Speaker 2: I don't even know, but they could have charged with
Speaker 2: something else but murder. Get break.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, the case you as you were talking through that,
Speaker 1: I remember an early case that I did where some
Speaker 1: young fellas broke into a house and they weren't very
Speaker 1: good crooks. They broke in the house to steal the
Speaker 1: dudes to the house. I was sixteen and seventeen so
Speaker 1: they could sell the house. They hadn't really thought I
Speaker 1: thought it through. I know, it's an elderly man that
Speaker 1: lived there on his own, breaking the house. We're going
Speaker 1: to steal the dudes to the house, and then we're
Speaker 1: going to sell the house. Great plan, guys. They broke
Speaker 1: him through a window at night, he woke up, they
Speaker 1: disturbed them, They pushed him, and he died. They panicked,
Speaker 1: They took his body away, dumped him in a shallow grave.
Speaker 1: It was dug up by dogs. Police called in, so
Speaker 1: you've got the actions after. We charged those guys with murder,
Speaker 1: but it came down to the medical evidence that he
Speaker 1: was literally a step away from having a heart attack,
Speaker 1: and that was the post more than he died as
Speaker 1: a result of a heart attack. We never got them
Speaker 1: convicted of murder. It didn't get to get to trial stage.
Speaker 1: It was accepted that unlawful disposal of the body, break
Speaker 1: an enter or assault, that type of thing. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a medical evidence. And when you talked about you
Speaker 1: shouldn't make assumptions or believe you know the true story,
Speaker 1: Like as a detective hole that there's a sign of entry,
Speaker 1: the house has been rated through, things have been stolen,
Speaker 1: the body's been dumped in a shallow grave. You're thinking murder.
Speaker 1: But when it all played out and all the evidence
Speaker 1: came out and you look at it, and I wasn't
Speaker 1: disgruntled with that decision to go down that path. I
Speaker 1: thought it was the right decision. They didn't break in
Speaker 1: there with the intent to murder him. They certainly didn't
Speaker 1: think he would die as a result of them breaking
Speaker 1: into the house.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean you've got to take step back
Speaker 2: and say, in the end, that was probably the right result.
Speaker 2: You know, do them for burglary, do them for disposing
Speaker 2: of a corpse or whatever it is, and that would
Speaker 2: feel to be about the right result. I mean I
Speaker 2: had one exactly the same way. I was approached by
Speaker 2: a chap something like forty years after his convicted and
Speaker 2: did his time for murder, and he'd broken in when
Speaker 2: he was a young bloke. And again somebody died, and
Speaker 2: this chap died about twenty minutes later of bleeding ulcer.
Speaker 2: And back then the received wisdom was stress causes ulcers,
Speaker 2: but of course we now know it doesn't. In fact,
Speaker 2: there's two Western Australians won the Nobel Prize for finding
Speaker 2: out that, in fact, it's a bacterium called helic Go
Speaker 2: back to pylori. There you go. That's two more big words.
Speaker 1: You're throwing out the big medical term. So I should
Speaker 1: have had a dictionary, a medical dictionary here in front
Speaker 1: of me. I won't understand what you're saying.
Speaker 2: Oh, I don't worry. I'll explain it to you. The
Speaker 2: question is where you know I'm telling you lies or not.
Speaker 2: But this guy, no, he died of a bleeding ulcer
Speaker 2: and he was convicted of murder, but he wanted to
Speaker 2: clear his name. Way way way down the track. He'd
Speaker 2: done his the entire sentence, and he wanted to join
Speaker 2: the army. For example, they wouldn't let him join the army.
Speaker 2: I found him some help and we got an affidavit
Speaker 2: from the Nobel Prize winner saying this, and eventually his
Speaker 2: name was cleared. I didn't see it all the way through.
Speaker 2: I just didn't have the resources to do it personally.
Speaker 2: But he was looked after and his name was cleared.
Speaker 2: But interestingly, the forman of the jury actually wrote a
Speaker 2: letter later saying, we wish we'd had more medical evidence.
Speaker 2: We understand there's some word about if you like that
Speaker 2: stress doesn't cause ulcers. We would have liked to have
Speaker 2: heard about that, but we didn't have it, so we
Speaker 2: had to convict on the evidence we had. And that
Speaker 2: takes me back to that point I made initially, and
Speaker 2: that is it's a battle, and you don't necessarily as
Speaker 2: a juror have the evidence you might have wanted to
Speaker 2: have because each side decides what they're going to dish up.
Speaker 1: Things that's in my career that we assumed that's a
Speaker 1: given that like blood splatter patterns, ballistic evidence, like a
Speaker 1: lot of that. Now we're looking at and it's not
Speaker 1: as and exact sciences what we believed at the time
Speaker 1: or what science believed at the time.
Speaker 2: Well ballistics, does you know if you're talking about angles
Speaker 2: and things, Yeah, that works on physics, and bloodstained pattern
Speaker 2: analysis or blood splatter as some people want to call it,
Speaker 2: that also abides by the rules of physics. But things
Speaker 2: like fingerprints, which were you know, I used to tell
Speaker 2: my clients, and I feel really bad about this now.
Speaker 2: I used to say, look, they've got your fingerprints. They've
Speaker 2: got you better plead guilty. You know you're stupid. If
Speaker 2: you don't read my lips, you're four letter word, which
Speaker 2: I'd probably better not say. But you know the one
Speaker 2: I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: As I told you before, I lived over in Western
Speaker 1: Australia for a while. I know it's used as a
Speaker 1: punctuation mark sometimes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I mean when you're communicating with your clients,
Speaker 2: you've got to be able to commit in their language.
Speaker 2: So yeah, But fingerprints, I now think are pretty much
Speaker 2: equivalent to the reading of entrails of goats in ancient
Speaker 2: Greece to tell the future someone who's comparing fingerprints. They
Speaker 2: have this method, I mean, don't get me started, or
Speaker 2: do get me started, whatever you want. They have a
Speaker 2: method called ACEV. You probably know about it, and it
Speaker 2: just it's an acronym. It stands for what they do.
Speaker 2: But they say, if you follow the method, you can't
Speaker 2: make a mistake. Now that is ridiculous. And they say
Speaker 2: they have a zero percent error rate, And to me,
Speaker 2: that loses all credibility because if you're looking at a
Speaker 2: fingerprint from a crime scene, it's not going to be perfect.
Speaker 2: The baddie. That's another technical word. The baddy won't have
Speaker 2: stood there and rolled their fingers on the window carefully
Speaker 2: to get perfect fingerprints. It'll be sparched. It'll be open
Speaker 2: to interpretation. Interpretation. That's where the human element comes in.
Speaker 2: And if you want this to be the person you've
Speaker 2: been told, for example, it is the guy we caught,
Speaker 2: we just need him identify, We need a result. We
Speaker 2: need you to match these. You're going to be internally
Speaker 2: motivated to match them, and you're going to explain away
Speaker 2: any apparent differences. And I've actually got a transcript of
Speaker 2: a fingerprint Chap who actually said to me, if these
Speaker 2: don't appear to match, I can probably explain it by
Speaker 2: smudging or an artifact or something. If they don't appear
Speaker 2: to match, is it possible it's actually not the same person.
Speaker 1: Hey, that is a concerning comment to make in the
Speaker 1: witness box.
Speaker 2: If they don't, I can explain it away.
Speaker 1: Were you involved in that court matter? How long was
Speaker 1: that person kept in the witness box after making a
Speaker 1: comment like that.
Speaker 2: Well, actually had pretty much said all he wanted to say.
Speaker 2: And you know that The really sad thing is that
Speaker 2: often these guys are believed anyway because people watch crime
Speaker 2: shows and fingerprints all they've got you, you know, and
Speaker 2: he's the expert. And people are not critical enough, be
Speaker 2: it prosecutors, be it jurors, they're just not critical enough.
Speaker 2: There was a case in the US where the judge
Speaker 2: actually didn't let the finger print evidence in because you know,
Speaker 2: to be an expert, you've got to vault over a
Speaker 2: certain hurdle. You've got to show that you know what
Speaker 2: you're doing. You've got to show that your air of
Speaker 2: expertise is reliable, that it's basically worth you know. I mean,
Speaker 2: I've had people try to give iridology evidence where you
Speaker 2: can tell what's wrong with people by looking at the
Speaker 2: iruses in their eyes, and they've actually got in and
Speaker 2: judges let that in. So yeah, yeah, I know. But
Speaker 2: a judge in the States actually threw this evidence out
Speaker 2: and came under an enormous amount of pressure, as in
Speaker 2: finger print evidence came under an enormous amount of pressure
Speaker 2: from the system and ended up reversing is ruling because
Speaker 2: we can't have that, we can't have fingerprint people not
Speaker 2: lad in because after all, they've been allowed to give
Speaker 2: evidence from time immemorial, so they must be right.
Speaker 1: And I would imagine there's a reluctance there too. I
Speaker 1: can see that problems were done because that would open
Speaker 1: up a lot of cases that would have to be revisited,
Speaker 1: and a lot of costs and all sorts of things.
Speaker 1: It would come in the play that would come in
Speaker 1: the play.
Speaker 2: Look subconsciously, I'm sure it does.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, you talk about from a police point of view.
Speaker 1: When we're using the experts, if it's a medical expert
Speaker 1: or whatever, we're not informed enough to disagree with them. Now,
Speaker 1: be the fingerprint expert or forensic science. When DNA came
Speaker 1: into we haven't got the skills to dissect we're getting
Speaker 1: we're looking for an answer. We present the information that
Speaker 1: comes back with an answer, and that's accepted at court.
Speaker 2: Well, hey on a minute, why haven't you got the
Speaker 2: skills to dissect it? Why can't you ask questions? Why
Speaker 2: can't you approach it?
Speaker 1: Go?
Speaker 2: Is this gospel or isn't it? I mean, lawyers have
Speaker 2: to learn those skills. If you're prosecuting, if you're defending,
Speaker 2: you've got to be able to analyze it. Why can't
Speaker 2: the investigators learn those skills?
Speaker 1: True? True, But if we're putting ourselves up, we're not
Speaker 1: the experts. And if we got into got into the
Speaker 1: witness box and said we're an expert when we're not,
Speaker 1: that's going to cause a problem. So we go to
Speaker 1: the experts. I think mistakes are often made. You've said
Speaker 1: with you know, we can make this fingerprint or justify
Speaker 1: why this fingerprint's not matching. I think from a policing
Speaker 1: point of view, what I tried to do was always
Speaker 1: careful with what information was provided to the expert. We
Speaker 1: gave all the information so independently they're looking at the evidence.
Speaker 1: But look, it's a tough it's a tough thing. And
Speaker 1: that's where the court's not perfect in the weight that's
Speaker 1: placed on people that present themselves as experts.
Speaker 2: And don't forget the jurors have to understand this and
Speaker 2: could it critically. They're told by the judge, oh, you
Speaker 2: don't have to accept the expert evidence. But by golly,
Speaker 2: it's a brave duror who says, well, I think, you know,
Speaker 2: this guy's got a head full of rocks, and you know,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to accept what the expert says. So
Speaker 2: they carry like an enormous amount of weight. There's a
Speaker 2: huge responsibility on them to get.
Speaker 1: It right most definitely, and the.
Speaker 2: Jurors have got to be able to follow that instead
Speaker 2: of you know, switching off. I mean it also goes
Speaker 2: with all sorts of other complicated evidence, like if you've
Speaker 2: got a check fraud, for example, where there are three
Speaker 2: hundred or three thousand checks, you're going to sit there
Speaker 2: as a juror while they go to every single check.
Speaker 2: I'll probably showing my age. Actually there's no checks anymore,
Speaker 2: aren't they.
Speaker 1: A dishonored check? Yeah? I forget what cheeven section that
Speaker 1: was in the Crimes Act, But yes, I know what
Speaker 1: you're talking about. That's how detectives, that's how we learned
Speaker 1: our trade. To start with you, the person that had
Speaker 1: just come into the detective's office was always the one
Speaker 1: that had to chase up the dishonored check. And yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: solve that. But yeah, that's not it's not a current crime,
Speaker 1: I'd say, but I understand what cuter fraud? Let's okay,
Speaker 1: let's be contemporary. Yeah, yeah, why did you get into law?
Speaker 2: This has a bit embarrassing nothing you know noble at all.
Speaker 2: I was a single parent, I had a science degree,
Speaker 2: and I had what I call her the ten lost
Speaker 2: years where basically having children and having a completely messed
Speaker 2: up life split up with Yes, I have an X
Speaker 2: or two as well.
Speaker 1: I'm not sitting here in judgment. Trust me. It happens, it.
Speaker 2: Does, doesn't it. Yeah, you make the best decisions you
Speaker 2: can And what is it Mary in haste and repent
Speaker 2: at leisure. But anyway, that's another podcast too.
Speaker 1: What went wrong with the marriage? It's a long story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But anyway, so I was there with Yeah, I
Speaker 2: broke up when I was pregnant with my fourth child.
Speaker 2: So I was there with three children under five and
Speaker 2: one not much older than five. What am I going
Speaker 2: to do now? Do I sit on supporting parent benefit
Speaker 2: as it then was till the youngest one's eighteen? Or
Speaker 2: do I try and do something useful? And it was
Speaker 2: back in the era when tertie education was free for
Speaker 2: a first degree. But I already had a degree. That's
Speaker 2: why I say I had science degree. I had a degree.
Speaker 2: So am I going to get funding to learn anything else?
Speaker 2: Only if you do law, that's the only second degree.
Speaker 2: The government would basically support you through and let you
Speaker 2: let you do. I think most of the big people
Speaker 2: often did you know arts law or commerce law? Or whatever.
Speaker 2: So that's why I did law because it was the
Speaker 2: only one that the government would pay me to do.
Speaker 1: It was they or learn Mkarami and who says solicitors
Speaker 1: are only motivated by money and.
Speaker 2: Plus crime doesn't pay either, So I got into crime
Speaker 2: and it doesn't pay for the lawyers.
Speaker 1: Are exactly where'd you grow up your childhood?
Speaker 2: Canber, but don't hold that against me.
Speaker 1: Explained that he just did. Explain explains a lot. So
Speaker 1: you did your science degree? Is that where you managed
Speaker 1: to with the information you got from that? When you
Speaker 1: you've got those experts in the witness boxes, a solicitor
Speaker 1: and barrister, Is that where you could match them when
Speaker 1: they were talking?
Speaker 2: It helps. It helps a lot. And the thing about
Speaker 2: science is that science always admits that it's uncertain, So
Speaker 2: you know, with the science attitude, you have to always
Speaker 2: be trying to prove yourself wrong. That's that's how science works,
Speaker 2: which is a bit different from you know, we know
Speaker 2: he did it, so let's gather the evidence to if
Speaker 2: he did it. Scientists will never do that, So it
Speaker 2: helps to be able to understand that mindset, and to
Speaker 2: be quite honest, I think it's a more healthy mindset,
Speaker 2: then let's gather the evidence prove he didn't. Let's ignore
Speaker 2: or explain away whatever doesn't fit our worldview. So it
Speaker 2: helped me be able to deal with the science and
Speaker 2: particularly help me know when the wool was being pulled
Speaker 2: over my eyes, because just because someone's a scientist doesn't
Speaker 2: mean that they're necessary, right, or you motivated by things
Speaker 2: other than the truth. So yeah, it did help a lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would imagine that under those precious situations in
Speaker 1: those trials, when the scientists or the expert evidence comes
Speaker 1: in and talks at the level he or she believes,
Speaker 1: no one understands, so they're not going to be questioned,
Speaker 1: then you hit them with the hard questions. But like
Speaker 1: a scientific approach, I know, doing external studies a degree
Speaker 1: for criminal investigation. That was one of the one of
Speaker 1: the things that they promoted, a scientific approach to criminal
Speaker 1: investigations in that you've got to fact check the information
Speaker 1: all the line that you're going down. And I was
Speaker 1: taught that by good detectives too. You don't just follow
Speaker 1: this lead and not explore other options. So it's the
Speaker 1: best practices in the way to approach a criminal investigation
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 2: If you don't you know, you can cause some serious injustice.
Speaker 2: And it's been all sorts of celebrated cases where someone's
Speaker 2: been cleared later because of the blinked approach and the
Speaker 2: way I used to when I was doing detective training,
Speaker 2: the way as in training detectives, I used to get
Speaker 2: it pass because a lot of them would take the
Speaker 2: other attitude, no, no, no, we know he did it.
Speaker 2: We already know he did it. We've just got to
Speaker 2: prove it, and that can lead you down the wrong path.
Speaker 2: I used to say to them, look, check this out anyway,
Speaker 2: because you might you know, I didn't say to them,
Speaker 2: you might accidentally get it right, but at least you'll
Speaker 2: have the answer. And I think i've you know, I've
Speaker 2: said that before, and that was the way to sneak
Speaker 2: it past the people who were inclined to have a
Speaker 2: blanket approach. But also it's one of the few places
Speaker 2: the law actually takes a science approach, because if you've
Speaker 2: got a situation like a circumstantial case where no one
Speaker 2: actually saw the deed happen, and you gather all the
Speaker 2: evidence and if the defense I'm saying this now from
Speaker 2: a prosecutor's point of view, if the defense comes up
Speaker 2: with another explanation for all that evidence that's reasonable. You know,
Speaker 2: it's not a little green man from Mars came down
Speaker 2: and did it. You know, it's something that's not fanciful.
Speaker 2: The judge has to say to the jury, if there's
Speaker 2: a reasonal possibility, is there's a reasonable explanation for these
Speaker 2: facts other than the guy did it? And I say
Speaker 2: guy advisedly, I'll tell you why in a minute, but
Speaker 2: other than the guy did it. You have to prefer
Speaker 2: that because that's basically called reasonable doubt. So the law
Speaker 2: takes the science approached it. And look, the reason I
Speaker 2: say guy, and I often call the criminals men is
Speaker 2: that far more men are convicted of crimes than women,
Speaker 2: which either means men are inherently more evil or worse
Speaker 2: people than women, or it means women are smarter and
Speaker 2: get away with it a lot more. You can choose
Speaker 2: which explanation you prefer.
Speaker 1: Was that a question or are you making a statement?
Speaker 1: Because that was my place in the witness box. If
Speaker 1: someone big statement like that, I'll sit there and go
Speaker 1: But you haven't asked a question.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that jury will think you're being a little
Speaker 2: smart alec then.
Speaker 1: And you've got to be delicate, but exploring another hypothesis
Speaker 1: for a crime. Some of my I'd say the proudest
Speaker 1: moments in the witness box where I really felt I've
Speaker 1: done my job is when am barrister like yourself is gone.
Speaker 1: Have you considered this? And as you get more experience,
Speaker 1: you let them. You look slightly nervous, yes, and you
Speaker 1: do your little roll your eyes and all that, and
Speaker 1: then well what did you do? And then well, there
Speaker 1: was twenty statements taken in regards to that line of inquiry,
Speaker 1: and we came to this conclusion based on the line
Speaker 1: of inquiry and the evidence. So you've got to do
Speaker 1: that because otherwise it's too easy to exploit the police
Speaker 1: case or the prosecution case if you haven't pursued alternative
Speaker 1: possibilities of what happened in the crime.
Speaker 2: A good prosecutor will ask you, because the good prosecutor
Speaker 2: will consider those possibilities because they know or should know
Speaker 2: they're going to be raised, and they will ask you
Speaker 2: before court did you look at this? And they'll even
Speaker 2: say to you or ought to if it's well before
Speaker 2: court and the preparations happening in a timely manner, why
Speaker 2: don't you go and check this out because you know
Speaker 2: this needs checking out, and they'll send you off as
Speaker 2: a copper to find out the answer to XYZZ if
Speaker 2: you haven't. But you know, if you've done your job well,
Speaker 2: you will have checked it out already and you'll have
Speaker 2: the answers. But yes, you'll take advantage of the theatrical
Speaker 2: aspect of the court room. Let the defense lawyer hang
Speaker 2: themselves a little bit first, won't you.
Speaker 1: And when the defense lawyer is telling me what a
Speaker 1: good experience detective I am, I know that I'm about
Speaker 1: to get belted over the head with something like you're
Speaker 1: very experienced, detective. Yes, and you've worked for a very
Speaker 1: long time. Yes, and you've had some success. I try
Speaker 1: to tone it down as the compliments keep coming, because
Speaker 1: I know sooner or later you're going to hit me
Speaker 1: over the head with something, and that's of court. And
Speaker 1: I look, I spent a lot of time in the
Speaker 1: witness box, but I got nervous before I got in
Speaker 1: the witness box. When I'm in, their preparation was crucial.
Speaker 1: And I think people that say that they're not nervous
Speaker 1: or when they're going the witness box, this will be fine,
Speaker 1: the couple of times I've let my guard down, haven't
Speaker 1: done the preparation. I've got out of the witness box,
Speaker 1: and I look at myself and think, you let yourself
Speaker 1: down and the whole case down there where you haven't
Speaker 1: done the preparation you need to prepare before you go
Speaker 1: in the witness box, don't you.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah. That applies to every player, applies to
Speaker 2: the lawyers too. And you know the minute you think
Speaker 2: you know everything is the time you really should stop
Speaker 2: doing it.
Speaker 1: Can I spoke to yesterday and I've said I could
Speaker 1: raise this but with back to your your life and
Speaker 1: gives you a perspective on crime because you've been a
Speaker 1: victim of crime as well. What sort of do you
Speaker 1: care to talk about that or your experiences there and
Speaker 1: did you have to go through court based on what
Speaker 1: happened to you?
Speaker 2: My experience and it's only been I guess, relatively recent
Speaker 2: in my life I've been prepared to talk about this.
Speaker 2: I've been a victim of crime, yes, more than once,
Speaker 2: but in particular, let's call it survivor of domestic violence.
Speaker 2: And I mean, you know, relatively serious. I mean hospital type,
Speaker 2: hospital mission type domestic violence and that I think gives
Speaker 2: me a perspective that well makes me human. It makes
Speaker 2: me understand a victim's perspective. I just don't like that word,
Speaker 2: but it makes me understand a victim's perspective. Also makes
Speaker 2: me understand from some of my clients as a defense
Speaker 2: lawyer that there, but for the grace of God, go
Speaker 2: I because you know, you can look at certain well.
Speaker 2: I can look at certain decisions I've made or parts
Speaker 2: I've taken, where, for example, I could have turned to
Speaker 2: drugs or alcohol and could have ended up committing crimes.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm one bad decision away from being a crook.
Speaker 2: But going back to the domestic violence thing, it certainly
Speaker 2: taught me an awful lot about life. And I guess
Speaker 2: in a way it's when I was eventually willing to
Speaker 2: talk about it. I think it helped a lot of
Speaker 2: people who heard about it because they can look at
Speaker 2: me and go, she looks like a tough lawyer, and
Speaker 2: she looks like a successful woman, and you know she
Speaker 2: would not. I just have clients sit in front of
Speaker 2: me saying you wouldn't understand because you're a lawyer. It's like, well,
Speaker 2: actually I do. I don't necessarily say that, but I
Speaker 2: do understand. I do get it. I think it's a
Speaker 2: hell of a good base to be coming from. But
Speaker 2: I wouldn't wish to do on anybody either. Did I
Speaker 2: have to go in the witness box, No I didn't.
Speaker 2: I have given evidence in court more than once, but
Speaker 2: back in those days I rang police more than once.
Speaker 2: And you probably won't like hearing this, but it was
Speaker 2: basically that she was it's only a domestic you know,
Speaker 2: we're not going to put resources into this. She'll probably
Speaker 2: change her mind and not be willing to give evidence
Speaker 2: later on. Anyway, that was the attitude.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I look at it. I don't mind hearing that
Speaker 1: because we've got to reflect on that attitude. And yeah,
Speaker 1: the problems I know here in New South Wales, I
Speaker 1: think it's across the country with domestic violence and the
Speaker 1: shocking end results where at least who partner's being murdered.
Speaker 1: But yeah, we just it was society. We didn't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was society's values as much as the police. Police
Speaker 1: were representing society's values. And there's not a police officer
Speaker 1: I know that one that has genuine empathy and feelings
Speaker 1: for victims. We don't look back at those times when
Speaker 1: we're all in uniform, where you go to a domestic
Speaker 1: and you knock on the door, is everything right? And
Speaker 1: the man that answered the door and aggressively, yeah, there's
Speaker 1: no problems here, and we just look around the corner
Speaker 1: and the partner would be seeing there. No, it's all fine,
Speaker 1: it's all fine, he won't there's nothing to worry about,
Speaker 1: and you go away knowing it's going to happen. But
Speaker 1: that was the accepted practice, and I know here in
Speaker 1: New South Wales we've changed, and other states where I'm
Speaker 1: speaking to police, they have become very much aware of it.
Speaker 1: It was something that we really had to get our
Speaker 1: act together on coercive controls. It's coming in a few
Speaker 1: states here, and I think that's a good thing, and
Speaker 1: if police learn to use it properly, I think it'll
Speaker 1: be a very powerful tool.
Speaker 2: But from a prosecution perspective, how are you're going to
Speaker 2: prove coersive control. It's a wrong thing, and it's a
Speaker 2: bad thing, and it's something that I think should be
Speaker 2: a crime, But how on earth are you going to
Speaker 2: practically prove that.
Speaker 1: I've spoken to a lot of people who have advocated
Speaker 1: for it coming in and the legislation changes. And I
Speaker 1: think that's why I preface it with educating police that
Speaker 1: it's going to be like an investigation. Now that the
Speaker 1: charge is being created, we're going to learn how to
Speaker 1: use it, to use it appropriately. What I say from
Speaker 1: a police officer's point of view, a former police officer's
Speaker 1: point of view, is that we would turn up to
Speaker 1: a domestic situation and we're looking at is there a
Speaker 1: physical assault. If there's not a physical assault, but we're
Speaker 1: looking at the person that's clearly terrified for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: or under the control of this domineering person, and we
Speaker 1: had no recourse on that. You know, we can okay,
Speaker 1: we'll just settle it down coercive control. At least you
Speaker 1: can start following up some lines of inquiry and I'll
Speaker 1: be interested to see how it plays out when they
Speaker 1: start charging people with it the news in and in
Speaker 1: the courts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, me too. And look, going back to what you're
Speaker 2: saying earlier about it, it's a thing about the attitude
Speaker 2: of society. Yeah. Back when I was, you know, dealing
Speaker 2: with that, I remember ring up a priest in the
Speaker 2: middle of the night, you know, because I just needed
Speaker 2: some help somewhere from somebody and he told me off,
Speaker 2: you know, how dare you ring me in the middle
Speaker 2: of the night. And that was sort of the level
Speaker 2: of empathy that society gave me there where I was
Speaker 2: living in a country area at the time, there were
Speaker 2: no women's shelters. It was nowhere I could go. So,
Speaker 2: you know, society as a whole is changing and changing,
Speaker 2: I've got to say for the better in areas like
Speaker 2: that anyway.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think so. I think so too. It's definitely
Speaker 1: definitely changing. You talked about the sliding door moment that
Speaker 1: you could have gone there anyway when life wasn't going
Speaker 1: too good. You feel in the pressure and you looked
Speaker 1: at people that no doubt you've represented, or even people
Speaker 1: that you've prosecuted, that life could take a twist turn
Speaker 1: over your career, you've seen many people that fall and
Speaker 1: foul of the law and criminals, and you would have
Speaker 1: seen the worst, and you would have seen people that
Speaker 1: have just made a genuine mistake, good people. What's your
Speaker 1: sense of it? What in your mind makes a criminal?
Speaker 2: Look? This is pure amateur psychology from me, and I
Speaker 2: got no idea whether you know I'm right or not.
Speaker 2: But I think there's like two types. I mean, let's
Speaker 2: look at murderers as you have. I think, honestly think
Speaker 2: there are two breeds of murderers. There are the psychopathic
Speaker 2: killers who kill for the sake of the thrill. They're
Speaker 2: a particular type of murderer. And then there's the murderer
Speaker 2: who and again I'm we're back to the relationship situation
Speaker 2: where it's what used to be called a crime of passion.
Speaker 2: I remember a particular client who he was breaking up
Speaker 2: with his wife. You know, everything was very fraud and
Speaker 2: very precious, and she had a boyfriend. And he never
Speaker 2: had so much as a parking ticket in his life.
Speaker 2: You know, oh, maybe he had a parking ticket, you
Speaker 2: know what I mean. He's basically a good guy. He
Speaker 2: was working, he you know, in his probably mid forties
Speaker 2: or something, and you know, contribute a lot to society.
Speaker 2: But he just lost the plot when you know, she
Speaker 2: took up with a boyfriend and ended up killing both
Speaker 2: her and the boyfriend. It was horrible crime scene because
Speaker 2: they had I think white shagpile carpet and there was
Speaker 2: lots of blood. But anyway, oh, the old hand next
Speaker 2: to the wall phone, the bloodied handprints smudge down the wall,
Speaker 2: and we're not doing TV show, so I'll sort of
Speaker 2: stop that imagery now. But the point being, he's that
Speaker 2: other type of murderer in my view. So in answer
Speaker 2: the question what makes the criminals, sometimes, I think circumstance
Speaker 2: means that someone will take one bad decision, which is
Speaker 2: what I was talking about when I said I could
Speaker 2: be a criminal quite easily, and it just sets you
Speaker 2: on that path or a bad decision, for example, to
Speaker 2: take drugs that are offered to you, and the next
Speaker 2: thing you know, you're hooked all those sorts of things.
Speaker 2: And then there's a person who's just really evil. And
Speaker 2: the weird thing about murder is those two were treated
Speaker 2: the same in the prison system, and this particular kiind
Speaker 2: of mine who was convicted ended up being locked up
Speaker 2: with an evil serial killer and became mates with him. Now,
Speaker 2: you tell me how the prison system is actually doing
Speaker 2: some rehabilitative good there when you lock up because they've
Speaker 2: both been convicted of murder. So that's a very long
Speaker 2: answer to what.
Speaker 1: You're right. Because people often often say to me, like
Speaker 1: every every been a homicide detective or anyone that's committed
Speaker 1: a murder, should be bringing the death penalty, lock them
Speaker 1: away for life, do this, do that. I've put away
Speaker 1: some people that have been charged and convicted of murder,
Speaker 1: but they've made mistakes. Like when I say mistakes, it's
Speaker 1: probably diminishing it. It's a big mistake if you're taking
Speaker 1: someone's life, but quite often it was a fit of rage.
Speaker 1: It wasn't their intent. And I'm not saying they're a
Speaker 1: bad person per se. I'm saying what they've done was
Speaker 1: horrific in whatever set of circumstances have brought them there.
Speaker 1: That doesn't make them inherently a bad person.
Speaker 2: That's right. Yeah, Yeah, we're sitting here, you know, you
Speaker 2: realize what we're doing. We're actually sitting here saying murders
Speaker 2: aren't necessarily bad.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that'll be good, will be on social media, murder
Speaker 1: is a fine, we'll balance it out. But then there's
Speaker 1: a really, really bad bad murderers. And I know what
Speaker 1: you're talking about with the prison system, and I want
Speaker 1: to talk about that a little bit later in the podcast,
Speaker 1: about the way prisons are approached, because I yeah, not
Speaker 1: a cop now, but I think it's better to prevent
Speaker 1: crime than to arrest people after the event. And I
Speaker 1: think the best way to do that for the people
Speaker 1: that we got in prison is make sure that they
Speaker 1: come out, if possible, in a better place to fit
Speaker 1: in to society than just bring them out there like
Speaker 1: cage animals and let them loose in society. Again, I
Speaker 1: really think we can do some good.
Speaker 2: There, having been to a university for crime in the
Speaker 2: interim as in prison, which is a very good place
Speaker 2: to learn how to do a better burglary, for example,
Speaker 2: or be less likely you get caught next time. But
Speaker 2: that's if you're a career criminal. And again not so
Speaker 2: much the murder situation. And you know who we've forgot before,
Speaker 2: I forget again, we forgot the insane murderers. Insanity is
Speaker 2: another thing that does happen mental health, Yeah, the mental
Speaker 2: health side of things. But then normally those people, if
Speaker 2: the system works properly, will not be convicted of murder.
Speaker 2: They'll be found insane and they'll actually be put in
Speaker 2: a psychic psychiatric institution rather than a prison. That's if
Speaker 2: the system works. And that's a big if. Of course.
Speaker 1: Baby deaths, shaken baby the type of scenario I talk
Speaker 1: about here, and I always found these hardest homicides to
Speaker 1: investigate for a whole range of reasons where you get
Speaker 1: called to a home because there's a young infant that's
Speaker 1: died in the place, and yeah, you look at it.
Speaker 1: You've got to treat it. There's an investigation because you've
Speaker 1: got to try and find out how this baby, this
Speaker 1: infant has died. But it's a difficult investigation to gather
Speaker 1: the evidence against because of people that invariably it's the
Speaker 1: parents that have discovered their child deceased. You've got to
Speaker 1: look at them as potential suspects. You've got to ask
Speaker 1: the hard questions, and you've got to do the investigation
Speaker 1: that gets to court. Have you had a lot of
Speaker 1: experience in matters like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've had some significant I mean, I guess more
Speaker 2: experience than I'd want to have because it's in particular
Speaker 2: with babies. It's an emotional thing and it's a hard
Speaker 2: job to do, both from investigating and defending. You know
Speaker 2: how emotional it can be. Yeah, you always have to,
Speaker 2: from an investigative point of view, treat the last person
Speaker 2: to see the deceased as a potential suspect. I've had
Speaker 2: that in situations where, for example, the father's come home
Speaker 2: to find his daughter deceased, clearly murdered, and he's immediately
Speaker 2: treated a suspect and has to be initially, So he's
Speaker 2: both grieving the death of his daughter and being treated
Speaker 2: as a potential perpetrator. A husband coming home to find
Speaker 2: you all, coming to the wife's place of work, for example,
Speaker 2: and finding her deceased. He's treated as a suspect and
Speaker 2: he has to be. You can't. You can't argue with that.
Speaker 2: As a matter of logic, he has to be. But
Speaker 2: by golly, can you imagine the experience of that person
Speaker 2: having to be treated as a potential murderer. But yeah,
Speaker 2: the baby death, so particularly the shaken baby, is a
Speaker 2: really big deal.
Speaker 1: Still is Have you defended or prosecuted matters like that
Speaker 1: in the courts?
Speaker 2: I've defended matters like that. My prosecuting's mainly been restricted
Speaker 2: to police prosecuting, which means the lower courts for the prosecuting.
Speaker 2: There's another story in that too, about why I didn't
Speaker 2: do the more serious ones in it. Well, I'd be defamatory,
Speaker 2: so I'm not going to go there. You know, I
Speaker 2: like it when the cops come out of court and
Speaker 2: shake my hands. So mate, if I'm ever in trouble,
Speaker 2: I'm coming to you. That's what I like. But look,
Speaker 2: going back to the there is one particular case that's
Speaker 2: stuck with me forever and always will And even now
Speaker 2: I'm listening to a podcast, not yours. But it's okay,
Speaker 2: I've listened to all the yours.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was just going to clarify that. That's you're
Speaker 1: just waiting for the next one to drop a ye,
Speaker 1: catch kills. That's okay. You have to listen to others.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I am faithful, so it's good. Let's
Speaker 2: not go there anyhow. Anyhow, Yeah, I was listening to
Speaker 2: a podcast. And this topic is still like up for
Speaker 2: debate and has been for years and years and years.
Speaker 2: It used to be that doctors are taught in medical
Speaker 2: school during say a particular election, that's probably the extent
Speaker 2: of their training. That if if you have a child,
Speaker 2: a baby present with what they call a triad of symptoms,
Speaker 2: and that's retinal hemorrhaging as in bleeding in the back
Speaker 2: of the eyeball, subdural hematoma that means bleeding under the
Speaker 2: lining of the brain or bleeding on it out surface
Speaker 2: of the brain, if you like, and basically brain swelling.
Speaker 2: That that was had to be non accidental injury. It
Speaker 2: had to be baby shaking now, and they would go
Speaker 2: into court, like a forensic pathologist will go into court
Speaker 2: and testify this child has been shaken, a whole array
Speaker 2: I was going to say, gang, that's probably not the
Speaker 2: right word. A whole array of experts. An ophthalmologist will
Speaker 2: testify that there's this particular pattern of retinal hemorrhaging that
Speaker 2: means it's shaken baby. The forensic neuropathologist will testify that
Speaker 2: there are injuries within the brain which show that force
Speaker 2: has been applied in a certain way. So they'll all
Speaker 2: get up there, and then the forensic pathologists will say,
Speaker 2: and yeah, these three symptoms mean the child's being shaken.
Speaker 2: And they would routinely give evidence, for example, that the
Speaker 2: force used would be the equivalent to a sixty kilometer
Speaker 2: an our car accident, or throwing the child from a
Speaker 2: second story window. Then someone started asking questions. It turns out,
Speaker 2: for example, that no human being can actually exert that
Speaker 2: sort of force of a sixty kilometer in our car accident.
Speaker 2: They've been testifying because it's received wisdom, because what they
Speaker 2: are taught in medical school, and it's not necessarily true. Now,
Speaker 2: what you end up with is two sets of experts,
Speaker 2: some who passionately believe that this has to be that
Speaker 2: the show deliberately shaken, and some who equally passionately believe
Speaker 2: that sometimes this can occur by accident. Then you've got
Speaker 2: the investigator saying, how do we determine which it was?
Speaker 2: How do we know who to charge? Do we let
Speaker 2: all the child killers go because the science is in
Speaker 2: a state of debate, or you know, we can't do that.
Speaker 2: We can't let child killers go free. But how do
Speaker 2: we know which is which? We have to rely on
Speaker 2: these experts, and the experts can't agree. And I've been
Speaker 2: at conferences, like I was a member of the American
Speaker 2: Academy of Forensic Sciences and they have lectures about this
Speaker 2: sort of thing, and you get two sets of doctors
Speaker 2: becoming extremely passionate and calling each other, you know, whores
Speaker 2: and sluts. And I've seen it happen because they're wedded
Speaker 2: to a particular idea. And guess what, They're not being
Speaker 2: objective anyway.
Speaker 1: Where it becomes problematic, isn't it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Because experts are supposed to be objective aren't they.
Speaker 2: But they think they are being objective, are they? Aren't they?
Speaker 1: It's the difficult one, and you have identified the hard
Speaker 1: part of investigating it. And yeah, if you put your
Speaker 1: hand up as a homicide detective, you've got to go
Speaker 1: in there and aresos hard questions and you find out, well,
Speaker 1: who was a child last with that type of thing,
Speaker 1: who had access to the child. But yeah, they're difficult investigations.
Speaker 1: And you talk about the science and the medical experts
Speaker 1: and that, and I know there was people that were
Speaker 1: very much in the camp, oh, this is definitely a
Speaker 1: shaken baby syndrome. And it was demonstrated how hard the
Speaker 1: baby would have to be shaken as shaken, and it
Speaker 1: was extreme. And then there were others, well that might
Speaker 1: not be the reason.
Speaker 2: So yeah, is this child? Has this child been ill?
Speaker 2: Has this child? For example, and the one I was
Speaker 2: involved in, we found out that after three days in hospital,
Speaker 2: the child had something called the coagulopity, In other words,
Speaker 2: its blood wasn't clotting properly. And when you think that
Speaker 2: two of these signs are bleeding signs, two of those three,
Speaker 2: you know, receive wisdom. Try it of symptoms, what significance
Speaker 2: did the fact that the child had a clotting problem
Speaker 2: have But they didn't do the test when the child
Speaker 2: was admitted to hospital. They did it after child had
Speaker 2: been in hospital for three days. Does that show the
Speaker 2: child had a clotting disorder at the time of mission
Speaker 2: to hospital? Will never know? And I asked the particular doctor, well,
Speaker 2: could this test have been done when the child was admitted? Yes,
Speaker 2: why wasn't it done? The doctor actually said, with a
Speaker 2: straight face, Well, our jobs to gather prosecution evidence, not
Speaker 2: defense evidence.
Speaker 1: Yeah. You identifying a lot of problems in the in
Speaker 1: the so called justice system. That. Yeah, it's not an
Speaker 1: exact science. There's problems left, right and center in that
Speaker 1: one that you're referring to. How did that matter play out?
Speaker 2: The father was acquitted And this is one where every
Speaker 2: time I think about it, I get a really sick
Speaker 2: feeling in my gut because, and I'm so not big
Speaker 2: noting myself, but if I hadn't known enough to know
Speaker 2: there were questions to be asked, and hadn't known what
Speaker 2: questions to ask, and I hadn't known how to know
Speaker 2: how to investigate it from a defense perspective, I think
Speaker 2: this guy would have been convicted without doubt, and I
Speaker 2: just wonder to myself how many other people are being
Speaker 2: convicted out there like that because someone hasn't wrapped their
Speaker 2: head around the science. I reckon all lawyers should be
Speaker 2: taught science, particularly in these days of forensic science. I
Speaker 2: reckon all investigators should be taught forensic science. Some of
Speaker 2: my most awarding teaching times have been when I've been
Speaker 2: teaching lawyers and police about science, because they've got to
Speaker 2: wrap the head around not the actual science, you know.
Speaker 2: I mean, I had to come up to speed on neuropathology, radiology, hematology, ophthalmology,
Speaker 2: forensic pathology, toxicology, you name it. I had to get
Speaker 2: my head around in ology and I didn't know any
Speaker 2: of those ologies. But you've got to know how to
Speaker 2: learn it, or how to learn enough to at least
Speaker 2: ask the right questions. So, yeah, I think I finally
Speaker 2: got myself off track and need you to bring me
Speaker 2: back now.
Speaker 1: No, I'm fascinated because you're opening up many, so many
Speaker 1: questions about as you're talking. It makes me reflect on
Speaker 1: the cases that I've seen before the courts and been
Speaker 1: involved in murder trials where it comes down to the
Speaker 1: medical evidence and you know the legal side of things.
Speaker 1: They're trying to get their heads around the medical evidence
Speaker 1: because quite often a murder trial is based yeah, not solely,
Speaker 1: but relies very heavily on the medical evidence. And then
Speaker 1: I've had an opportunity to at least study, speak to
Speaker 1: the people that have provided the reports, and read the
Speaker 1: reports in details. And then I look at the jurist
Speaker 1: city there thinking how are they taking this in? And Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm watching people that have got the skill set, the barrasses,
Speaker 1: the medical medical people dissecting the type of thing that
Speaker 1: you're talking about. And I'm looking at durors that we
Speaker 1: don't know anything about their background. They could have no
Speaker 1: knowledge in this field, and they're trying to take that
Speaker 1: all in. You left me in control. I'm going to
Speaker 1: make that a nice segue to bring Part one to
Speaker 1: a conclusion. When we get back for part two, I
Speaker 1: want to talk about the case that when you turned
Speaker 1: up at court you thought it was unwinnable to give
Speaker 1: you a heads up on that that was defending someone
Speaker 1: that was in a fight with someone that the only
Speaker 1: two people in the room and the person was stabbed
Speaker 1: in the back. I'll let you explain that in part two.
Speaker 1: You told me not to ask the question, but I'm
Speaker 1: stupid and I'm going to ask the question about what
Speaker 1: happened to the what happened at the police Christmas party
Speaker 1: in the eighties. So there might be a lot of yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure, but yeah, don't ask the question you
Speaker 1: don't know the answer to.
Speaker 2: They say, you know the answer to that one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've got a pretty good idea. But I think
Speaker 1: our listeners would like to like to get an insight
Speaker 1: into that, and let's really break down the jury system
Speaker 1: because you were given a rare opportunity, weren't you, as
Speaker 1: a part of an academic study, to have access to
Speaker 1: jurors what was going through their minds.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, yeah, I interview real jurors after real trials, which
Speaker 2: is in Australia, in our justice system, pretty much unheard
Speaker 2: of it.
Speaker 1: I think people will be surprised and shocked by some
Speaker 1: of the things you're going to say there. So we'll
Speaker 1: come back for our part two and just work out
Speaker 1: what parts you're going to describe about the police Christmas Party. Okay,
Speaker 1: stop loving, Okay,