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Speaker 1: Now, speaking of the courts, all the charges against the

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Speaker 1: handgloing restore passenger rail protesters have been dismissed. But what's

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Speaker 1: weird about this is how they've been dismissed. Six of

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Speaker 1: these dudes had already pleaded guilty to minor charges and

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Speaker 1: then yesterday they turned up to court to find out

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Speaker 1: what the sentencing date would be, and at that point

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Speaker 1: they changed their minds and they decided to withdraw the

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Speaker 1: guilty please and go for not guilty please, and the

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Speaker 1: judge allowed it. Steve Cullen is a criminal lawyer with US. Now, hey, Steve,

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Speaker 1: Oh good a, Heather, is that weird?

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Speaker 2: It's very odd. Under the Criminal Procedure Act, people are

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Speaker 2: in told of withdraw a plea of guilty, but normally

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Speaker 2: it's on a written application with arguable grounds. This seems

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Speaker 2: to be that the Crown has looked at the fact

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Speaker 2: that the jury did not convict anybody, that there's a

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Speaker 2: backlog built up in the courts the post COVID world,

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Speaker 2: of course, that there's a real pressure on the district

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Speaker 2: courts to get rid of things. And we've also had

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Speaker 2: the solicited generous guidelines go out and say if you

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Speaker 2: don't have a realistic prospect of success, then you really

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Speaker 2: need to consider a position. They took all of that

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Speaker 2: into account and said, why are we wasting our time

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Speaker 2: with these people, it seems, and told them so the

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Speaker 2: people that could then go before the court and say, well,

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Speaker 2: we want to vacate our pleas because they hadn't been convicted.

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Speaker 2: They're on their way to arguing that they should have

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Speaker 2: been discharged. So instead of going down that path and

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Speaker 2: wasting more time and resources, it seemed to have been agreed, well,

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Speaker 2: actually we're just vacate the please of guilty de facto

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Speaker 2: deal with the discharges by the crown, agreeing to offer

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Speaker 2: no evidence and withdraw everything, and they walk away scot free.

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Speaker 2: It's remarkable.

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Speaker 1: Okay, So I can understand that if what we were

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Speaker 1: talking about is we're going to tie the courts up

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Speaker 1: for weeks on end or even days on end with

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Speaker 1: trials and all that kind of stuff. But we'd already

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Speaker 1: got the success. They pleaded guilty. All we needed to

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Speaker 1: do was the sentencing. Is that really something that would

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Speaker 1: have taken that much time?

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Speaker 2: Well, it would have been an afternoon. The sentencing wasn't

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Speaker 2: necessarily going to proceed because they were asking for discharges

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Speaker 2: which would have encompassed sentencing, but it requires a judge

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Speaker 2: to consider whether the penal would be disproportionate to their actions.

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Speaker 2: And of course you get the feeling there's some sort

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Speaker 2: of moral undercurrent acpearing, which I quite frankly I don't

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Speaker 2: really want to address.

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Speaker 1: Well, now I want you to address it. Wants the

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Speaker 1: moral undercurrent?

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Speaker 2: Well, you do get the feeling that either one, people

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Speaker 2: were of the view that a certain proportion of the

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Speaker 2: community felt that these people shouldn't have been convicted at all,

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Speaker 2: or they were exercising their freedom of speech. There's no

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Speaker 2: doubt about that. It's a methodology that led to them coming.

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Speaker 1: Are you saying to me, Steve, that there may be

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Speaker 1: some people within the criminal justice system who think that

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Speaker 1: it's okay to do it a little you know, on

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Speaker 1: the side, a little wilful damage, Jobby, just a little

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Speaker 1: bit of criminal nuisance, as long as it's in the

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Speaker 1: name of the climate, it's okay.

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Speaker 2: Well, I don't know if that's the message. I don't

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Speaker 2: know if that's what anyone in particular is thinking, but

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Speaker 2: you do get the feeling that people just thought it

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Speaker 2: was impractical to allow this to continue and wasting resources.

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Speaker 1: Okay, Steve, shiate your work very much. Steve Cullen, criminal lawyer.

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Speaker 2: For more from Heather Duplessy Allen Drive, listen live to

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