# How an innocent man ended up in prison for 12 years: Neil Mercer Pt. 1

An episode of [I Catch Killers with Gary Jubelin](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1506667049), 22 Aug 2026, 58 min.

Audio: https://p.podderapp.com/2544644999/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/2fb3740d-3436-44af-8cc0-a91900716aa5/5bc8c2ed-b718-4f44-beb3-ac2a005246cc/4d690a82-c2e0-4881-923b-b4ae0045881a/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=786928c3-10c1-4cef-a7bf-ac2a005246d0

What happens when the justice system gets it catastrophically wrong? Neil Mercer has spent over five decades as a journalist unafraid of the hard stories, as evidenced in his latest book Falsely Convicted. In this episode, Neil joins Gary to unpack two of Australia's most shocking miscarriages of justice. First, the wrongful conviction of schoolteacher Josephine Greensill, whose life was torn apart by allegations from two former students dredged up from three decades earlier. Then, the case of Andrew Mallard, who was wrongfully convicted for the 1994 murder of Perth shopkeeper Pamela Lawrence. Gary also shares a confronting personal account from his early career as a detective, illustrating how difficult it can be to halt the "machinery of the justice system" once it's in motion, even when doubts about guilt begin to surface. Neil Mercer is the author of Falsely Convicted: True Stories of Injustice in Australia. Want to hear more from Neil Mercer? Listen to his other interviews with Gary on I Catch Killers here and here. You can watch I Catch Killers on Youtube here. Follow I Catch Killers: Instagram: @icatchkillers Tiktok: @icatchkillerspodcast Facebook: @icatchkillers Email the show at icatchkillers@news.com.au See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:01] Speaker 1: The public has had a long held fascination with detectives.
[0:05] Speaker 1: Detective see aside of life the average person is never
[0:08] Speaker 1: exposed to. I spent thirty four years as a cop.
[0:11] Speaker 1: For twenty five of those years, I was catching killers.
[0:14] Speaker 1: That's what I did for a living. I was a
[0:16] Speaker 1: homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead,
[0:20] Speaker 1: I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated.
[0:23] Speaker 1: The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories
[0:26] Speaker 1: from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw
[0:28] Speaker 1: and honest, just like the people I talk to. Some
[0:31] Speaker 1: of the content and language might be confronting. That's because
[0:34] Speaker 1: no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged.
[0:38] Speaker 1: Join me now as I take you into this world
[0:46] Speaker 1: what happens when the justice system gets catastrophically wrong. Neil
[0:51] Speaker 1: Mercer has spent over five decades as a journalist I'm
[0:55] Speaker 1: Afraid of the Hard Stories, and in his latest book,
[0:58] Speaker 1: Falsely Convicted, he examines a number of wrongful convictions across
[1:03] Speaker 1: the country. In this episode, we unpack some of those
[1:06] Speaker 1: miscarriages of justice, including Josephine Greensill, a school teacher whose
[1:11] Speaker 1: life was torn apart by uncorroborated allegations made almost three
[1:15] Speaker 1: decades after the fact. And Andrew Mallard, whose wrongful conviction
[1:20] Speaker 1: exposed police misconduct, false confessions, and suppressed evidence that should
[1:26] Speaker 1: have cleared him years earlier. As a former homicide detective,
[1:30] Speaker 1: these stories shocked me. The idea that our justice system
[1:34] Speaker 1: built on checks and balances can still fail so spectacularly
[1:38] Speaker 1: is confronting, to say the least. Neil Mercer, welcome back
[1:43] Speaker 1: to I Catch Killers for the second time.
[1:44] Speaker 2: Thanks for having me.
[1:46] Speaker 1: Well, it's always good to have a chat with you.
[1:48] Speaker 1: I enjoyed our chat last time talking about the notorious
[1:52] Speaker 1: Roger Rogerson.
[1:54] Speaker 3: Indeed, Roger and ed was a different era in policing
[2:00] Speaker 3: crime in Sydney. I mean, it was a fascinating, fascinating era.
[2:04] Speaker 2: Both of us would have lived through it.
[2:05] Speaker 1: And yeah, it certainly is. And just to put it
[2:10] Speaker 1: in perspective, like your experience in you've been working in
[2:14] Speaker 1: journalism for forty years or or.
[2:17] Speaker 4: Longer, longer, got more than fifty actually, okay, who's counting,
[2:22] Speaker 4: But you wrote for some of the biggest newspapers in
[2:26] Speaker 4: the country or a producer on sixty minutes today tonight,
[2:30] Speaker 4: you're on air reporter and with four corners you've done
[2:34] Speaker 4: a fair bit and the author of quite a few
[2:37] Speaker 4: true crime books.
[2:38] Speaker 3: Yeah, mate, I've been around the traps. I feel like
[2:40] Speaker 3: a dinosaur in these days, to tell you the truth.
[2:43] Speaker 3: But it's been a it's been a great journey, you know.
[2:46] Speaker 3: I've been incredibly lucky to meet some of the characters
[2:50] Speaker 3: that I've met from all walks of life, you know, police, lawyers, crooks. Yeah,
[2:56] Speaker 3: it's been a it's been a great journey for me.
[2:59] Speaker 1: It's been well, there's certainly some interesting characters in there.
[3:03] Speaker 1: You've got another book out that's brought you to the table.
[3:07] Speaker 3: Today, Indeed, Falsely Convicted, which tells the stories of nine
[3:13] Speaker 3: Australians from around the country who have been accused, charged,
[3:19] Speaker 3: convicted of crimes they didn't commit. And I'm talking about
[3:22] Speaker 3: things like murder, armed robbery, sexual assault, whole range of cases. So, yeah,
[3:30] Speaker 3: they're from around the country. Some go back to the
[3:34] Speaker 3: eighties and nineties, some are more recent. And I tried
[3:38] Speaker 3: to cover a range of cases, a range of reasons
[3:42] Speaker 3: why things go wrong in the legal system.
[3:44] Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's certainly things have gone wrong. I got
[3:47] Speaker 1: to say, I read I read your book. I've been
[3:50] Speaker 1: away on holidays in Japan, hiking through the forests of Japan,
[3:54] Speaker 1: very peaceful, and I decided to pick up your book
[3:57] Speaker 1: and read it after each day hiking. And I've got
[4:02] Speaker 1: to say it took me right back into a world
[4:04] Speaker 1: that I didn't want to read it on the holidays,
[4:07] Speaker 1: but I did.
[4:09] Speaker 2: I apologize for that.
[4:10] Speaker 3: It's probably not the best place to read it if
[4:13] Speaker 3: you're on a zen like holiday. It's probably you know,
[4:17] Speaker 3: for true crime readers who want to settle in, but
[4:21] Speaker 3: maybe not when you're on a lovely holiday.
[4:25] Speaker 1: Well, the thing is that it concerns me that you've
[4:29] Speaker 1: been in the industry for a long time, and so
[4:32] Speaker 1: have I. As a police officer, you know that the
[4:36] Speaker 1: courts get it wrong sometimes sometimes Yeah, But what frightened
[4:40] Speaker 1: me about the content in your book some of the
[4:42] Speaker 1: mistakes that were made, And it's a combination of things.
[4:45] Speaker 1: It's not just the court's getting it's wrong. It's the
[4:47] Speaker 1: actions of the police, whether it's it's corruption or whether
[4:50] Speaker 1: it's just incompetency. The judiciary, Like, I scratch my head
[4:55] Speaker 1: how some of the things that they let through and
[4:57] Speaker 1: how people were convicted. It shows the jury system is
[5:01] Speaker 1: not perfect, because it comes down to human emotions and
[5:07] Speaker 1: decisions made on things that probably shouldn't be taken in
[5:11] Speaker 1: the consideration. And then the other troubling thing is because
[5:14] Speaker 1: we rely on it a great deal. Is the scientific
[5:17] Speaker 1: evidence of forensic evidence now that we bring in experts,
[5:21] Speaker 1: and the problems that that can cause because most people
[5:25] Speaker 1: accept forensic evidence from a scientific point of view or
[5:29] Speaker 1: medical evidence is irrefutable. But as your book demonstrates, it's
[5:34] Speaker 1: not often the case.
[5:36] Speaker 3: Indeed, I think they call it in the CSI effect,
[5:39] Speaker 3: because you see programs like CSA on TV and the
[5:44] Speaker 3: forensics are always perfect and they're always solved pretty quickly,
[5:48] Speaker 3: and forensics and DNA and never lies. It's not quite
[5:52] Speaker 3: that simple. And I mean in the book, there's one
[5:55] Speaker 3: case where DNA was the only evidence against a young
[6:00] Speaker 3: man who'd been accused of rape. It was the only evidence,
[6:04] Speaker 3: there was nothing else. And I mean you talk about
[6:07] Speaker 3: the reasons for things going wrong in that.
[6:10] Speaker 2: Case and one or two others.
[6:11] Speaker 3: I think common sense sort of flew out the window
[6:15] Speaker 3: in that particular case and in a couple of others.
[6:18] Speaker 3: You know, you're just going, how could this happen?
[6:22] Speaker 1: Well, it's interesting you say common sense, because quite a
[6:25] Speaker 1: number of the cases you refer to in the book
[6:28] Speaker 1: or you've covered in the book a common sense. I'm
[6:32] Speaker 1: reading it going, well, it's fairly obvious that this person
[6:35] Speaker 1: can't get convicted, but the system seems to just roll
[6:38] Speaker 1: along and someone gets caught up in the system. And yeah,
[6:42] Speaker 1: we've got a judicial system that there's a lot of
[6:45] Speaker 1: checks and balances, so this type of thing doesn't doesn't happen,
[6:49] Speaker 1: but it's surprising how many occurred. I got to say too,
[6:53] Speaker 1: when I picked up the book false Falsely Convicted. Before
[6:57] Speaker 1: I asked you to come on the podcast, I've made
[6:59] Speaker 1: sure there's none of my cases.
[7:01] Speaker 2: Cases in there. There wouldn't be.
[7:03] Speaker 1: And then when I've checked that, then I was disappointed
[7:06] Speaker 1: my conviction wasn't in there as a falsely convicted. But anyway,
[7:09] Speaker 1: that's it.
[7:09] Speaker 2: That's falsely convicted too. That's the next book. Good.
[7:13] Speaker 1: I'm glad, you're glad you're going to cover that. Were
[7:15] Speaker 1: you shocked by it that you've been around for a
[7:17] Speaker 1: long time, Were you shocked by the research you've done
[7:20] Speaker 1: with your book? You might must have lost a lot
[7:23] Speaker 1: of faith in the court system.
[7:25] Speaker 2: I'm not sure if I.
[7:25] Speaker 3: Can say I was shocked. I was certainly surprised and
[7:29] Speaker 3: in a couple of cases almost flabbergasted that you know,
[7:34] Speaker 3: as I say, common sense seemed to go out the
[7:36] Speaker 3: window and you're looking at it going, how could this
[7:38] Speaker 3: possibly happen? Why didn't why didn't this happen? And this happened?
[7:43] Speaker 3: I mean in one case where we're talking about a
[7:45] Speaker 3: woman in Victoria, Josephine greencial she's charged with twenty one
[7:50] Speaker 3: counts of indecent assault historic she's a semi retired school teacher.
[7:56] Speaker 3: Two blokes come forward and say that thirty years earlier,
[8:00] Speaker 3: she'd raped them, sexually assaulted them. Basically, they'd had sexual
[8:04] Speaker 3: intercourse as eight year old boys. There's no medical evidence
[8:08] Speaker 3: called at the trial to say our eight year old
[8:12] Speaker 3: boys capable of doing these things. Because they described in
[8:17] Speaker 3: great detail at her trial at Josephine Green Seals trial
[8:22] Speaker 3: what they'd done, and experts later much after that, much
[8:27] Speaker 3: much later, when it was after she'd done two years
[8:30] Speaker 3: and eight months jail for something she didn't do, the
[8:33] Speaker 3: experts were just going what those blokes.
[8:36] Speaker 2: Said in the witness box is impossible. It is just
[8:40] Speaker 2: it's not possible.
[8:41] Speaker 1: So well that was one of the first chapters I
[8:45] Speaker 1: read in your book, that story, and that got me
[8:47] Speaker 1: hooked because I'm reading it and I'm thinking whole that
[8:50] Speaker 1: this doesn't seem right. Now we talk common sense. Twenty
[8:54] Speaker 1: eight years after the event, this teacher, which you know
[8:58] Speaker 1: and we've seen, you can't say an impeccable record because
[9:02] Speaker 1: a lot of people have been called out and they've
[9:04] Speaker 1: committed offenses. So let's forget the reputation. But it was
[9:08] Speaker 1: a lady that was a highly regarded, highly regarded teacher,
[9:13] Speaker 1: and then these allegations come up twenty eight years later,
[9:16] Speaker 1: two eight year old boys that they were sexually assaulted
[9:21] Speaker 1: camping in the tent in her backyard. She had three
[9:26] Speaker 1: or four children, I think at the time a husband
[9:29] Speaker 1: was there and apparently she's gone out and sexually assaulted
[9:33] Speaker 1: them to the point of it was full sexual intercourse.
[9:37] Speaker 2: Yeah, the two eight year old boys.
[9:39] Speaker 3: The two eight year old boys are having a sleepover
[9:41] Speaker 3: in the backyard. Josephine Greenseel knew the parents of the
[9:47] Speaker 3: two boys. They've been out to dinner once or twice,
[9:49] Speaker 3: So I mean it might sound a bit weird these days,
[9:52] Speaker 3: but yeah, back then, you know more than thirty years ago.
[9:55] Speaker 3: You know, the two boys said they were excited, they
[9:58] Speaker 3: were sleeping in a tent in the backyard. Was a
[10:00] Speaker 3: Friday or Saturday night. Almost thirty years later they come
[10:04] Speaker 3: forward and say, you know, she indecently assaulted us. And
[10:08] Speaker 3: at the trial they say, we had full sexual intercourse,
[10:15] Speaker 3: We obtained directions, we had full sexual intercourse not once,
[10:20] Speaker 3: but multiple times over a long period of time. And
[10:26] Speaker 3: crucially they say, or at least one of them says
[10:30] Speaker 3: he produced seamen as an eight year old boy. I
[10:35] Speaker 3: spoke to Josephine Greensell last year about her case, and
[10:41] Speaker 3: you know, she just struck me as a very shy,
[10:44] Speaker 3: decent person. Her barrister said, look, don't worry about this.
[10:50] Speaker 3: You know, nobody's going to believe these two blokes. Well,
[10:53] Speaker 3: the jury did believe the two blokes and she was
[10:58] Speaker 3: sent off to Dame Phyllis Frost down in Melbourne. She's
[11:03] Speaker 3: a child molester and she's of course she's on protection.
[11:06] Speaker 3: You know, she's the lowest.
[11:07] Speaker 2: Of the low in the prison system.
[11:08] Speaker 4: Yeah.
[11:09] Speaker 3: I mean, this is an extraordinary turn of events because
[11:13] Speaker 3: it's completely out of the blue. It's completely out of
[11:16] Speaker 3: the blue. The police turn up at a home at
[11:20] Speaker 3: lunchtime one day. Knock on the door and she just
[11:23] Speaker 3: says she opens the door, and they say, we're here.
[11:25] Speaker 1: To arrest you, talking about your life being too upside down.
[11:30] Speaker 3: I mean, she's in her pajamas, her son's on his
[11:33] Speaker 3: exercise bike, and off she goes to the police station.
[11:37] Speaker 3: They do say you can have a lawyer, and she goes, well,
[11:40] Speaker 3: the only lawyer I know is the one who did
[11:42] Speaker 3: my will, so he's probably not going to be all
[11:45] Speaker 3: that handy. And I've got nothing to hide. I'll just
[11:48] Speaker 3: I've got nothing to hide. I'll just answer all the questions.
[11:51] Speaker 3: And I think there is something like in the couple
[11:53] Speaker 3: of hours or three hundred and fifty odd questions, and
[11:56] Speaker 3: she's answered all of them and said, these allegations are outrageous.
[12:00] Speaker 2: Happened.
[12:00] Speaker 3: They're fabricating it, And the only reason I can think
[12:03] Speaker 3: that they might be fabricating is for money. Because, as
[12:07] Speaker 3: it turns out, Josephine Grensill's husband had been killed in
[12:12] Speaker 3: a level crossing accident a couple of years earlier, and
[12:15] Speaker 3: she'd received compensation of about six hundred thousand dollars, and
[12:19] Speaker 3: it was known in the in the in the railways,
[12:23] Speaker 3: and one of her accusers worked in the railways, so
[12:26] Speaker 3: it's quite possible he knew about that six hundred thousand.
[12:29] Speaker 3: There was money there, There was money there, and this
[12:32] Speaker 3: is what this is what Joe Greensill thought. They're after money,
[12:35] Speaker 3: either part of the six hundred thousand or victims of
[12:39] Speaker 3: crime compensation.
[12:40] Speaker 1: Well, breaking that breaking that case down. Now, the obvious
[12:44] Speaker 1: thing when I started reading about it in your book
[12:47] Speaker 1: was two eight year old boys and the way they're
[12:49] Speaker 1: describing a full sexual intercourse with erections and then ejaculation,
[12:54] Speaker 1: like I'm thinking eight year old. No, I'm not saying it.
[13:00] Speaker 1: So I would have as a police officer, that would
[13:03] Speaker 1: be the first place I would go to is could
[13:05] Speaker 1: we get some medical evidence? And I think when it
[13:07] Speaker 1: finally was done, when there was an appeal put in
[13:11] Speaker 1: medical evidence, and I think the age was about twelve
[13:14] Speaker 1: or where it would be realistic that a young male
[13:17] Speaker 1: could do something like that around about the age of
[13:20] Speaker 1: twelve at the earliest. So that would have been the
[13:24] Speaker 1: first form of defense. And there's a let's breaking it down.
[13:29] Speaker 1: There's a responsibility on the police to look at this
[13:32] Speaker 1: like you don't when a victim comes in you don't
[13:35] Speaker 1: just take it on face value. You've still got to
[13:38] Speaker 1: investigate it. I would have thought the police would have
[13:42] Speaker 1: sought medical advice on that.
[13:45] Speaker 3: I can't explain it, but my reaction when I first
[13:49] Speaker 3: heard about this case and the fact they were eight
[13:51] Speaker 3: years old, was exactly the same as yours. I think,
[13:54] Speaker 3: hang on, that just doesn't sound right. I think, also
[13:58] Speaker 3: more so than the police, probably the Director of Public Prosecutions,
[14:02] Speaker 3: they should have gone, hold on, you know, let's get
[14:05] Speaker 3: some medical evidence. I mean, why wouldn't they Why wouldn't.
[14:08] Speaker 2: They do that?
[14:09] Speaker 3: I can't explain that, because, as you say, that's that's
[14:11] Speaker 3: the first thing you'd get a pediatrician or a professor
[14:16] Speaker 3: of endo chronology or whatever, and they would have said
[14:21] Speaker 3: if they had been called, this is this is unheard of.
[14:25] Speaker 3: It's not recorded in any medical literature. Eight year old
[14:28] Speaker 3: boys cannot do this. But I mean I take your
[14:32] Speaker 3: point that, you know, police have to take these things
[14:34] Speaker 3: seriously and they have to investigate. But yeah, just a
[14:39] Speaker 3: bit of common sense.
[14:40] Speaker 1: I think there with sexual assaults and I'll tread carefully
[14:44] Speaker 1: carefully here because it is something that needs to be
[14:47] Speaker 1: taken seriously. But for sure, I think I saw in
[14:50] Speaker 1: the past. So it was almost like, Okay, well there's
[14:53] Speaker 1: there's a statement. We don't need to corroborate anything else.
[14:56] Speaker 1: We'll just put the allegation to the offender the accused,
[15:00] Speaker 1: and the accused might deny it and will let the
[15:04] Speaker 1: courts decide. You need to investigate the allegations properly.
[15:09] Speaker 3: I think that that's one of the things I hope
[15:11] Speaker 3: people take out of the book that look, I think, yeah,
[15:16] Speaker 3: it's very it's incredibly serious. We've all heard the accounts
[15:20] Speaker 3: of historical child sex abuse in church's institutions pretty much everywhere,
[15:25] Speaker 3: and I think in the vast majority of cases there's
[15:28] Speaker 3: no doubt that people coming forward are telling the truth.
[15:31] Speaker 3: You've got a case here where these two blokes colluded. Basically,
[15:36] Speaker 3: they got together, they had their heads together and for
[15:40] Speaker 3: reasons that seemed trivial on the one hand, and you know,
[15:45] Speaker 3: one of these guys had held a grudge against Josephine
[15:50] Speaker 3: Greensill for thirty years for something that happened in the classroom, yes,
[15:54] Speaker 3: when he was eight, I mean, And this came out
[15:58] Speaker 3: in court and evidence was given about this. So this
[16:02] Speaker 3: is a possible reason as to why one bloke in
[16:05] Speaker 3: particular has come forward. He was the teacher's pet. But
[16:09] Speaker 3: then one day, Josephine greenstill noticed that there was ten
[16:12] Speaker 3: bucks missing from a purse, and she's not happy, understandably.
[16:16] Speaker 3: She goes around and she finds the ten bucks in
[16:19] Speaker 3: the school bag of this particular boy, and it's obviously
[16:25] Speaker 3: stuck in his brain for decades, because years and years
[16:29] Speaker 3: later he talks to his then wife about it, and
[16:34] Speaker 3: the wife comes to the trial, she's an ex wife
[16:36] Speaker 3: by now, gives evidence and she says, oh, yeah, he
[16:40] Speaker 3: said something like this is the accuser. He said, oh yeah,
[16:44] Speaker 3: my teacher accused me of stealing the ten dollars. Maybe
[16:48] Speaker 3: I should take her to court. Maybe I should get
[16:51] Speaker 3: her into court and embarrass her sort of thing. So
[16:55] Speaker 3: it appears that this tiny incident, which most people would
[17:00] Speaker 3: have forgot, has fested for all these years, and he's
[17:05] Speaker 3: come forward, and he's got his classmate to also make
[17:10] Speaker 3: a statement to corroborate what they say happened in the
[17:14] Speaker 3: tent in the backyard that particular night, and that's the
[17:17] Speaker 3: central allegation.
[17:19] Speaker 1: And there was some failings there too, in that there
[17:21] Speaker 1: was some corroboration between the two alleged victims of the
[17:27] Speaker 1: sexual assault that they did collude, but it was denied
[17:31] Speaker 1: at first, and then it was exposed at court that
[17:34] Speaker 1: they had in fact spoken to each other before they
[17:37] Speaker 1: made the report, and I think that it was miles
[17:41] Speaker 1: apart from their first version they said, no, we haven't
[17:43] Speaker 1: spoken in years to oh yeah, before I went to
[17:46] Speaker 1: the police station, I spoke to the other person. So
[17:50] Speaker 1: so many I call them red flags that would have
[17:55] Speaker 1: caused concern, But the police have happily gone through with
[17:59] Speaker 1: the prosecution, and I think there is a nous on
[18:02] Speaker 1: the police. And I speak on behalf of police. I
[18:05] Speaker 1: think ninety nine percent of police are very ethical in
[18:09] Speaker 1: the way that they approach an investigation. If they had
[18:11] Speaker 1: doubts on it, they wouldn't want to see the matter
[18:14] Speaker 1: proceed through the court. Failings of the defense, but you've
[18:17] Speaker 1: highlighted the failings of the prosecution as well, and then
[18:22] Speaker 1: whether it be a jury or the judge, there's a
[18:25] Speaker 1: failing in that part of it as well, a question
[18:27] Speaker 1: the validity of the evidence.
[18:29] Speaker 2: Yeah. Look, I mean it.
[18:32] Speaker 3: Was a disaster all round, really, I mean, and you're
[18:36] Speaker 3: talking about that collusion. One of the interesting things was
[18:40] Speaker 3: the two boys, as you say said something like, oh,
[18:43] Speaker 3: we haven't spoken since we left school. But the second
[18:47] Speaker 3: boy makes a statement, and in the first part of it,
[18:50] Speaker 3: in the first paragraph, the very first paragraph of his
[18:53] Speaker 3: own statement, he says, I was contacted.
[18:58] Speaker 2: By the police.
[19:00] Speaker 3: He allegedly says, oh, I knew exactly what it was about. Yeah,
[19:04] Speaker 3: but then I said, oh, I'd like to speak to
[19:06] Speaker 3: my mate, his schoolmate before I say anything, And the
[19:11] Speaker 3: police officer says, yeah, okay, and he does, and he
[19:14] Speaker 3: says this in his own statement. He then denies his
[19:17] Speaker 3: own statement in court and says, I didn't say that,
[19:20] Speaker 3: but you signed the statement. Oh I didn't read it.
[19:23] Speaker 3: It's in the first paragraph, mate, Yeah, you know, I
[19:26] Speaker 3: mean this is you talk about a red flag.
[19:29] Speaker 1: I mean, well, that's where the credibility, like people have
[19:33] Speaker 1: to look at the credibility of the witness and the
[19:36] Speaker 1: accounts of the witness. But yeah, that one chapter and
[19:40] Speaker 1: that story of that wrongful conviction just got me curious,
[19:47] Speaker 1: and I'm just thinking, I've worked in that industry. I know,
[19:50] Speaker 1: the industry, the courts of prosecution, the police investigations, and
[19:55] Speaker 1: there just seem to be so many many failings that
[19:57] Speaker 1: went unchecked. And I can aim hazard, the guests, the
[20:01] Speaker 1: impact that had on the.
[20:03] Speaker 3: Accused on Josephine Greenzille.
[20:07] Speaker 1: When she was convicted, did one of them went for
[20:10] Speaker 1: the civil claim honor as well?
[20:12] Speaker 3: In the witness box, the chief bloke, the main protagonist,
[20:17] Speaker 3: I guess he's asked, Oh, you're after compensation, aren't you,
[20:20] Speaker 3: And he goes, no, no, I'm not interested in compensation.
[20:23] Speaker 3: I'm not interested in money, don't want anything to do
[20:25] Speaker 3: with it. Eight days after Josephine Greenzill was sentenced, he
[20:31] Speaker 3: goes and sets in training the process to get compensation,
[20:35] Speaker 3: the very thing he's denied in the witness box, and
[20:38] Speaker 3: he is awarded sixty thousand dollars plus five thousand dollars.
[20:44] Speaker 2: For costs or whatever.
[20:46] Speaker 3: In the end, that's not actually paid because Joe Greensill's
[20:52] Speaker 3: appeal in the Court of Criminal Appeal comes up just
[20:55] Speaker 3: before she's due to pay him this money. So yeah,
[20:59] Speaker 3: that was another thing. I'm not interested in money. Eight
[21:03] Speaker 3: days after she has sent to the slammer Bang, he's
[21:05] Speaker 3: in there trying to get it. And look, just just
[21:10] Speaker 3: one point. I think it's really important that I don't
[21:14] Speaker 3: want this to be seen as a general sort of
[21:17] Speaker 3: thing people coming forward and making false allegations that it's commonplace.
[21:21] Speaker 3: I don't think that is the case, but it's an
[21:23] Speaker 3: example where expert evidence should have been called failing of
[21:28] Speaker 3: the DPP. I've got one of the one of the
[21:32] Speaker 3: reports of one of the experts, and it's Professor Margaret Zacherin,
[21:36] Speaker 3: and I think it's worth quoting one or two lines.
[21:39] Speaker 3: She says, where the boys have claimed to be able
[21:42] Speaker 3: to sustain a rectile function to the point of having
[21:45] Speaker 3: sexual intercourse and achieving ejaculation seems totally unwarranted and unlikely,
[21:52] Speaker 3: to the point of being completely impossible. And that's the
[21:56] Speaker 3: word she uses, and she goes on it sounds to
[21:59] Speaker 3: be an invention of quite remarkable proportions. But you know this,
[22:05] Speaker 3: this I think is a unique case, Gary, I really do.
[22:08] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[22:08] Speaker 1: Well, it's an extreme case. To make an allegation against
[22:12] Speaker 1: someone of that nature can be devastating for the person
[22:16] Speaker 1: that's been the accused of the crime if it got
[22:20] Speaker 1: to the point where it's found to be false. I've
[22:24] Speaker 1: never known a situation where someone's been charged by making
[22:27] Speaker 1: an allegation, and I'm not suggesting that should be the norm,
[22:30] Speaker 1: because of course, we want victims to feel comfortable coming
[22:33] Speaker 1: forward absolutely reporting things. But you know, if there's overwhelming evidence,
[22:39] Speaker 1: I think there needs to be some accountability because you
[22:42] Speaker 1: can destroy people's lives with these type of allegations.
[22:45] Speaker 3: Even though Josephine Greenzel's conviction was eventually quashed, she's still
[22:50] Speaker 3: living with that. I mean, it's been in the newspapers.
[22:53] Speaker 3: Mum of five, you know, jailed for sex crimes or
[22:57] Speaker 3: something like that. You know, it's everybody knows about it.
[23:01] Speaker 3: And even though the conviction is quashed, she's still living
[23:04] Speaker 3: with it. And she's still living with the trauma of
[23:07] Speaker 3: being one minute a completely normal, average suburban mum and
[23:13] Speaker 3: the next thing she's in protection in jail, and the
[23:15] Speaker 3: trauma that goes with that. Every time she had a visitor,
[23:19] Speaker 3: she was strip searched before and after the visit. She
[23:24] Speaker 3: came out of jail when the conviction was quashed, and
[23:28] Speaker 3: I suppose most people would go, oh, you know, that's okay,
[23:30] Speaker 3: justice has finally finally been done. She said, I had
[23:37] Speaker 3: panic attacks when I got into crowds. When I went
[23:42] Speaker 3: to the supermarket. I couldn't make up my mind what
[23:44] Speaker 3: product choose. I couldn't remember what was in my own
[23:48] Speaker 3: wardrobe at home, and she described being in prisoners like
[23:51] Speaker 3: being in a mini city where you just do as
[23:55] Speaker 3: you told you just the prison officers. The system has
[23:59] Speaker 3: total con role over your life and you don't have
[24:02] Speaker 3: to think about anything. And she seemed, she seemed remarkably
[24:08] Speaker 3: to me to not be bitter about what these two
[24:11] Speaker 3: men had done. She did want the Victoria Police to
[24:14] Speaker 3: investigate them, and I think they did do an investigation
[24:19] Speaker 3: to see if they could be charged with either perjury
[24:22] Speaker 3: or conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, but nothing
[24:25] Speaker 3: came of it. She also wants them named, which is
[24:30] Speaker 3: impossible because there's a suppression order in place. She's remarkably
[24:38] Speaker 3: she's been refused any compensation by the Victorian government, even
[24:43] Speaker 3: though you've got the reports of the experts, part of
[24:46] Speaker 3: which I just read out saying it's impossible. They what
[24:50] Speaker 3: they've said the state government. This is repeated state governments
[24:54] Speaker 3: have said.
[24:55] Speaker 2: Tough luck.
[24:58] Speaker 1: I'm always amazed. Seems to be a reluctance when cases
[25:02] Speaker 1: proved so overwhelmingly that she should not have been convicted,
[25:06] Speaker 1: that there's no compensation forthcoming. So you know, falsely convicted.
[25:12] Speaker 1: I suppose from the title of your book, you can
[25:15] Speaker 1: break it down falsely convicted, because there's people that have
[25:19] Speaker 1: been convicted and acquitted but you saw the step away
[25:22] Speaker 1: and think, Okay, because of a legal loophole or some reason,
[25:27] Speaker 1: they're walking free. And I'm not going to mention specific
[25:31] Speaker 1: cases because we'll get ourselves into trouble, but where people
[25:34] Speaker 1: have been acquitted and you accept, ok there was insufficient
[25:38] Speaker 1: evidence to have that person convicted at court, but that
[25:41] Speaker 1: doesn't mean the person hasn't committed the offense.
[25:44] Speaker 3: Well, I think I can mention one case quite confidently,
[25:46] Speaker 3: and that is Roger Rogerson being accused of the conspiring
[25:50] Speaker 3: to shoot detective during mic drury, and Roger was acquitted
[25:56] Speaker 3: on that charge and he is entitled by lord as
[26:00] Speaker 3: being innocent. But I think there's more than a few
[26:03] Speaker 3: people who reckon Roger didn't do it himself, but was very,
[26:07] Speaker 3: very heavily involved in that. So exactly, you know, you
[26:11] Speaker 3: can be acquitted, and I mean you can still hold
[26:14] Speaker 3: of you Yeah, I still think that person is guilty. Yeah,
[26:18] Speaker 3: the law has said there's not enough evidence beyond reasonable doubt.
[26:21] Speaker 3: As you know better than me, it's a pretty high
[26:24] Speaker 3: bar to jump out.
[26:24] Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a very high bar. And well, I thought
[26:28] Speaker 1: it was a high bar until I read your book.
[26:32] Speaker 1: There's some there's some horror stories in there, isn't there.
[26:36] Speaker 1: I look at a couple of the other ones, like
[26:38] Speaker 1: we've talked about Josephine's case and what went wrong, and
[26:42] Speaker 1: there was a combination of things, but highlighted by the
[26:45] Speaker 1: fact that what you read out from the expert that
[26:48] Speaker 1: should have been at the forefront and just negated the
[26:51] Speaker 1: investigation from the start. Why do you think this happens?
[26:55] Speaker 3: Is?
[26:55] Speaker 1: I know with the DPP, and I can only speak
[26:58] Speaker 1: for New South Wales, I know they're incredibly overworked, so
[27:01] Speaker 1: they don't have time to Quite often they're looking at
[27:05] Speaker 1: the brief on the day you're going to court with
[27:08] Speaker 1: police again, can be overworked. I worry if there's sometimes
[27:14] Speaker 1: some tunnel vision that comes into it. Okay, well we've
[27:16] Speaker 1: got the evidence. There's almost It takes some pressure off
[27:20] Speaker 1: when you've charged someone you put the brief before the
[27:23] Speaker 1: DPP because you haven't got carriage of it at that stage.
[27:27] Speaker 1: It's now the DPP. So if there's any failings in
[27:30] Speaker 1: the investigation or weaknesses in the evidence, you have an
[27:34] Speaker 1: expectation that the DPP will highlight them, so it's almost
[27:37] Speaker 1: like you're passing the responsibility onto the DPP. Our role
[27:41] Speaker 1: as police is not to see the person convicted. That's
[27:44] Speaker 1: to gather the chargers, charge them, and then the DPP
[27:47] Speaker 1: has carriage of it. So there's a responsibility there. But
[27:51] Speaker 1: I don't know as a police officer that one just
[27:56] Speaker 1: sort of jumped out so many failings. It seems once
[28:00] Speaker 1: someone's in the system, it's very hard to hard to stop.
[28:04] Speaker 1: I had I had someone I talk about this of you.
[28:08] Speaker 1: People might argue, argue the case and say there's more
[28:10] Speaker 1: than one, but have you ever sent an innocent person
[28:13] Speaker 1: to jail? And this was I won't name the names,
[28:18] Speaker 1: but it was before I was in major crime and
[28:21] Speaker 1: I got called out at two o'clock in the morning
[28:23] Speaker 1: and a young lady had come in and complained of
[28:26] Speaker 1: being sexually assaulted by her flatmate. The flatmate was arrested
[28:31] Speaker 1: by uniform police and brought back to the police station.
[28:34] Speaker 1: I was called in as a detective to interview him.
[28:37] Speaker 1: He was I picture a kid that spends his whole
[28:41] Speaker 1: day sitting on the lands playing computer games. You know,
[28:43] Speaker 1: he wasn't worldly, he was just the innocence or the
[28:47] Speaker 1: kid interviewed him put the allegations to him, and his
[28:50] Speaker 1: answers were somewhat ambiguous in the way he answered, you know,
[28:55] Speaker 1: I probably shouldn't have done that, you know, and enough
[28:59] Speaker 1: that actively I had to say, well, there's enough to
[29:02] Speaker 1: have this person person charge. I don't know the strength
[29:04] Speaker 1: of the case at this stage, but based on what
[29:07] Speaker 1: he said, it wasn't a denial, it was I probably
[29:09] Speaker 1: shouldn't have done that. And so he went to court.
[29:12] Speaker 1: He was bail refused. I remember this because he was
[29:15] Speaker 1: wearing a red tracksuit. And when I say a kid
[29:18] Speaker 1: who was over eighteen, he was going to an adult prison.
[29:20] Speaker 1: But for whatever reason, the magistrate decided that he didn't
[29:23] Speaker 1: get bail. He's gone the prison. The person that made
[29:27] Speaker 1: the allegation then has contacted me a short time a
[29:32] Speaker 1: week or so later, and said, oh, he sent a
[29:35] Speaker 1: letter to me from prison, and we've gone round to
[29:37] Speaker 1: a place and it's a letter like a ransom note
[29:40] Speaker 1: newspaper newspaper letters from the newspaper cut out that if
[29:44] Speaker 1: you really yeah, if you don't drop the chargers, you'll
[29:47] Speaker 1: get it all. It was childish.
[29:49] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[29:50] Speaker 1: I then went to the kitchen waistbin and found the
[29:52] Speaker 1: newspaper with the letters cut out.
[29:55] Speaker 2: She'd done it.
[29:55] Speaker 1: She had done it, so her credibility at that stage
[30:01] Speaker 1: as a victim was rapidly diminishing. I made every representation
[30:06] Speaker 1: I could to get that kid out of jail. They
[30:09] Speaker 1: didn't didn't release him. I think he got his jaw
[30:13] Speaker 1: broken in jail. I knew he wasn't suited for jail,
[30:17] Speaker 1: and went to trial and I couldn't stop it. The
[30:21] Speaker 1: point I'm trying to make from that long story is
[30:24] Speaker 1: that once the things in motion, it's very hard to stop. Yeah,
[30:29] Speaker 1: and it's almost like that's just caught up in the
[30:31] Speaker 1: machinery of the justice system and no one can put
[30:34] Speaker 1: the brakes on.
[30:35] Speaker 3: I think that the machinery of the justice system is
[30:38] Speaker 3: a really good phrase, because in a lot of these cases,
[30:41] Speaker 3: people are convicted and trying to get that overturned, even
[30:46] Speaker 3: when there seems to be quite overwhelming evidence that they
[30:50] Speaker 3: shouldn't be in jail, is really, really difficult. And I
[30:54] Speaker 3: think one of the themes in the book is the authorities.
[30:58] Speaker 3: If I can call, say, the Director of Public Prosecutions, police, politicians,
[31:04] Speaker 3: because some of these cases become very political. Nobody wants
[31:08] Speaker 3: to say acknowledge a possible mistake. And you know, let's
[31:12] Speaker 3: face it, none of us like to say I've made
[31:14] Speaker 3: a mistake. It's a human nature exactly. But there's a
[31:18] Speaker 3: reluctance around the country to say there's something seriously wrong here.
[31:24] Speaker 3: We should at least have a look at it and
[31:27] Speaker 3: have an inquiry or do something about it. No, no, no,
[31:30] Speaker 3: We've got it right. He's guilty, she's guilty. Whatever.
[31:34] Speaker 1: There's an arrogance in the judicial system. I think you
[31:38] Speaker 1: mentioned politicians, please, but we're taught the judiciary. They like
[31:42] Speaker 1: to think they're infallible, they do not make mistakes, and
[31:46] Speaker 1: I've found that there's I call it an intellectual arrogance
[31:49] Speaker 1: sometimes with people that I've met, whether it be barrister's
[31:53] Speaker 1: defense or prosecution solicitors, they common sense. No, that's just
[32:00] Speaker 1: for the average people. You don't understand the intellect of
[32:02] Speaker 1: what we know because we're qualified legal practitioners. And I
[32:06] Speaker 1: think it gets lost there sometimes. Just getting back to
[32:10] Speaker 1: red tracksuit boy situation, it went to trial, wouldn't get
[32:14] Speaker 1: it stopped. I'm sitting with his family, I'm giving evidence
[32:18] Speaker 1: for the defense and basically and it got thrown out.
[32:22] Speaker 1: But the damage had already already already been done.
[32:26] Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think that, you know, common sense and
[32:31] Speaker 3: the law don't always intersect.
[32:34] Speaker 1: For people just listening your hands and not meeting it.
[32:36] Speaker 3: Now, that's right, that's sort of one goes that way
[32:38] Speaker 3: and the other one goes this way. Probably shouldn't laugh.
[32:41] Speaker 3: I mean, we're talking about people's lives. But I do
[32:46] Speaker 3: get what you mean about judges getting things wrong. And
[32:49] Speaker 3: there's a couple of cases in here where the Court
[32:53] Speaker 3: of Criminal Appeal in Western Australia in the case I'm
[32:55] Speaker 3: thinking about, has thrown out or refused dismissed a peace
[33:00] Speaker 3: and said, oh no, no, he's absolutely guilty. There's no
[33:04] Speaker 3: mischaracter of justice here, and it's finally been overturned.
[33:08] Speaker 2: By the High Court.
[33:09] Speaker 3: And the High Court has been highly critical of the
[33:12] Speaker 3: judges on the Court of Criminal Appeal and saying, you know,
[33:16] Speaker 3: they basically got the law wrong. They got this wrong,
[33:19] Speaker 3: they got that wrong. So like all of us, judges
[33:23] Speaker 3: are not infallible.
[33:24] Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, well that's one hundred right. Are we talking
[33:28] Speaker 1: to Andrew Mallard cases on that one.
[33:30] Speaker 2: Let's talk us through that.
[33:31] Speaker 1: If you could explain to the listeners, and it had
[33:33] Speaker 1: a high profile. I knew of it before I read
[33:37] Speaker 1: your book, but talk us through because that's a fascinating
[33:40] Speaker 1: case in itself.
[33:41] Speaker 3: I'd heard about the case over the years, but I
[33:43] Speaker 3: didn't really know much about it until I started looking
[33:46] Speaker 3: at it for the book. I mean Andrew Mallard. In
[33:51] Speaker 3: May nineteen ninety four, there's a murder in Mossman Park,
[33:56] Speaker 3: a Perth suburb. A shopkeeper by the name of Pamela
[33:59] Speaker 3: Laura is murdered about five or six pm one evening.
[34:04] Speaker 3: She's brutally bashed. The police zero in on a bloke
[34:08] Speaker 3: called Andrew Mallard, who at that stage is thirty one
[34:11] Speaker 3: years old. He's mentally unwell. He's been living rough, he's
[34:17] Speaker 3: been living in parks and that sort of stuff, and
[34:20] Speaker 3: he's living this fantasy life. He thinks he's a Viking.
[34:25] Speaker 3: He tells people he speaks six languages.
[34:28] Speaker 2: Walter Mity is very wal to Miitty.
[34:30] Speaker 3: He says he's actually working for Interpol, investigating the mafia.
[34:34] Speaker 3: He tells this to several people. He starts impersonating police officers,
[34:40] Speaker 3: the police in Perth. He's living very close to where
[34:45] Speaker 3: the murder occurred, and on the evening of the murder.
[34:49] Speaker 3: Andrew Mallard gets dropped off very close by to where
[34:53] Speaker 3: the shop is, and he's not an easy person to
[34:57] Speaker 3: miss Andrew Mallard. He's one hundred and ninety nine centimeters tall,
[35:01] Speaker 3: and he dresses in bright colorful clothing, torn jeans, so
[35:04] Speaker 3: he's easy to spot.
[35:06] Speaker 2: So they do.
[35:07] Speaker 3: They find out that he's been really close to the shop.
[35:12] Speaker 3: They ask him where he's been and he gives a
[35:15] Speaker 3: variety of answers, none of which check out. The fact
[35:18] Speaker 3: is he's been going around knocking on people's doors trying
[35:20] Speaker 3: to score marijuana because he's a big dope smoker. They
[35:26] Speaker 3: call him in for questioning. None of it's electronically recorded.
[35:30] Speaker 3: They say at the beginning, I would just want a
[35:32] Speaker 3: brief chat goes on for eight hours and it ends
[35:35] Speaker 3: with him biting the detective on the thigh, I think.
[35:43] Speaker 3: But during that interview, police later say, oh, he made confessions,
[35:47] Speaker 3: which he sort of did, but he makes them in
[35:50] Speaker 3: the third person, and then he retracts them. He says, oh,
[35:54] Speaker 3: this man who did this was an evil man. I
[35:57] Speaker 3: think he would have done this, and I think he
[35:58] Speaker 3: would have done that, And the cops go, is this
[36:02] Speaker 3: evil man you Andrew, and he says, I know, I'm
[36:04] Speaker 3: just imagining what happened. So he's released, he's called in
[36:09] Speaker 3: for questioning again and they finally do record some stuff
[36:13] Speaker 3: with him and they charge him with the murder of
[36:17] Speaker 3: Pamela Lawrence. He goes to trial, he's convicted and he's
[36:24] Speaker 3: sent to jail. There's an appeal to the Court of
[36:26] Speaker 3: Criminal Appeal. No, no, nothing to see here. It's all good,
[36:32] Speaker 3: you know. It's this is a man who's been in
[36:36] Speaker 3: and out of psychiatric hospitals.
[36:39] Speaker 1: Some of the interviews were done after he was just
[36:42] Speaker 1: released or he'd been assaulted. And I looked at the
[36:46] Speaker 1: type of interviews and then when they finally I'm talking here,
[36:51] Speaker 1: when the police finally did the recorded interview, electronically recorded interview,
[36:56] Speaker 1: he's revealing things, but these are things that he's been
[36:59] Speaker 1: told by by the police during the informal let's call
[37:04] Speaker 1: it the inform of.
[37:04] Speaker 3: The unrecorded interviews. That's right. And he is interviewed. He's
[37:09] Speaker 3: interviewed a few times in Greyland's Psychiatric Hospital and they're informal,
[37:14] Speaker 3: but nevertheless he's he doesn't have a lawyer, he doesn't
[37:18] Speaker 3: have anybody with him. He's in a psychiatric hospital. You know,
[37:23] Speaker 3: the whole thing was.
[37:25] Speaker 2: Was was really really bad. And you're right.
[37:29] Speaker 3: I mean, they don't record hours and hours of stuff.
[37:34] Speaker 3: And when they finally do record it, they say, oh,
[37:37] Speaker 3: now do you agree this is what you told us
[37:40] Speaker 3: several hours ago? And he's sort of going, yes, I
[37:43] Speaker 3: think so. So there are confessions, the professions are withdrawn,
[37:49] Speaker 3: it's all over the place, and on any reading of it,
[37:52] Speaker 3: you'd be going, he's deeply troubled. He's read he's getting
[37:57] Speaker 3: this from in the media. You know, I would have
[38:02] Speaker 3: thought they would have been very doubtful about him being
[38:08] Speaker 3: the killer.
[38:08] Speaker 1: And look, in defense of the police in this portion,
[38:13] Speaker 1: when you're dealing with someone that's got mental health issues,
[38:16] Speaker 1: there could still be in the fence and it could
[38:18] Speaker 1: be a very serious offense, as it wasn't in this case.
[38:21] Speaker 1: That you've got to think outside of the square a
[38:23] Speaker 1: little bit in the way that you approach the interview.
[38:26] Speaker 1: You're getting snippets, but the interview. My thoughts being that
[38:31] Speaker 1: you wouldn't hold a great deal of wait on anything
[38:33] Speaker 1: that they've said, so you'd be looking at other Okay,
[38:35] Speaker 1: So I'm confused. I don't know whether it was a
[38:37] Speaker 1: confessional or not a confession. He's got mental health issues.
[38:40] Speaker 1: What are we dealing with here? So you're looking at
[38:42] Speaker 1: corroborative evidence. But then it came in I think that
[38:47] Speaker 1: was the one with the injury to her head and
[38:50] Speaker 1: the forensic tests that were done with a pig's head.
[38:53] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[38:54] Speaker 3: At the trial, the prosecutor says, because police had some
[38:59] Speaker 3: difficulty established what the murder weapon was, Pamela Lawrence sustained
[39:03] Speaker 3: these terrible injuries to her head, but they couldn't quite
[39:06] Speaker 3: figure out what sort of weapon had caused it, and
[39:09] Speaker 3: they finally settled on the fact that it was a wrench.
[39:13] Speaker 3: And the prosecutor mentions this eighty times during the trial,
[39:17] Speaker 3: that it's a wrench. He's hit it with a sid
[39:19] Speaker 3: chrome wrench. What the prosecutor never tells the jury, or
[39:26] Speaker 3: in fact, the prosecution doesn't tell the defense, is that
[39:30] Speaker 3: months prior to this, they've done some testing on a
[39:33] Speaker 3: pig's head, which is apparently, I'm told, a recognized way
[39:37] Speaker 3: over there trying to replicate injuries where they've said, oh,
[39:44] Speaker 3: and they've used a wrench, and they've come to the
[39:46] Speaker 3: conclusion that a wrench.
[39:48] Speaker 2: Is not the murder weapon. But this is not.
[39:51] Speaker 3: Mentioned during the trial. In fact, there are quite a
[39:54] Speaker 3: few things not mentioned during the trial. They weren't mentioned
[39:58] Speaker 3: to the jury, and the defense had no idea the
[40:01] Speaker 3: pig's head testing was one of them. They also didn't
[40:04] Speaker 3: know there'd been an undercover operation with Andrew Mallard where
[40:09] Speaker 3: everything he said had been recorded, evidence was withheld. The
[40:14] Speaker 3: DPP later said it was inadvertently overlooked, or words to
[40:19] Speaker 3: that effect, and he looked back at it. And it
[40:23] Speaker 3: was only because of the work of a journalist in
[40:27] Speaker 3: Perth by the name of Colleen Egan that this case
[40:31] Speaker 3: sort of gained some momentum and doubts began to emerge
[40:34] Speaker 3: that Andrew Mallard might actually be innocent. And Colin Egan
[40:39] Speaker 3: also enlisted the help of a lawyer who previously acted
[40:43] Speaker 3: for the police union, John Quigley, for many, many years.
[40:47] Speaker 3: He was very proactive for the police union, you know,
[40:50] Speaker 3: appearing in court.
[40:51] Speaker 1: Police never do anything wrong.
[40:52] Speaker 2: Absolutely, he's on camera.
[40:55] Speaker 3: He leaves the law enters parliament and Colin Egan, the
[40:59] Speaker 3: journalist who's taken up on Andrew Malliard's case, sort of says, geez,
[41:03] Speaker 3: I need some help here. She goes to John Quiggley,
[41:06] Speaker 3: who by now is an MP. He goes to the
[41:10] Speaker 3: He goes to the Attorney General and says, I think
[41:12] Speaker 3: there's a serious problem with this case. I'm going to
[41:14] Speaker 3: stand up in Parliament and drop a bucket of you
[41:19] Speaker 3: know what. And the Attorney General says, oh, hold the phone,
[41:24] Speaker 3: I'll get in touch with the DPP and they'll open
[41:26] Speaker 3: up all their files for you. John Quiggley, previously the
[41:32] Speaker 3: police union lawyer, now MP, goes down there and what
[41:35] Speaker 3: he finds is that all this evidence has never made
[41:38] Speaker 3: it into court, which should have made it into court.
[41:41] Speaker 3: And this is a case where the prosecutors, well police
[41:44] Speaker 3: but also prosecutors have not done the right thing. There's
[41:50] Speaker 3: an inquiry later in which the prosecutor in the trial
[41:54] Speaker 3: was found to engage in misconduct. So it's you know,
[41:57] Speaker 3: cops get the blame a lot of the time, but
[41:59] Speaker 3: it's not.
[41:59] Speaker 1: All yeah, And that's what the safeguards that are put
[42:04] Speaker 1: in place. It comes very much from the time that
[42:06] Speaker 1: the brief is handed over to the DPP. And I've
[42:09] Speaker 1: had great DPP slices or barristers that have gone through
[42:15] Speaker 1: the brief with a fine tooth. Came and the requisitions
[42:18] Speaker 1: you get. I know, like with Mark Tadeski, you'd send
[42:20] Speaker 1: a brief and you think you've got it all covered.
[42:22] Speaker 1: When he was working for the DPP, he'd come back
[42:25] Speaker 1: with hundreds of requisitions. He was so thorough just making sure,
[42:29] Speaker 1: not all to strengthen the case, but to make sure
[42:31] Speaker 1: that nothing's been missed on the non disclosure. I know
[42:36] Speaker 1: in New South Wales and I'm not sure when it
[42:38] Speaker 1: came in, but it was some stage during my career
[42:41] Speaker 1: that we've got to do a full disclosure. So part
[42:43] Speaker 1: of the brief, you've got to disclose all the evidence
[42:46] Speaker 1: you've got, whether it's inculplatory or exculpatory, so the evidence,
[42:50] Speaker 1: and I think that prevents that type of type of failings.
[42:54] Speaker 1: But the offense or the prosecution mentioning the monkey, wrench
[42:59] Speaker 1: or whatever is the eighty times.
[43:01] Speaker 3: Eighty times they said that this is the murder weapon,
[43:04] Speaker 3: this is the murder weapon. The guy, the forensic expert
[43:07] Speaker 3: who had actually done the testing on the pig's head
[43:10] Speaker 3: months before the trial, is in the witness box, but
[43:13] Speaker 3: he's not once asked, yeah, by the prosecutor, what was
[43:17] Speaker 3: the murder weapon?
[43:18] Speaker 2: Yeah?
[43:18] Speaker 3: Was it a wrench? He's not asked, because he's done
[43:22] Speaker 3: the testing months earlier and found that a wrench is
[43:25] Speaker 3: not the murder weapon. That's I mean, that's just I
[43:28] Speaker 3: just went I took my breath away.
[43:30] Speaker 2: Income yeah. Yeah.
[43:32] Speaker 1: And that's but whether it's defense or prosecution, I've seen
[43:36] Speaker 1: it in trials, big murder trials, and there was one
[43:40] Speaker 1: I won't go into the specific trial, but that they
[43:43] Speaker 1: talked about the London Report. It was a forensic examination
[43:46] Speaker 1: and I was asked, was the forensic scent over to London?
[43:51] Speaker 1: And no, it wasn't, because it didn't need to be
[43:54] Speaker 1: as simple as that. So you put to bed. But
[43:56] Speaker 1: then this defense barrister kept mentioning the London Report. The
[44:00] Speaker 1: point even the judge was talking about the London Report,
[44:03] Speaker 1: there was no it didn't exist. There was no London Report,
[44:06] Speaker 1: but mentioning the wrench eighty times in front of a jury,
[44:10] Speaker 1: they'd be sitting there. I can just imagine the discussion
[44:13] Speaker 1: in a jury room going, well, the murder weapons, the
[44:16] Speaker 1: wrench that's been mentioned. He's consistently mentioned that. So it's
[44:21] Speaker 1: the way that these miscarriages can happen because of people,
[44:27] Speaker 1: whether they're not doing their job deliberately or it's in competence.
[44:31] Speaker 1: You know, each case needs to be judged on its
[44:33] Speaker 1: own merits. But there were other failings in there that
[44:37] Speaker 1: I understand that some of the statements were changed with
[44:40] Speaker 1: the witness statements to fit the narrative of the prosecution.
[44:43] Speaker 2: That's exactly right.
[44:45] Speaker 3: Initial statements were taken from his flatmate because the killer
[44:51] Speaker 3: is supposed to be wearing some sort of scarf wrapped
[44:55] Speaker 3: around his head, or a cap or something like that.
[44:58] Speaker 3: You know, his flatmate originally tells police certain things. When
[45:06] Speaker 3: they're not consistent with what the police are finding, they
[45:09] Speaker 3: go back to her and her statement changes to fit
[45:14] Speaker 3: with what the police now know. And she's not the
[45:18] Speaker 3: only one. There's a series of these where statements are
[45:22] Speaker 3: taken initially and then a second statement is taken which
[45:26] Speaker 3: is different in meaningful ways to the first one and
[45:32] Speaker 3: is far more points to the guilt of Andrew Mallard,
[45:37] Speaker 3: whereas the first statement pointed away from his guilt, pointed
[45:41] Speaker 3: more to his innocence. Yeah, the defense was never told
[45:45] Speaker 3: about the first the initial statements. They were presented, so
[45:49] Speaker 3: the jury's got all this material. And also the prosecutor
[45:54] Speaker 3: said there's fifteen things only the killer could have known.
[45:58] Speaker 3: And that was about there were twelve headwords the body.
[46:03] Speaker 3: Pamela Lawrence's body had been dragged from the front of
[46:05] Speaker 3: the shop to the back of the shop. He knew
[46:09] Speaker 3: what she was wearing. Well, that wasn't quite true because
[46:13] Speaker 3: the fact that there were twelve headwords had been published
[46:16] Speaker 3: in the media. The fact that she'd been dragged from
[46:18] Speaker 3: the front to the back had also been published in
[46:20] Speaker 3: the media. And Andrew Mallard had said, Oh, she was
[46:25] Speaker 3: a stylish woman, she would have been wearing a skirt.
[46:28] Speaker 2: She wasn't.
[46:29] Speaker 3: Well, the fifteen things only the killer could know were
[46:33] Speaker 3: things that half of Perth could know. And on crucial points,
[46:38] Speaker 3: Andrew Mallard actually got it wrong. He drew a layout
[46:41] Speaker 3: of the shop Pamela Lawrence owned and ran it was wrong.
[46:48] Speaker 3: So the fifteen things only the killer cano sounds fantastic,
[46:52] Speaker 3: sounds it would be very, very convincing in front of
[46:55] Speaker 3: a jury.
[46:57] Speaker 2: It just wasn't true.
[46:58] Speaker 1: Because if your cherry picked the evidence that the prosecution
[47:02] Speaker 1: want to rely on without scrutiny, the case can sound
[47:05] Speaker 1: quite compelling. Yeah, if it's if it's not scrutinized, oh.
[47:08] Speaker 3: I think the jury. I mean Andrew Mallard gave evidence
[47:12] Speaker 3: and he's he's one hundred and ninety nine centiment as
[47:16] Speaker 3: tall as I said he you know, he admits some
[47:19] Speaker 3: stuff that he claimed he worked for Interpoll. You know,
[47:23] Speaker 3: he's working on the mafia.
[47:24] Speaker 2: He speaks all.
[47:25] Speaker 3: These languages which he doesn't. You the jury would watch
[47:29] Speaker 3: him in the witness box, and then they'd see the
[47:31] Speaker 3: police and other witnesses who are calm and they've done
[47:36] Speaker 3: it before, they know how to give evidence, and it's
[47:40] Speaker 3: a little wonder the jury found him guilty.
[47:43] Speaker 1: Well, there is a lot to ask of the jury,
[47:46] Speaker 1: isn't it? Because the jury and you know, you and
[47:48] Speaker 1: I have been in the industry and we're still surprised
[47:51] Speaker 1: by failings of the system. Imagine being plucked from the street,
[47:53] Speaker 1: which most jurors are no involvement or inside knowledge of
[47:59] Speaker 1: what goes on in the investigations or the court system.
[48:03] Speaker 1: And then to adjudicate, you've got police presenting professionally, You've
[48:08] Speaker 1: got barristers standing up there performing like peacocks in front
[48:12] Speaker 1: of the jury. It is because, isn't it. And then
[48:15] Speaker 1: you've got the poor jury sitting there being overwhelmed with
[48:18] Speaker 1: forensic evidence. And I could imagine. Yeah, they'd be thinking, oh, well,
[48:22] Speaker 1: that's that's forensic evidence. I've watched CSI, this is what
[48:25] Speaker 1: happens so many we do ask a lot of the
[48:29] Speaker 1: juris in these situations. We do.
[48:32] Speaker 3: I'm a big believer in the jury system. I think
[48:34] Speaker 3: most of the time it works. And in a number
[48:37] Speaker 3: of the cases in the book, number of the nine cases,
[48:41] Speaker 3: it's arguable the jury actually got it right. But the
[48:44] Speaker 3: jury wasn't told what they should have been told. They
[48:48] Speaker 3: weren't presented with all the evidence. And this is particularly
[48:51] Speaker 3: so in the case of Andrew Mallard. And look, eventually
[48:56] Speaker 3: his conviction was quashed in the High Court and they
[49:01] Speaker 3: ordered a new trial I think from memory, which was
[49:05] Speaker 3: disappointing to Mallard because by this stage they've exposed the
[49:10] Speaker 3: change witness statements. The rancher is not the murder well,
[49:16] Speaker 3: and the prosecution is still going. Andrew Mallard is still
[49:20] Speaker 3: the prime suspect. Well, he was not, or should never
[49:24] Speaker 3: have been a suspect. Because what happens is on the
[49:29] Speaker 3: day of the murder, the police find a palm print
[49:32] Speaker 3: in the shop of Pamela Lawrence. And they in those
[49:38] Speaker 3: days apparently in Perth. You could not do a computerized
[49:41] Speaker 3: check of palm prints. You could do it with the fingerprints,
[49:44] Speaker 3: but not palm prints. They check the palm print. It's
[49:48] Speaker 3: not Andrew Mallard's. Okay, Andrew Mallard went double, going back
[49:55] Speaker 3: here a little bit. But Andrew Mallard goes to jail
[49:58] Speaker 3: and he notices this other isn't it looking at him
[50:01] Speaker 3: sort of weirdly? And this goes on. This bloke is
[50:05] Speaker 3: staring at him. Turns out it's a bloke called Simon
[50:10] Speaker 3: Rochford who was in jail for murdering his girlfriend and
[50:14] Speaker 3: he's pleaded guilty. He's doing I think fifteen years or whatever.
[50:19] Speaker 3: It turns out when after Andrew Mallard's conviction is quashed,
[50:26] Speaker 3: there's inquiries.
[50:27] Speaker 2: And so on.
[50:28] Speaker 3: Turns out the palm print in the shop matches that
[50:32] Speaker 3: of Simon Rochford, the bloke who's killed his girlfriend roughly
[50:37] Speaker 3: the same time as the murder of Pamela Lawrence. There
[50:39] Speaker 3: are few there's some weeks apart, but it's within a
[50:42] Speaker 3: few weeks. And they then go to Simon Rochford's backpack,
[50:47] Speaker 3: which they've kept as an exhibit from his not trial
[50:51] Speaker 3: because he pleaded guilty, and in that they find traces
[50:56] Speaker 3: of Prussian blue paint, which is exactly the same Prussian
[51:02] Speaker 3: blue paint that they'd found in the head wounds of
[51:05] Speaker 3: Pamela Lawrence. So there's the palm print and the forensics.
[51:09] Speaker 1: Now you're starting to get there.
[51:11] Speaker 3: And yeah, so he Andrew Mallard was not the killer.
[51:15] Speaker 3: They start an investigation into Simon Rochford, who's obviously in
[51:19] Speaker 3: jail for after pleading guilty to killing his girlfriend by
[51:22] Speaker 3: bashing her. He denies it. He denies it he killed
[51:27] Speaker 3: Pamela Lawrence. The fact that he's now the number one
[51:30] Speaker 3: suspect and not Andrew leaks to the media. Yep, and
[51:34] Speaker 3: Rochford's in his cell watching TV and up he comes.
[51:38] Speaker 3: He's now the prime suspect. The next morning he's found
[51:42] Speaker 3: debt in his cell. Okay, and I probably should bring
[51:46] Speaker 3: in here. The family of Pamela Lawrence believed Andrew Mallard
[51:51] Speaker 3: was the killer all along.
[51:53] Speaker 2: Yep.
[51:53] Speaker 3: Absolutely, They thought the police had got it right, the
[51:56] Speaker 3: judge had got it right, jury got it right. When
[51:59] Speaker 3: they found out this detail that was pretty overwhelming that
[52:03] Speaker 3: Rochford was the killing. The palm print and the forensics matched.
[52:08] Speaker 3: They were you know, their lives. I mean they've already
[52:11] Speaker 3: lost their mother or wife and mother, and now they're
[52:14] Speaker 3: being told, oh, yeah, he the man you hated didn't
[52:19] Speaker 3: actually do it.
[52:20] Speaker 2: I know.
[52:20] Speaker 1: And they've invested their emotional energy and anger and grief
[52:25] Speaker 1: and it's all confused grief.
[52:26] Speaker 2: Yes, it's immense grief.
[52:30] Speaker 1: The ramifications from this type of miscarriage of justice. And
[52:35] Speaker 1: it's a valid point that you make. It's not just
[52:38] Speaker 1: so falsely accused. It's the victims, families, family that can
[52:42] Speaker 1: be caught called up in it. So many, so many
[52:46] Speaker 1: things that play out. When you mentioned the jury and
[52:50] Speaker 1: what the jury, getting back to that per sect what
[52:53] Speaker 1: the jury are exposed to. I do believe in the
[52:56] Speaker 1: jury system. I think that there's certainly failings in it,
[52:59] Speaker 1: but where I think could be improved, they need to
[53:01] Speaker 1: be exposed to all the evidence. And this is where
[53:05] Speaker 1: I call it the intellectual arrogance of the legal fraternity, going, well,
[53:09] Speaker 1: we can't tell the jury this because it would know
[53:11] Speaker 1: the probate value would overwigh the prejudicial legis. So they're
[53:17] Speaker 1: separated from knowing the full facts. But we're relying on
[53:20] Speaker 1: our peers to judge their peers that's the premise of
[53:23] Speaker 1: a jury system, but we don't trust them enough to
[53:27] Speaker 1: have all the evidence presented to them. And I could
[53:29] Speaker 1: see the frustration time and time again on juries when
[53:33] Speaker 1: they'd be excluded from the courtroom and we'd be in
[53:36] Speaker 1: there arguing of the evidence that decided whether it should
[53:40] Speaker 1: go before the jury for hours, and then the jury'd
[53:42] Speaker 1: come back and the human reaction would be, what have
[53:46] Speaker 1: they been talking talking about?
[53:48] Speaker 2: Exactly?
[53:50] Speaker 1: I think if there's improvements in the jury system, we've
[53:52] Speaker 1: got to trust the jury system, but we've got to
[53:55] Speaker 1: trust them completely, have all the evidences.
[53:58] Speaker 3: Their common sense or perhaps yeah, that's a very good point.
[54:02] Speaker 1: Might improve it. With the Andrew Mallard case, it ended
[54:07] Speaker 1: up that two of the police officers were found guilty
[54:10] Speaker 1: of misconduct, and the.
[54:14] Speaker 3: Crime and Corruption and Crime Commission in Western Australia said
[54:18] Speaker 3: they had engaged in misconduct and the prosecutor had engaged
[54:22] Speaker 3: in misconduct by not asking the expert what's the murder weapon.
[54:28] Speaker 3: They all resigned from the police force or from the
[54:32] Speaker 3: office of the DP. Probably the police officers, I think
[54:35] Speaker 3: in one case certainly went on to another career. They
[54:40] Speaker 3: really didn't face any repercussions apart from public publicity. And
[54:49] Speaker 3: you mentioned very early on something called tunnel vision, and
[54:52] Speaker 3: I think this was a case where one of the
[54:55] Speaker 3: police officers in particular settled on Andrew Mallard and decided
[55:00] Speaker 3: that he was the guy, and that tunnel vision led
[55:04] Speaker 3: them to exclude any other possibility.
[55:09] Speaker 2: So yeah, and you.
[55:10] Speaker 1: Can get that group think in an investigation too, Like
[55:13] Speaker 1: an investigative team, it's yeah, sure, okay, you Neil's the person.
[55:17] Speaker 1: Where after so the evidence gets filtered that okay, we're
[55:22] Speaker 1: only looking for evidence with Neil. I was taught very
[55:26] Speaker 1: early in in policing that by people like that, you
[55:30] Speaker 1: would know Paul Jacob and Paul Mager and all that
[55:34] Speaker 1: tunnel vision is okay when we're looking at you, but
[55:36] Speaker 1: you've also got.
[55:37] Speaker 2: To explore other hypothesis.
[55:39] Speaker 1: But it's okay, let's go get everything we can on
[55:43] Speaker 1: Neil if we're targeting you for a thing, but look
[55:45] Speaker 1: at all the potential exculpatory evidence. And I think that's
[55:50] Speaker 1: very important because I've been involved in investigations where at
[55:55] Speaker 1: the time you'd be certain the person has done it,
[55:57] Speaker 1: but then with further exploration, it might be an hour
[56:00] Speaker 1: by or something that comes in that that this proves
[56:02] Speaker 1: that they were the person involved. Yeah, but it's complex,
[56:06] Speaker 1: isn't it.
[56:07] Speaker 3: It's very complex, and you know, juries do have a
[56:11] Speaker 3: lot to think about to absorb. And when you get
[56:17] Speaker 3: experts saying, oh, you know or DNA people, juries would
[56:23] Speaker 3: accept that a person in the witness box who's called
[56:25] Speaker 3: as an expert is an expert and they do know
[56:28] Speaker 3: what they're talking about. And in the case of DNA,
[56:32] Speaker 3: you know, it's sometimes the inference of guilt can be overwhelming.
[56:36] Speaker 3: When you say, you know, it's eight hundred eight hundred
[56:40] Speaker 3: billion times more likely that it was Nil's the DNA
[56:43] Speaker 3: than anybody else. You're just going, well, he's obviously guilty.
[56:46] Speaker 1: Well that when DNA first came in and you're getting
[56:49] Speaker 1: those statistics put out, you're thinking, okay, but there's not
[56:51] Speaker 1: that many people in this on this on the planet,
[56:54] Speaker 1: that's right, it must be it must be him. So, yeah,
[56:57] Speaker 1: it is confused. And I have seen trials madic base
[57:00] Speaker 1: trials where it might be a murder of a child,
[57:04] Speaker 1: and there's so much medical evidence that comes in. I
[57:08] Speaker 1: sit there and I know the investigation. I've worked on,
[57:10] Speaker 1: the investigation, I've consulted with the medical experts. And I'm
[57:13] Speaker 1: looking at the jury as they're going through all this
[57:17] Speaker 1: medical evidence, and I'm wondering, what are they thinking, Like,
[57:20] Speaker 1: unless they've got a medical degree, they're going to be
[57:22] Speaker 1: as confused as the rest of us. Yeah, sitting there
[57:25] Speaker 1: in sitting there in court. Look, they're just a couple
[57:29] Speaker 1: of the cases mentioned in your book. Let's take a
[57:32] Speaker 1: break now, when I get back, or when we get back,
[57:34] Speaker 1: I hope you're coming back. I am, okay, I've got
[57:37] Speaker 1: that acknowledgment. I want to talk about the type of
[57:40] Speaker 1: things that why, like misidentification, witness misidentification, scientific evidence, all
[57:47] Speaker 1: the type of problems that come in when you're looking
[57:50] Speaker 1: at these falsely convicted people, where the red problems lie.
[57:55] Speaker 1: How we potentially could make the system better so this
[57:59] Speaker 1: doesn't happen. And we'll refer to a couple of other
[58:02] Speaker 1: stories from from your book.
[58:03] Speaker 2: Sounds good, cheers
[58:13] Speaker 4: Mm hmm.

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