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

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 https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Neil-Mercer-Falsely-Convicted-9781761472978. Want to hear more from Neil Mercer? Listen to his other interviews with Gary on I Catch Killers here https://pod.fo/e/26c80e and here https://pod.fo/e/26c80d. You can watch I Catch Killers on Youtube here. https://www.youtube.com/@ICatchKillers-Podcast Follow I Catch Killers: Instagram:@icatchkillers https://www.instagram.com/icatchkillers/?hl=enTiktok:@icatchkillerspodcast https://www.tiktok.com/@icatchkillerspodcastFacebook:@icatchkillers https://www.facebook.com/icatchkillers/ Email the show at [email protected] See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  The public has had a long-held fascination with detectives. Detectives see a side of life the average person is never exposed to. I spent 34 years as a cop. For 25 of those years, I was catching killers. That's what I did for a living. I was a homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead, I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated. The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw and honest, just like the people I talk to. Some of the content and language might be confronting. That's because no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged. Join me now as I take you into this world.

• 0:46Speaker 00

  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. And in his latest book, Falsely Convicted, he examines a number of wrongful convictions across the country. In this episode, we unpack some of those miscarriages of justice, including Josephine Greensill, a schoolteacher whose life was torn apart by uncorroborated allegations made almost three decades after the fact. And Andrew Mallard, whose wrongful conviction exposed police misconduct, false confessions, and suppressed evidence that should have cleared him use earlier. As a former homicide detective, these stories shocked me.

• 1:31Speaker 00

  The idea that our justice system, built on checks and balances, can still fail so spectacularly is confronting to say the least. Neil Mercer, welcome back to I Catch Killers for the second time.

• 1:44Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me.

• 1:46Speaker 00

  Well, it's always good to have a chat with you. I enjoyed our chat last time, talking about the notorious Roger Rogerson.

• 1:54Speaker 01

  Indeed, Roger and Ned, it was a different era in policing and crime in Sydney. I mean, it was a fascinating, fascinating era, and both of us would have lived through it. Yeah.

• 2:07Speaker 00

  It certainly is. And just to put it in perspective, like your, your experience in, you've been working in journalism for 40 years or, or longer.

• 2:17Speaker 01

  Longer, more than 50, actually.

• 2:19Speaker 00

  Okay, who's counting? But you wrote for some of the biggest newspapers in the country. You're a producer on 60 Minutes, Today Tonight, you're on, on-air reporter, and with Four Corners. You've done, done a fair bit, and the author of quite a few true crime books.

• 2:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, mate, I've, I've been around the traps. I feel like a dinosaur these days, to tell you the truth. But it's, it's been a, it's been a great journey, you know? I've, I've been incredibly lucky to meet some of the characters that I've met from all walks of life, you know, police, lawyers, crooks. It's, it's been a, it's been a great journey for me.

• 2:59Speaker 00

  It's been, well, there's certainly some interesting characters in there. You've got another book out that's brought you to the table, table today.

• 3:08Speaker 01

  Indeed, Falsely Convicted, which tells the stories of nine Australians from around the country who have been accused, charged, convicted of crimes they didn't commit. And I'm talking about things like murder, armed robbery, sexual assault, a whole range of cases. So, yeah, they're, they're from around the country. Some go back to the 80s and 90s, some are more recent. And I tried to cover a range of, of cases, a range of reasons why things go wrong in the legal system.

• 3:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, and certainly things have gone wrong. I've got to say, I, I read, I read your book. I've been away on holidays in Japan, hiking through the forests of Japan, very peaceful. And I decided to pick up your book and read it after each day hiking. And I've got to say, you took me right back into a world that I, I didn't want to read it on holidays, but I did.

• 4:08Speaker 01

  I apologize for that. It's probably not, not the best place to read it if you're on a zen-like holiday. It's probably, you know, for, for true crime readers who want to settle in, but maybe not when you're on a lovely holiday.

• 4:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, the thing is, it, it concerns me that you've been in the industry for a long time, and so have I as a, as a police officer. You know that the, the courts get it wrong sometimes.

• 4:38Speaker 01

  Sometimes, yeah.

• 4:39Speaker 00

  But what frightened me about the content in your book, some of the mistakes that were made, and it's a combination of things. It's not just the courts getting it wrong, it's the actions of the police, whether it's corruption or whether it's just incompetency. The judiciary, like I scratch my head how some of the things that they, they let through and how people were convicted. It shows that the jury system is not, not perfect, because that's, you know, it comes down to human emotions and decisions made on, on things that probably shouldn't be taken into consideration. And then the other troubling thing is, because we rely on it a great deal, is the scientific evidence, the forensic evidence now that we bring in experts and the problems that

• 5:23Speaker 00

  that can cause, because most people accept forensic evidence from a scientific point of view or medical evidence as irrefutable. But, yeah, as your book demonstrates, it's not often the case.

• 5:36Speaker 01

  Indeed, I think they call it in the CSI effect, because you see programs like CSI on TV, and the forensics are always perfect, and they're always solved pretty quickly, and, and forensics and DNA never lies. It's not quite that simple. And, I mean, in the book, there's one case where DNA was the only evidence against a young man who'd been accused of rape. It was the only evidence. There was nothing else. And, I mean, you talk about the reasons for things going wrong in that case and one, and one or two others. I think common sense sort of flew out the window in, in that particular case and, and in a couple of others, you know?

• 6:19Speaker 01

  You're just going, how could this happen?

• 6:22Speaker 00

  Well, it's interesting you say common sense, because quite a number of the, the cases you refer to in the book or you've covered in the book, common sense, I'm reading it going, well, it's fairly obvious that, you know, this person can't get convicted. But the system seems to just roll along, and someone gets caught up in the system. And, yeah, we've got a judicial system that, there's a lot of checks and balances, so this type of thing doesn't, doesn't happen. But it's surprising how many, how many occurred. I've got to say too, when I picked up the book, Falsely Convicted, before I asked you to come on the podcast, I made sure there was none of my cases, cases in there.

• 7:02Speaker 01

  There wouldn't be.

• 7:03Speaker 00

  And then, when I've checked that, then I was disappointed. My conviction wasn't in there as a falsely convicted, but anyway, that's a.

• 7:09Speaker 01

  That's falsely convicted too. That's the next book.

• 7:12Speaker 00

  Oh, good, I'm glad you're, glad you're going to cover that. Were you shocked by it? You've been around for a long time. Were you shocked by the research you've done with your book? You might, must have lost a lot of faith in the court system.

• 7:25Speaker 01

  I'm not sure if I can say I was shocked. I was certainly surprised and in a couple of cases, almost flabbergasted that, you know, as I say, common sense seemed to go out the window, and you're looking at it going, how could this possibly happen? Why didn't, why didn't this happen and this happen? I mean, in one case, where we're talking about a woman in Victoria, Josephine Greensill, she's charged with 21 counts of indecent assault, historic. She's a semi-retired schoolteacher. Two blokes come forward and say that 30 years earlier, she'd raped them, sexually assaulted them, basically, they'd had sexual intercourse as eight-year-old boys.

• 8:07Speaker 01

  There's no medical evidence called at the trial to say, are eight-year-old boys capable of doing these things? Because they were, they described in great detail at her trial, at Josephine Greensill, Greensill's trial, what they'd done. And experts later, much after the, much, much later, when it was after she'd done two years and eight months jail for something she didn't do, the experts were just going, what those blokes said in the witness box is impossible. It is just, it's, it's not, it's not possible.

• 8:41Speaker 00

  So, well, that was, that was one of the first chapters I read in your book, that story, and that, that got me hooked, because I'm, I'm reading it and I'm thinking, hold it, this doesn't seem right. Now, we talk common sense. Twenty eight years after the event, this teacher, which, yeah, and, and we've, we've seen, I, I suppose you can't say an impeccable record because a lot of people have been caught out and they, they've committed offences. So let's

• 9:06Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 9:07Speaker 00

  the reputation, but it was a lady that was a, a, a highly regarded, uh, highly regarded teacher. And then these allegations come up, um, twenty eight years later, two eight year old boys, that, uh, they were sexually assaulted camping in the, a tent in her backyard.

• 9:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:25Speaker 00

  Um, with, she had three or four children, I, I think at the time, her husband, husband was there. And, uh, apparently she's gone out and sexually assaulted them to the point of it was full sexual intercourse.

• 9:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:37Speaker 00

  The two eight year old boys.

• 9:39Speaker 01

  The two eight year old boys are having a sleepover in the backyard. Um, uh, Josephine Greensill knew the parents of the two boys, they'd been out to dinner once or twice. So, I mean, it might sound a bit weird these days, but

• 9:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:52Speaker 01

  back then, um, you know, more than thirty years ago, you know, the two boys said they were excited, they were sleeping in a tent in the backyard. It was a Friday or Saturday night. Almost thirty years later, they come forward and say, you know, she indecently assaulted us. And at the trial, they say we had full sexual intercourse.

• 10:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:14Speaker 01

  We, uh, we obtained erections, we had full sexual intercourse, not once.

• 10:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:20Speaker 01

  But multiple times.

• 10:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  Um, over, over a long period of time. Um, and crucially, they, they say, or at least one of them says, he produced semen.

• 10:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:32Speaker 01

  Uh, as an eight year old boy. Um, I, I, I spoke to Josephine Greensill last year about her case and, and, um, you know, I, she just struck me as a very shy.

• 10:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:43Speaker 01

  Um, decent person. Her barrister said, look, don't worry about this. Um, you know, nobody's going to believe these two blokes.

• 10:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:52Speaker 01

  Well, the, the jury did believe the two blokes. And, um, she, she was sent off to, um, Dame Phyllis Frost in, down in Melbourne. Uh, she's a child molester and she's, of course, she's on protection.

• 11:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:06Speaker 01

  You know, she's the lowest of the low.

• 11:07Speaker 00

  In the prison system.

• 11:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, this is, this is an extraordinary turn of events because it's, it's completely out of the blue. It's completely out of the blue. The police turn up at a home at lunchtime one day, knock on the door and she just says, she opens the door and they say, we're here to arrest you.

• 11:26Speaker 00

  Yeah. Talk about your life being turned upside down.

• 11:29Speaker 01

  Upside down. I mean, she's in her pyjamas. Um, her son's on his exercise bike.

• 11:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:35Speaker 01

  And off she goes to the police station. They do say, you can have a lawyer and she goes, well, the only lawyer I know is the one who did my will.

• 11:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:43Speaker 01

  So he's probably not going to be all that handy and I've got nothing to hide.

• 11:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:47Speaker 01

  I'll, I'll just, I've got nothing to hide.

• 11:49Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 11:49Speaker 01

  I'll just answer all the questions. And I think there are something like in the couple of hours, there are three hundred and fifty odd questions.

• 11:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:56Speaker 01

  And she's answered all of them and said, these allegations are outrageous. It never happened. They're fabricating it. And the only reason I can think that they might be fabricating is for money. Cause as it turns out, Josephine Greensill's husband had been killed in a level crossing accident a couple of years earlier. And she'd received compensation of about six hundred thousand dollars.

• 12:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:19Speaker 01

  And it was known in the, in the, in the railways. Um, and one of her accusers Hmm. worked in the railways. So it's quite possible he knew about that six hundred thousand.

• 12:29Speaker 00

  There was money there.

• 12:30Speaker 01

  There was money there. And this is what, that, this is what Joe Greensill thought. They're, they're, they're after money, either part of the six hundred thousand or victims of crime compensation.

• 12:40Speaker 00

  Well, breaking that, uh, breaking that case down now, the obvious thing when I, I, I started reading about it in, in your book was two eight year old boys and the way they're describing it, the full sexual intercourse with erections and then ejaculation. Like, I'm thinking, eight year olds? No, I, I'm, I'm not seeing it. So though I, I would have as a police officer, that would be the first place I would go to is, could we get some medical evidence? And I think when it finally was done, when there was an appeal put in, um, the medical evidence and I, I think the age was about twelve or where it would be realistic that, um, a young male could, uh, do something like that, round about the age of twelve.

• 13:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:21Speaker 00

  At the earliest. So that would have been the first form of defence.

• 13:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:26Speaker 00

  And there's a, let's breaking it down. There's a responsibility on the police to look at this. Like you don't, when a victim comes in, you don't just take it on face value. You, you've still got to investig- investigate it. I would have thought the police would have, uh, sought medical, uh, a- advice on that.

• 13:45Speaker 01

  I, I, I can't explain it, but my reaction when I first heard about this case and the fact they were eight years old was exactly the same as yours. I think, hang on, that, that just doesn't sound right. And

• 13:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:56Speaker 01

  I think also that more so than the police, probably the Director of Public Prosecutions, they should have gone, hold on, you know, let's get some medical evidence. I mean, why wouldn't they? Why wouldn't they do that? I, I can't explain that because as you say, that's, that's the first thing you'd get, you'd get a paediatrician.

• 14:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:14Speaker 01

  Or, and, you know, a professor of endocrinology or whatever. And they would have said,

• 14:21Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 14:21Speaker 01

  if they'd been called, this is, this is unheard of.

• 14:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:25Speaker 01

  It's not recorded in any medical literature. Eight year old boys cannot do this.

• 14:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:30Speaker 01

  But I, I mean, I, I, I take your point that, you know, police have to take these things seriously and they have to investigate. But yeah, just a bit of common sense.

• 14:40Speaker 00

  I, I think there with sexual assaults and I'll, I'll tread carefully, carefully here because it is something that needs to be taken seriously, but

• 14:48Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 14:48Speaker 00

  I think I saw in the past that it was almost like, okay, well, there's this, there's a statement. We don't need to corroborate anything else. We'll just put the allegation to the offender, the, oh, the accused. And, uh, the accused might, uh, de- deny it and, uh, we'll let the courts decide. You need, need to investigate, uh, the, the allegations properly.

• 15:09Speaker 01

  I think that, that's one of the things I hope people take out of the book that, um, lo- look, I think, yeah, it's, it's a very, it's incredibly serious. We've all heard the accounts of historical child sex abuse in churches, institutions, pretty much everywhere. Um, and I think in the vast majority of cases, there's no doubt that people coming forward are telling the truth. You've got a case here where these two blokes colluded, basically. They got, they got together. They had their heads together. And for reasons that seem trivial on the one hand, um, and, you know, one of these guys had held a grudge against Josephine Greensill for thirty years for something that happened in the classroom.

• 15:54Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 15:54Speaker 01

  When he was eight.

• 15:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:56Speaker 01

  It, I mean, and this came out in court.

• 15:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:58Speaker 01

  And evidence was given about this. Um, so this is a possible reason as to why one bloke in particular has come forward. He was the teacher's pet, but then one day Josephine Greensill noticed that there was ten bucks missing from her purse. And she's not happy, understandably. She goes around and she finds the ten bucks in the schoolbag of this particular boy.

• 16:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:23Speaker 01

  And it, it's obviously stuck in his brain for decades because years and years later, he's, he talks to his then wife about it. And the wife comes to the trial, she's an ex-wife by now, gives evidence and she says, oh yeah. He said something like, this is the accuser. He said, oh, yeah, my teacher, you know, accused me of stealing the ten dollars. Uh, maybe I should take her to court. Maybe I should, you know, get her into court and, you know, embarrass her sort of thing. So it appears that this, this tiny incident, which most people would have forgotten has festered for all these years. Um, and, and he's come forward and he's got his classmate

• 17:09Speaker 01

  to also make a statement to corroborate.

• 17:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:12Speaker 01

  What they say happened in the tent, in the backyard, that particular night. And that's, that's the central allegation.

• 17:19Speaker 00

  And there was some failings there too, in that there was, um, some corroboration between the, the two alleged victims of the, uh, of the sexual assault, that they did collude, but it was denied at first. And then it was exposed at court that they had in fact spoken to each other before, uh, they made the report. And I think that it was, um, miles apart from their first version. They said, no, we haven't spoken in years to, oh yeah, before I went to the police station, I spoke to the other, other, other person. So so many, I call them red, red flags.

• 17:53Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 17:54Speaker 00

  That, uh, would have caused concern, but the police have happily gone through with the prosecution. And I, I think there is an onus on the, on the police and I, I, I speak on, on behalf of police. I think ninety nine percent of police are very ethical in, you know, the way that they approach an investigation. If they had doubts on it, they wouldn't want to see the matter proceed through the court. Failings of the defence, but you've highlighted the failings of the, the prosecution as well. And then, um, whether it be a jury or the judge, there's a failing in that part of it as well. Cause it questioned the validity of the evidence.

• 18:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. Look, I mean, it, it was a, it was a disaster all round really. I mean, um, you, and you, you're talking about that collusion. One of the interesting things was the two boys, as you say, said something like, oh, we, we haven't spoken since we left school.

• 18:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:46Speaker 01

  But the second boy makes a statement. And in the first part of it, in the first paragraph, the very first paragraph of his own statement.

• 18:54Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 18:55Speaker 01

  He says, uh, I was contacted by the police. Uh, he allegedly says, oh, I, I knew exactly what it was about.

• 19:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:03Speaker 01

  Um, but then I said, oh, I'd like to speak to my mate, his, his schoolmate before I say anything. And the police officer says, yeah, okay. And he does. And he says this in his own statement. He then denies his own statement in court and says, I didn't say that.

• 19:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:20Speaker 01

  But I, but you signed the statement. Oh, I didn't read it. It's in the first paragraph, mate, you know? I mean, this is, you talk about a red flag. I mean.

• 19:29Speaker 00

  Well, that, that's where the credibility, like, people have to look at the credibility of, of the witness and, uh, the accounts of, of the witness. But yeah, that, that one chapter and that, uh, story of that wrongful conviction just got me, got me curious. And I'm, I'm just thinking, I've worked in that industry. I know the industry, the, the courts, the prosecution, the police investigations. And there just seemed to be so many, many failings that went unchecked. And I can only hazard a guess the impact it had on, uh, had on the, uh, the accused.

• 20:04Speaker 01

  On Josephine Greensill, oh.

• 20:06Speaker 00

  Did, uh, when, uh, when she was convicted, did one of them went for, um, the civil claim on her as well?

• 20:12Speaker 01

  In the witness box, uh, the, the, the chief bloke, the, the main protagonist, I guess. He's asked, oh, you're after compensation, aren't you? And he goes, no, no, I'm not interested in compensation. I'm not interested in money. Don't want anything to do with it. Uh, eight days after Josephine Greensill was sentenced, he goes and sets in train the process to get compensation, the very thing he's denied in the witness box. And he is awarded sixty thousand dollars plus five thousand dollars, um, for costs or, or whatever. In the end, that's not actually paid because Joe Greensill's appeal in the Court of Criminal Appeal comes up just before she's due to pay him this money.

• 20:58Speaker 01

  So, yeah, that, that, that was another thing. I'm not interested in money. Eight days after she's sent to the slammer, bang, he's in there trying to get it.

• 21:08Speaker 01

  And, and look, just, just one point. I, I think it's really important that I don't, I don't want this to be seen as a general sort of thing, people coming forward and making false allegations, that it's commonplace. I don't think that is the case, but it's an example where expert evidence should have been called, the fa- failing of the D P P. I've got one of the, um, one of the reports of one of the experts, and it, and it's Professor Margaret Zachary. And I think it's worth quoting one or two lines. She says, um, where the boys have claimed to be able to sustain erectile function to the point of having sexual intercourse

• 21:46Speaker 01

  and achieving ejaculation seems totally unwarranted and unlikely to the point of being completely impossible.

• 21:55Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 21:56Speaker 01

  And that's a word she uses. It's, and she goes on, it sounds to be an invention of quite remarkable proportions. But, you know, this, this, I think is a unique case, Gary. I really do.

• 22:08Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, it's a, it's an extreme case. To make an allegation against someone of that nature can be devastating for the person that's been accused of the crime. If it got to the point where it's found to be false. Uh, I've never known a situation where someone's been charged by making an allegation and, and not, and I'm not suggesting that should be the norm. Because of course we want victims to feel comfortable coming forward.

• 22:34Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 22:34Speaker 00

  Reporting, reporting things. But, you know, if there's overwhelming evidence, I, I think there needs to be some accountability because you can destroy people's lives with these type of allegations.

• 22:45Speaker 01

  Oh, e- even though Josephine Greensill's conviction was eventually quashed, she's still living with that. I mean, it's been in the newspapers.

• 22:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:53Speaker 01

  Mum of five, you know, jailed for sex crimes or something like that, you know, it's, it's, everybody knows about it. And even though the conviction is quashed, she's still living with it. And she's still living with the trauma of being one minute a completely normal, average.

• 23:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:11Speaker 01

  Suburban mum. And the next thing, she's in protection in jail and the trauma that goes with that. Every time she had a visitor, she was strip searched before and after the visit. Um, she came out of jail when the conviction was quashed. And I suppose most people would go, oh, you know, that's okay. Justice has finally, finally been done.

• 23:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:33Speaker 01

  Um, she was, she said, I had panic attacks when, when I got into crowds. I, when I went to the supermarket, I couldn't make up my mind what product to choose. I, I couldn't remember what was in my own wardrobe at home. And she described being in prison as like being in a mini city.

• 23:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:53Speaker 01

  Where you just do as you're told. You just, the prison officers, the system has total control over your life and you don't have to think about anything.

• 24:03Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 24:03Speaker 01

  And I, she seemed, um, she seemed remarkably to me to not be bitter about what these two men had done. She did want the Victoria Police to investigate them.

• 24:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:16Speaker 01

  Uh, and I think they did do an investigation to see if they could be charged with either perjury or conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. But nothing came of it. Um, she also wants them named, which is impossible because there's a suppression order in place. Um, uh, she's remarkably, she's been refused any compensation by the Victorian government. Even though you've got the reports of the experts, part of which I just read out, saying it's impossible what they, what they've said, the, the state government, and this is repeated.

• 24:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:53Speaker 01

  State governments have said, oh, tough luck, tough luck.

• 24:57Speaker 00

  Yeah. I, I'm always amazed. There seems to be a reluctance when a case has proved so overwhelmingly that, uh, she should not have been convicted, that there's no compensation forthcoming. So, yeah. Falsely convicted. I, I suppose from the title of your book, you can break it down, uh, falsely convicted because there's people that have been, uh, convicted, then acquitted. But you sort of step away and think, okay, because of a, uh, a legal loophole or some reason they're, they're walking free. And I, I don't, I'm not going to mention specific cases because we'll get, get ourselves into trouble. But where people have been acquitted and you accept, okay, there was, there was insufficient evidence to have that person convicted at court.

• 25:40Speaker 00

  But that doesn't mean that the person hasn't committed the offence.

• 25:44Speaker 01

  Well, I, I think I can mention one case quite confidently, and that is Roger Rogerson being accused of the conspiring to shoot Detective, um,

• 25:52Speaker 00

  McDrury.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  McDrury.

• 25:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:54Speaker 01

  And, and Roger was acquitted on that charge and he is entitled by law to be seen as being innocent. But I think there's more than a few people who reckon Roger was, didn't do it himself.

• 26:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:06Speaker 01

  But was very, very heavily involved in that. So, e- exactly, you know, you can be acquitted and, um, I mean, you can still hold of you.

• 26:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:15Speaker 01

  I still think that person is, is guilty.

• 26:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:18Speaker 01

  The law has said there's not enough evidence beyond reasonable doubt, as you know, better than me. It's a pretty high bar to jump over.

• 26:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's, it's a ve- very high, high bar. And, uh, well, I thought it was a high bar until I read your book. It's, uh, there's, there's some, uh, there's some horror stories in there, isn't there? Um, I, I look at the couple of the other ones, like we've talked about Josephine's, uh, case and, you know, what went wrong. And there was a combination of things, but highlighted by the fact of what you read out from the, uh, the expert. That should have been at the forefront and just negated the investigation from the start. Why, why do you think this is happens is I, I know with the D P P, and I can only speak for, uh, New South Wales. I know they're incredibly overworked, so they don't have time to, you know, quite often they're looking at the brief on the day you're going to, to court.

• 27:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 27:07Speaker 00

  With police, um, again, can, can be overworked. I worry if there's sometimes some tunnel vision that comes into it. Okay, well, we've got the evidence. There's almost, it takes some pressure off when you've, you've charged someone, you put the, um, brief before the D P P because you haven't got carriage of it at that stage. It's now the D P P. So if there's any failings in the investigation or weaknesses in the evidence, you have an expectation that the D P P will highlight them. So it's almost like you're passing the responsibility on to the D P P. Our role as police is not to see the person convicted, that's to gather the charges, charge them, and then the D P P has carriage of it.

• 27:49Speaker 00

  So there's a responsibility there, but I don't know, as a, as a police officer, I. That one just sort of jumped out. There's so many, so many failings. But it seems once someone's in the system, it's very hard to, hard to stop. I had, I had someone, I talk about this, you, you know, people might argue, argue the case and say there's more than one, but have you ever sent an innocent person to jail? And this was, I won't, won't name the, the names. But it was before I was in major crime and I got called out at two o'clock in the morning. And a young lady had come in and complained of being sexually assaulted by her flatmate. The flatmate was arrested by uniform police and, and brought back to the police station.

• 28:34Speaker 00

  I was called in as a detective to interview him. He was, I, I picture a kid that spends his whole day sitting on the lounge playing computer games. You know, he, he wasn't worldly. He was, yeah, just an innocent sort of kid. Interviewed him, put the allegations to him and his answers were somewhat ambiguous in the way he answered. You know, I, I probably shouldn't have done that. I, you know, and enough that objectively I had to say, well, there's enough to have this person, person charged. I don't know the strength of the case at this stage. But based on what he said, it wasn't a denial. It was, I probably shouldn't have done that. And so he went to court. Uh, he was bail refused. I remember this because he was wearing a red tracksuit.

• 29:16Speaker 00

  And when I say a kid, he was over eighteen, he was going to an adult prison. But for whatever reason, the magistrate decided that he didn't get bail. He's gone to prison. The person that made the allegation then has contacted me a, a short time, uh, or a week or so later. And said, oh, he sent a letter to me from prison. And we've gone around to a place and it's a letter like a ransom note. Newspaper art, uh, newspaper, letters from the newspaper cut out that if you don't, yeah. If you don't drop the charges, you'll get it all. It was childish.

• 29:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:50Speaker 00

  I then went to the kitchen waste bin and found the newspaper with the letters cut out. So.

• 29:55Speaker 01

  She'd done it.

• 29:55Speaker 00

  She had done it. So her credibility at that stage, you know, as a victim was rapidly diminishing. I made every representation I could to get that kid out of jail. He, they didn't, uh, didn't release him. It, uh, he got, uh, I think he got his jaw broken in jail. I, I knew he wasn't suited, suited for jail. And it went to, uh, uh, went to trial and I couldn't stop it. The point I'm trying to make from that long story is that once the thing's in, in motion, it's very hard, hard to stop.

• 30:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:29Speaker 00

  And it's almost like, uh, that's just caught up in the machinery of the justice system and no one can put the brakes on.

• 30:35Speaker 01

  I, I think that the machinery of the justice system is a really good phrase because in, in a lot of these cases, people are convicted and, and trying to get that overturned, even when there seems to be quite overwhelming evidence that they shouldn't be in jail.

• 30:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:51Speaker 01

  Is really, really difficult. And I think one of the themes in the book is the authorities, if I can call, say the director of public prosecutions, police, um, politicians.

• 31:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:04Speaker 01

  Because some of these cases become very political. No, nobody wants to say, acknowledge a possible mistake. And, uh, you know, let's face it, none of us like to say, oh, I've made a mistake.

• 31:14Speaker 00

  No, that's a human nature.

• 31:16Speaker 01

  It's a human nature. Exactly. But there's a reluctance around the country to say, there's something seriously wrong here. We, we should at least have a look at it.

• 31:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:26Speaker 01

  And, and have an inquiry or, or do something about it. No, no, no, we've got it right. He's guilty. She's guilty. Whatever.

• 31:34Speaker 00

  There, there's an arrogance in the judicial system, I, I think. And you mentioned politicians, please, but we, we talk the judiciary. They like to think they're infallible. They do not make mistakes. And I've found that there's, I, I call it an intellectual arrogance sometimes that, uh, with people that I've met that, you know, whether it be barristers, defence or, or prosecution solicitors. They, common sense, no, that, that's just for the average people. You don't understand the intellect of what we know because we're qualified legal practitioners. And I think it gets lost there sometimes. Just getting back to red tracksuit, uh, boy, uh, situation. It went to trial, couldn't get it stopped.

• 32:15Speaker 00

  I'm sitting with his family. I'm giving evidence for the defence and, and basically, and it, it got thrown out. But the damage is already, already, already been done.

• 32:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I think that, um, you know, um, common sense and the law don't always intersect.

• 32:34Speaker 00

  For people just listening, your hands are not making that.

• 32:36Speaker 01

  No, that's right. That's sort of, one goes that way and the other one goes this way. Um, probably shouldn't laugh. I mean, this, we're, we're talking about people's lives. Um, but I, I do get what you mean about judges getting things wrong. And there's a couple of cases in here where the Court of Criminal Appeal in Western Australia, in the case I'm thinking about, has thrown out or, or refused dismissed appeals. And said, oh, no, no, he's absolutely guilty. There's no miscarriage of justice here. And it's finally been overturned by the High Court.

• 33:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:09Speaker 01

  And the High Court has been highly critical of the judges on, you know, the Court of Criminal Appeal and saying, you know, they basically got the law wrong. They got this wrong. They got that wrong. Um, so like all of us, judges are not infallible.

• 33:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. Well, that, that's one hundred percent right. Um, are we talking the Andrew Mallard case?

• 33:29Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 33:29Speaker 00

  On that one? Let's, talk us through that if you could explain to the listeners. And it had a high profile. I, I, I knew of it before I read, read your book. But tell, talk us through it because that's a fascinating case in itself.

• 33:40Speaker 01

  I'd, I'd heard about the case over the years, but I didn't really know much about it until I started, um, uh, looking at it for the book. I mean, Andrew Mallard, um,

• 33:51Speaker 01

  in, in, in May nineteen ninety-four, there's a, there's a murder in Mossman Park, a Perth suburb. Um, a shopkeeper by the name of Pamela Lawrence is murdered about five or six P M one evening. She's brutally bashed. The police zero in on a bloke called Andrew Mallard, who at that stage is thirty-one years old. Um, he's mentally unwell. He's been living rough. He's been living in parks and that sort of stuff. And he's, he's living this fantasy life. Um, he thinks he's a Viking. He tells people he speaks six languages.

• 34:27Speaker 00

  Almost Walter Mitty, isn't it?

• 34:29Speaker 01

  Very Walter Mitty. Um, he says he's actually working for Interpol, investigating the mafia. He tells this to several people. He starts impersonating police officers. The police in, in Perth, he's living very close to where the murder occurred. And on the evening of the murder, Andrew Mallard gets dropped off, uh, very close by to where the shop is. And he's not an easy person, uh, to miss, Andrew Mallard. He's a hundred and ninety-nine centimetres tall. And he dresses in bright colourful clothing, torn jeans. So he's, he's easy to spot. So they do, they, they find out that he's been really close to the shop.

• 35:12Speaker 01

  They ask him where he's been and he gives a variety of answers, none of which check out. Fact is, he's been going around knocking on people's doors, trying to score marijuana.

• 35:22Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 35:22Speaker 01

  Cause he's a big dope smoker.

• 35:25Speaker 01

  They call him in for questioning. None of it's electronically recorded.

• 35:29Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 35:30Speaker 01

  Um, they say at the beginning, I would just want a brief chat. Goes on for eight hours. And it ends with him biting the detective on the thigh, I think.

• 35:39Speaker 00

  Okay. All right. That's an interesting.

• 35:41Speaker 01

  And, and, and, um, but during that interview, police later say, oh, he made confessions, which he sort of did, but he makes them in the third person. And then he retracts them.

• 35:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:53Speaker 01

  He says, oh, this man who did this was an evil man. I think he would have done this and I think he would have done that. And the cops go, is this evil man you, Andrew? And he says, oh, no, I'm just imagining what happened.

• 36:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:07Speaker 01

  So he's released, he's called in for questioning again. And they finally do record some stuff with him. Um, and they charge him with the murder of, of Pamela Lawrence. Um, he goes to trial, he's convicted, uh, and he's, he's sent to jail. There's an appeal to the Court of Criminal Appeal. No, no, nothing, nothing to see here. It's all, it's all good. Um, you know, it's, this is a man who's been in and out of psychiatric hospitals.

• 36:38Speaker 00

  Some of the interviews were done, um, after he was just released or he'd been assaulted. And, uh, I, I, I looked at the, the type of interviews. And then when they finally, I'm, I'm talking here, when the, the police finally did the recorded interview, electronically recorded interview, he's revealing things. But these are things that he's been told by, by the police during the informal, let's call it the informal.

• 37:04Speaker 01

  The unrecorded interviews.

• 37:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:06Speaker 01

  That's, that's right. And he is interviewed, um, he's interviewed a few times in, uh, Greyland Psychiatric Hospital.

• 37:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:13Speaker 01

  Um, and they're informal, but nevertheless, he's, he doesn't have a lawyer. He doesn't have anybody with him. He's in a psychiatric hospital, you know, it, it, the whole thing was, um, was, was, was really, really bad. And, and, and you're right. I mean, they don't record.

• 37:32Speaker 01

  Hours and hours of stuff.

• 37:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:34Speaker 01

  And when they finally do record it, they say, oh, now, do you agree this is what you told us several hours ago?

• 37:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:42Speaker 01

  And he's sort of going, yes, I think so. Um, so he does, there are confessions, the confessions are withdrawn. It's all over the place.

• 37:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:50Speaker 01

  And on any reading of it, you'd be going, he's, he's deeply troubled. Um, he's read, he's getting this from in the media, um, you know, he, he, I would have thought they would have been very doubtful about him being

• 38:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:08Speaker 01

  the killer.

• 38:08Speaker 00

  And, and look, in, in defence of the, the police in, in this portion, when you're dealing with someone that's got mental health issues, they, they could still be in the fence and it could be a very serious offence, as it was in, in this case. But you've got to think outside the square a little bit in the way that you approach the interview. You're getting snippets, but the interview, my thoughts being that you wouldn't hold a great deal of weight on anything that, that they said. So you'd be looking at other, okay, so I'm confused. I don't know whether it was a confession or not a confession.

• 38:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:39Speaker 00

  He's got mental health issues. What are we dealing with here? So you're looking at corroborative evidence. But then it came in, I think that was the one with the, uh, the injury to her head and the, the forensic tests that were done with a, a pig's, pig's head.

• 38:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. At, at the trial, the prosecutor says the, because police had some difficulty establishing what the murder weapon was, that Pamela Lawrence sustained these terrible injuries to her head.

• 39:05Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 39:05Speaker 01

  But they couldn't quite figure out what had, what sort of weapon had caused it. And they finally settled on the fact that it was a wrench. And the prosecutor mentions this eighty times during the trial, that it's a wrench. He's hit it with a Sid Chrome wrench. What the prosecutor never tells, um, the jury, or in fact prosecution doesn't tell the defence, is that months prior to this, they've done some testing on a pig's head, which is apparently, I'm told, a, a recognised way of

• 39:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, we use.

• 39:38Speaker 01

  trying to replicate injuries. Um, where they've said, oh, and they've used a wrench and they've come to the conclusion that a wrench is not the murder weapon. But this is not mentioned during the trial. In fact, there are quite a few things not mentioned during the trial. They weren't mentioned to the jury and they, and the defence had no idea. And when the pig's head testing was one of them, um, they also didn't know there'd been an undercover operation.

• 40:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:07Speaker 01

  Uh, with Andrew Mallard, where everything he said had been recorded. Um, evidence was withheld. The D P P later said it was inadvertently overlooked, or words to that effect. And he looked back at it and it was only because of the, the work of a journalist in Perth by the name of Colleen Egan, that this case sort of gained some momentum and doubts began to emerge that Andrew Mallard might actually be innocent. And Colleen Egan also enlisted the help of a lawyer who'd previously acted for the police union.

• 40:44Speaker 00

  Quigley?

• 40:44Speaker 01

  John Quigley for many, many years. He was very proactive for the police union, you know, appearing in court.

• 40:51Speaker 00

  Police never do anything wrong.

• 40:52Speaker 01

  Yep, absolutely. He's on camera. Um, he leaves the law, enters parliament. And Colleen Egan, the journalist who's taken up Andrew Mallard's case, sort of says, geez, I need some help here. She goes to John Quigley, who by now is an M P.

• 41:08Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 41:09Speaker 01

  He goes to the, he goes to the attorney general and says, I think there's a serious problem with this case. I'm going to stand up in parliament and drop a bucket of, you know, what? And the attorney general says, oh, hold, hold the phone. Um, I'll get in touch with the D P P and they'll open up all your, all their files for you.

• 41:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:29Speaker 01

  John Quigley, previously the police union lawyer, now M P, goes down there. And what he finds is that all this evidence has never made it into court, which should have made it into court. And this is a case where the prosecutors, well, police, but also prosecutors have not, you know, done the, the right thing. Uh, there, there's an inquiry later in which the prosecutor in the trial was found to have engaged in misconduct.

• 41:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:56Speaker 01

  So it's, you know, cops get the blame a lot of the time, but it's not always.

• 42:00Speaker 00

  Yeah. And that's what, uh, the safeguards that are put in place, it, it comes very much from the time that the brief is handed over to the D P P. And, you know, I've had great D P P, uh, solicitors or, or barristers that have gone through the brief with a fine tooth comb. And, and the requisitions you get, I, I know like with Mark Tedeschi, you'd send a brief and you think you've got it all covered when he was working for the D P P. He'd come back with hundreds of requisitions. He was so thorough, just making sure, not all to strengthen the case, but to make sure that nothing's, nothing's been missed. On the, uh, non-disclosure, I know in New South Wales, and I'm not sure when it came in, but I, I, it was some stage during my career, that we've got to do a full disclosure.

• 42:43Speaker 00

  So part of the brief, you've got to disclose all the evidence you've got, whether it's inculpatory or exculpatory.

• 42:48Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 42:49Speaker 00

  So the evidence, and I, I think that prevents that type of, uh, type of failings. The defence, um, or, or the prosecution mentioning the, uh, the monkey wrench or whatever is the, the eighty times?

• 43:01Speaker 01

  Eighty times, they said he's, that this is the murder weapon, this is the murder weapon. The guy, the, the forensic expert who had actually done the testing on the pig's head months before the trial is in the witness box, but he's not once asked

• 43:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:15Speaker 01

  by the prosecutor, what was the murder weapon?

• 43:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:18Speaker 01

  Was it a wrench? He's not asked because he's done the testing months earlier and found that a wrench is not the murder weapon.

• 43:26Speaker 00

  But that, that's

• 43:27Speaker 01

  I mean, that's just, I, I, I just went, I took my breath away, fair dinkum.

• 43:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. And that's, but whether it's defence or prosecution, I've seen it in, uh, in trials, big murder trials. And there was one, I, I won't go into the specific trial, but that they talked about the London report. It was a forensic examination and, uh, I was asked was the forensic sent over to London? And, uh, no, it wasn't because it didn't need to be, as simple as that. So it put to bed. But then this, uh, defence barrister kept mentioning the London report to the point, even the judge was talking about the London report. There was no

• 44:03Speaker 01

  It didn't exist.

• 44:04Speaker 00

  There was no London report, but mentioning the wrench eighty times in front of a jury. They'd be sitting there, I can just imagine the discussion in a, in a jury room going, well, the murder weapon's the, the wrench that's been, uh, been mentioned. He's consistently mentioned that. So it's a way that, uh, yeah, these miscarriages can happen because of, uh, yeah, people, whether they're not doing their job deliberately or it's incompetence. It's, you know, each case needs to be judged on its own merits. But there were other failings in, uh, in there that I understand that, that some of the statements were changed. The witness

• 44:40Speaker 01

  The witness statements.

• 44:41Speaker 00

  The narrative of the prosecution.

• 44:43Speaker 01

  That's exactly right.

• 44:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:45Speaker 01

  Um, initial statements were taken from his flatmate because the killer is supposed to be wearing some sort of, um, scarf wrapped around his head or a cap or something like that, you know?

• 44:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:59Speaker 01

  Um, his flatmate originally tells police certain things. When they're not consistent with what the police are finding, they go back to her and her statement changes to fit with what the police now know. And she's not the only one. There's a series of these where statements are taken initially and then a second statement is taken, which is different

• 45:27Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 45:27Speaker 01

  in, in meaningful ways, um, to the first one, uh, and is far more, you know, points to the guilt of Andrew Mallard.

• 45:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:37Speaker 01

  Uh, whereas the first statement pointed away from his guilt, pointed more to his innocence. Um, yeah, that was, the defence was never told about the first, the initial statements. They weren't presented. So the jury's got all this material. And also the, the prosecutor said there's fifteen things only the killer could have known. And that was about, there were twelve head wounds. Uh, the body, Pamela Lawrence's body had been dragged from the front of the shop to the back of the shop. Um, he knew what she was wearing. Well, that wasn't quite true because the fact that there were twelve head wounds had been published in the media.

• 46:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:17Speaker 01

  The fact that she'd been dragged from the front to the back had also been published in the media. And Andrew Mallard had said, oh, I, I, she was a stylish woman. She would have been wearing a skirt. She wasn't.

• 46:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:29Speaker 01

  The fifteen things only the killer could know were things that half of Perth could know. And on crucial points, he, Andrew Mallard actually got it wrong.

• 46:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:40Speaker 01

  Um, he drew a layout of the shop Pamela Lawrence, uh, owned and ran. It was wrong. Uh, so the fifteen things only the killer can know sounds fantastic.

• 46:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:52Speaker 01

  It sounds, it would be very, very convincing in front of a jury. Um, it just wasn't true.

• 46:58Speaker 00

  Cause if you cherry pick the evidence that the prosecution want to rely on without scrutiny, the case can sound quite compelling.

• 47:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:06Speaker 00

  If it's, if it's not scrutinised.

• 47:08Speaker 01

  Oh, I think the jury, um, I mean, Andrew Mallard gave evidence and he's, uh, he's a hundred and ninety nine centimetres tall, as I said, uh, he, you know, he admits some stuff that he claimed he worked for Interpol. Um, you know, he's working on the mafia, he speaks all these languages, which he doesn't. You, the jury would watch him in the witness box and then they'd see the police and other witnesses who are Calm.

• 47:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:35Speaker 01

  And they've done it before, um, they know how to give evidence and it's little wonder the jury found him guilty.

• 47:43Speaker 00

  Well, there is a lot to ask of a jury, isn't it? Because the jury, and you know, you and I have been in the industry and we're still surprised by failings of the system. Imagine being plucked from the street, which most jurors are. No, uh, yeah, involvement or inside knowledge of what goes on in the, the investigations or the court system. And then to adjudicate, you've got police presenting professionally. You've got barristers standing up there performing like peacocks in, in front of, in front of the jury. It is, cause it's a theatre, isn't it? And then you've got the poor jury sitting there being overwhelmed with forensic evidence. And I could imagine, yeah, they'd be thinking, oh, well, that's, that's forensic evidence. I've watched CSI, this is, this is what happens.

• 48:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:27Speaker 00

  So many, we, we do ask a lot of the, the jurors in these situations.

• 48:31Speaker 01

  We do, I'm, I'm a big believer in the jury system. I think most of the time it works. And in a number of the, the cases in, in the book, a number of the nine cases, you, you, it's arguable. The jury actually got it right.

• 48:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:44Speaker 01

  But the jury wasn't told what they should have been told. They, they weren't presented with all the evidence. And this is particularly so in the case of, of Andrew Mallard. Um, and look, eventually his conviction was quashed in the, in the high court. And they ordered a new trial, I think, from, from memory. Um, which was disappointing to Mallard because by this stage they've exposed the, um, changed witness statements, the, the wrench is not the murder weapon.

• 49:14Speaker 00

  They still haven't fully.

• 49:15Speaker 01

  And, and, and the prosecution is still going. Andrew Mallard is still the prime suspect. Well, he was not, uh, or should never have been a suspect because what happens is on the day of the murder, the police find a palm print, uh, in the shop of Pamela Lawrence.

• 49:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:35Speaker 01

  Um, and they, in those days, apparently in Perth, you could not do a computerized check of palm prints. You could do it with fingerprints, but not palm prints.

• 49:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:45Speaker 01

  They check the palm print, it's not Andrew Mallard's. Okay, um, Andrew Mallard, we're double, going back here a little bit, but Andrew Mallard goes to jail and he notices this other prisoner looking at him sort of weirdly. And he's, this goes on, he's, he's, this bloke is staring at him. Turns out it's a bloke called Simon Rochford, who was in jail for murdering his girlfriend.

• 50:14Speaker 00

  Right.

• 50:14Speaker 01

  And he's pleaded guilty.

• 50:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:16Speaker 01

  He's doing, I think, 15 years or whatever. It turns out when, after Andrew, Andrew Mallard's conviction is quashed, there's inquiries and so on. Turns out the palm print in the shop matches that of Simon Rochford. The bloke who's killed his girlfriend roughly the same time as the murder of Pamela Lawrence. There are a few, there's some weeks apart, but it's within a few weeks. And they then go to Simon Rochford's backpack, which they've kept as an exhibit from his, not trial because he pleaded guilty. Um, and in that they find traces of Prussian blue paint,

• 50:59Speaker 01

  which is exactly the same Prussian blue paint that they'd found in the head wounds of Pamela Lawrence. So there's the palm print and the forensics.

• 51:09Speaker 00

  Now you're starting to get the.

• 51:10Speaker 01

  And, yeah, so he, Andrew Mallard was not the killer. They start an investigation into Simon Rochford, who's obviously in jail for, after pleading guilty to killing his girlfriend by bashing her. He denies it, he denies that he killed Pamela Lawrence. The fact that he's now the number one suspect and not Andrew leaks to the media.

• 51:33Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 51:34Speaker 01

  And Rochford's in his cell watching TV. And up he comes, he's now the prime suspect. Um, the next morning he's found dead in his cell.

• 51:43Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 51:43Speaker 01

  Uh, and, and I probably should bring in here, the, the family of Pamela Lawrence believed Andrew Mallard was the killer all along.

• 51:52Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 51:53Speaker 01

  Absolutely. They thought the police had got it right, the judge had got it right, jury got it right.

• 51:59Speaker 01

  When they found out this detail, that was pretty overwhelming, that Rochford was the killer. The palm print and the, the forensics matched. They were, you know, their lives, I mean, they've already lost their mother or wife and mother. And now they're being told, oh.

• 52:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:16Speaker 01

  He, the man you hated, didn't actually do it.

• 52:19Speaker 00

  I know, and they, they've invested their emotional energy and anger and.

• 52:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, grief and it's all confused.

• 52:26Speaker 01

  Grief, yes, immense grief, um.

• 52:29Speaker 00

  The, the ramifications from this, this type of miscarriage of justice. And it's a valid point that you, you make. It's not just the falsely accused.

• 52:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:39Speaker 00

  It's the victims' families.

• 52:41Speaker 01

  Families.

• 52:42Speaker 00

  That can be, be caught, caught up in it. So many, uh, so many things that, that play out. When you, uh, you, you mentioned the jury and what the jury, getting back to that for a sec, what the jury are exposed to. I do believe in the jury system. I think that there's certainly failings in it, but where I think it could be improved, they need to be exposed to all the evidence.

• 53:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:03Speaker 00

  And this is where I, I call it the intellectual arrogance of the legal fraternity going, well, we can't tell the jury this because it would, uh, you know, the probability value would over, uh, weigh the prejudicial.

• 53:14Speaker 01

  Prejudice, yeah.

• 53:16Speaker 00

  So they're separated from knowing the full facts, but we're relying on our peers to judge their peers. That's the premise of a, a jury system. But we don't trust them enough to have all the evidence presented to them. And I, I could see the frustration time and time again on juries when they'd be, uh, excluded from the courtroom and we'd be in there arguing of wa di, uh, the evidence that decided whether it should go before the jury for hours. And then the jury had come back and

• 53:45Speaker 00

  the human reaction would be, what have they been talking about?

• 53:47Speaker 01

  What have they been talking about? Exactly, exactly.

• 53:50Speaker 00

  I, I think if there's improvements in the jury system, we've got to trust the jury system, but we've got to trust them completely and have all the evidence presented.

• 53:58Speaker 01

  Trust their common sense more.

• 53:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:00Speaker 01

  Perhaps, yeah, yeah, look, it's a very good point.

• 54:01Speaker 00

  Might, uh, might improve it. With the, um, Andrew Mallard case, uh, it ended up that, uh, two of the police officers, uh, were found guilty of misconduct and, uh.

• 54:12Speaker 01

  That they, they, the, the crime and corruption and crime commission in Western Australia said, um, they had engaged in misconduct, um, and the prosecutor had engaged in misconduct by not asking the expert, what's the murder weapon?

• 54:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:27Speaker 01

  Um, they all, uh, resigned from the police force or from the office of the D P P. The police officers, I think, in one case certainly went on to another career.

• 54:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:38Speaker 01

  Um, they really didn't face any, you know, repercussions apart from public publicity.

• 54:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 54:46Speaker 01

  And, and, um, and you, you mentioned very early on something called tunnel vision. And I think this was a case where, uh, one of the police officers in particular settled on Andrew Mallard.

• 54:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:59Speaker 01

  And decided he was the guy. And they, that tunnel vision.

• 55:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:04Speaker 01

  Led them to exclude.

• 55:06Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 55:06Speaker 01

  Any other possibility, uh, so, yeah, I'm.

• 55:10Speaker 00

  And you can get that group think in an investigation too.

• 55:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:13Speaker 00

  Like an investigative team, it's, yeah.

• 55:15Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 55:15Speaker 00

  Okay, you're, you're, Neil's the person we're after. So the, the evidence gets filtered that, uh, okay, we're only looking for evidence, uh, with Neil. I was, I was taught very early in, uh, in policing that, uh, you know, by people like, that you would know, Paul Jacob and Paul Maeger and all that. Tunnel vision is okay when we're looking at you, but you've also got to explore other.

• 55:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:38Speaker 00

  Hypothesis. But, uh, it's okay, let's go get everything we can on Neil if we're targeting you for a thing. But look at all the, uh, the potential exculpatory evidence. And I think that's, uh, that's very important because I've been involved in investigations where, yeah, at the time you'd be certain the person has done it, but then with further exploration, it might be an alibi or, or something that comes in that, that disproves that, uh, they were the person involved.

• 56:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:05Speaker 00

  But it's, it's complex, isn't it?

• 56:07Speaker 01

  It's very complex and, you know, um, juries do have a lot to think about, to absorb. And when you get experts saying, oh, you know, or, or DNA, people, juries would accept that a person in, in the witness box who's called as an expert is an expert. And they do know what they're talking about. And in the case of DNA, you know, it's sometimes the inference of guilt can be overwhelming when you say, you know, it's, it's eight hundred, eight hundred billion times more likely that it was Neil's DNA than anybody else. You're just going, well, he's obviously guilty.

• 56:46Speaker 00

  Well, I, when, when DNA first came in and you're getting those statistics put out, you're thinking, okay, but there's not that many people on, in this, on this planet.

• 56:53Speaker 01

  On the planet, that's right.

• 56:54Speaker 00

  So it must be, must be him. So, yeah, it is confused and I, and I have seen trials, medical based trials where, you know, it might be a, a murder of a, a child and there's so much medical evidence that comes in. I sit there and I know the investigation, I've worked on the investigation, I've consulted with the medical experts and I, I'm looking at the jury as this, they're going through all this, um, medical evidence. And I'm wondering, what are they thinking? Like unless they've got a medical degree, they're going to be as confused as the rest of us.

• 57:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:24Speaker 00

  Sitting, sitting there in, uh, sitting there in court. Look, there are, there are just a couple of the, uh, cases mentioned in your book. Let's take a break now. When I get back or when we get back, I hope you're coming back.

• 57:36Speaker 01

  I am.

• 57:36Speaker 00

  Oh, good, okay, I've got that acknowledgement. I want to talk about the type of things that, uh, why, like misidentification, witness misidentification, um, scientific evidence, all the type of problems that come in when you're looking at these, uh, falsely convicted people, where the, where the problems, uh, lie. How we potentially could, uh, yeah, make the system better so this doesn't happen. And we'll refer to a couple of other, uh, stories from, from your book.

• 58:03Speaker 01

  Sounds good.

• 58:04Speaker 00

  Cheers.