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THE JURY'S OUT

A lot of issues are covered on my daily radio programme on Talk 1116 3AK in Melbourne. One issue I know I go back to again and again – at the risk of boring listeners—is one that some people think I am obsessive about.

This time it is NOT about child molesters although I was pleased to pass on the news yesterday about the so-called society priest, Vincent Kiss -- the man who swaggered through Melbourne in the Eighties and ingratiated himself into so-called society as the silver-haired handbag in the Lillian Frank, Sheila Scotter and Jeanne Pratt circle.

I chased him for years and did stories about the near two million dollars he stole from charity. He did time for that and now has been sentenced to more than ten years jail for repeated sex offences against boys. And this is after he was deported from Vanuatu for similar offences against boys in 1979.

But it is another aspect of our courts I want to look at. Something that I know concerns a lot of you.

Our courts are meant to be fair. Our jury system supposedly means that twelve of your peers hear all the evidence and then decide on your guilt or innocence.

And it is true the defendant is entitled to the benefit of the doubt. But too many times these days juries – and judges sitting alone – are handing down verdicts when all the evidence has not been presented to the court And to make my point I want to talk about a man named Jason Van Der Bann.

He was twice convicted of rape. He confessed to murdering his attractive young aunt. Years earlier he had stolen her knickers and cut the crotch out of them. He told police he always carried a knife.

And a jury acquitted him of murder. In deliberations that lasted three hours.

And before you think that the jury was mad… take this on board.

The Supreme Court judge ruled that the rapes could not be used in evidence – even though the way one rape victim was tied up was exactly the way that his aunt 30-year-old Irene Wilson was tied up.

The judge ruled that the stolen and mutilated underwear could not be mentioned because it happened a long time ago and would be prejudicial to the accused if the jury was told about it.

Justice Greg James also decided that a confession from the alleged killer to an undercover police officer in prison was inadmissible even though Van der Baan said his aunt was lying down, I jumped on her back. It all happened in the bedroom.

He also talked about cutting his shoelace with a knife to strangle her and expressed fears that although police wouldn’t find semen they might find hairs in the house.

The judge permitted the jury to hear none of that. The judge DID let Van der Baan’s lawyer tell the jury that his client was not the type of person to go out at night and commit horrific crimes.

But he was the type of person who would answer ads in papers for people looking for a flatmate. One of those young women was tied up and raped.

The jury heard none of that.

And in another twist the jury was not told that another man – Irene Wilson’s ex-boyfriend – who was cross-examined by the defence for three days and depicted as the real killer had already been exonerated totally by a magistrate.

That man remained a friend of the family of the murdered woman but the defence lawyer made sure that he didn’t sit with them in the public gallery in court – because that might influence the jury.

Justice James has yet to give his written reasons for some of his extraordinary decisions to ban so much evidence from the jury in a murder case but even when he does produce them it can’t help the family of the dead mother of three.

Even if the judge is wrong…. The Crown is unable to appeal. Jason Van Der Baan cannot be recharged with murder.

Just think what those jurors are thinking as they read all the stuff they were not allowed to know while supposedly examining ALL the evidence and then making a learned judgement. A dangerously sick joke our judicial system at times. Criminally insane.

Tuesday, September 17th, 2002

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2002