Sweet Little Fish
Little fish are sweet. High profile defamation actions and messy murder trials may make for big headlines, but from a lawyer’s point of view the smaller, seemingly less significant cases are just as challenging and (provided you finish first, and not just a commendable second) every bit as satisfying.
Taking On The State
Experienced lawyers will tell you, you can’t really call yourself a litigator until you’ve won the unwinnable case, and lost the un-loseable. I’ve had more than my share of hopeless cases, with varying results, but here’s one even I wouldn’t like to take on.
Policy or Politics?
Last week the Supreme Court ordered the Queensland Parole Board to pay convicted bank robber Brenden Abbott’s legal costs because it failed to make a timely decision on his parole application. The Board had sat on Abbott’s application for 389 days, unable to decide whether or not it should release the so-called ‘Postcard Bandit’.
Why? What was the problem? The only answer I have is “It’s complicated.”
The Rumble Of Turbulent Times
Well, the final figures are in, and it’s official – the Manny Pacquiao-Floyd Mayweather Jr. prize-fight last month was the most lucrative bout in boxing history. It racked up a record 4.4 million pay-per-view buys, which produced more than $US400 million in TV revenue alone. Ticket sales of around $US72 million, international sales of $US35 million, closed-circuit broadcasts of $US13 million, $US12 million worth of sponsorships and another $US1 million in merchandise, pushed up the overall take to well over $US500 million. Mayweather took home $US210 million and Pacquiao’s a relatively paltry $US142 million.
Party Time – Regulating The Party House
Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the suburbs…
Earlier this year, eight years after he made national headlines when the party he threw at his parents’ suburban home was overrun by hundreds of gatecrashers who responded to a MySpace invitation, Corey Worthington, now 23 and all grown up, has launched his latest business venture — an online party planning service, would you believe.
Ruffled Eagle Feathers
A clash of Queensland judicial personalities flared earlier this week, with the Courier Mail newspaper reporting on Wednesday a serious difference of opinion between retired District Court Chief Judge Patsy Wolfe and current President of the Court of Appeal Margaret McMurdo. When Judge Wolfe retired in September last year, Justice McMurdo gave a speech at an Australian Association of Women Judges luncheon, held in Judge Wolfe’s honour, in which she lamented what she perceived to be the deepening state of gender inequality on the Queensland bench. The following day Judge Wolfe reportedly wrote a private letter to the Newman government, distancing herself from Justice McMurdo’s comments, and claiming no one at the luncheon agreed with her remarks.
A Call To All Good Men – Stop Domestic Violence
It’s high time for good men to stand up and do something about domestic violence. Last year domestic violence was the leading cause of death and injury in women under 45 in this country. It reportedly accounted for 40 per cent of police time, and cost the economy $13.6 billion. The Easter period alone marked the death of six women and children in a single week. This year, which is not yet two months old, we have already seen 14 Australian women allegedly killed by domestic violence. If that figure runs true, we are online for the shocking statistic of two domestic violence related deaths per week in 2015. That represents a 100% increase in such crimes since last year. It underscores what campaigners have long warned, that domestic violence is at risk of reaching epidemic proportions in Australia.
Vive l’humanité
As distressing as last week’s terrorist attacks in Paris proved to be, they were not the first, and certainly not the worst, acts of terrorism the French people have endured in living memory. During the German occupation of France in the early 1940s, Christian soldiers scoured the streets and homes of France arresting, gaoling, and murdering thousands of Jewish citizens. In that terrible time, the French people demonstrated their capacity to endure and overcome racism, terrorism, and inhumanity.
Showtime
Talk about art imitating life imitating art imitating life.
In the 2002 American action-comedy movie Showtime two odd-couple cops are ordered by the LA Police Department to pair up for a reality television police show. Hard-nosed veteran detective Mitch Preston (played in delightfully irascible fashion by the great Robert De Niro) is a distinctly unenthusiastic participant, but his new partner, brash and charismatic rookie Trey Sellars (Eddie Murphy), laps up the glamour and attention of his 15 minutes of fame, revelling in his new-found celluloid celebrity. Throughout the film the grisly Preston, who just wants to get his serious police work done, bemoans his flashy partner’s corner-cutting and grandstanding for the cameras, ignoring the all-important grunt work in favour of sexy TV stunts.
Open Justice – Racial Inequality, Video Evidence And Probable Cause
Questions about racial inequality continue to simmer in the United States following last week’s decision of a Staten Island Grand Jury not to indict Officer Daniel Pantaleo to stand trial for the killing of Eric Garner earlier this year. It’s a decision which has even some of the country’s most staunchly conservative commentators, such as Fox News traditionalist Bill O’Reilly, scratching their heads in disbelief. Protesters in New York have taken up from where the citizens of Ferguson left off. But unlike the unsavoury shooting of Michael Brown in Missouri, which was shrouded in conflicting versions of events, the video evidence of Garner’s death was there for all to see. The deceased’s non-threatening behaviour was visible, his cries for help audible, and the excess use of force by the Officers, irrefutable. Upon examining the deceased’s body, the coroner labelled Eric Garner’s death a homicide, having regard to the fact that he died as a result of a violent attack. The video clearly shows the officer applying a rear chokehold, a manoeuvre banned by the NYPD in 1993. The evidence was damning. Or so we thought. On 3 December 2014, a Staten Island Grand Jury declined to indict the officer.
The Underbelly Issue
A couple of years back, at the International Criminal Law Congress, I delivered a paper on the effect of pre-trial publicity on jury trials. Victorian Supreme Court Justice Betty King, who presided over the trial of Melbourne underworld figure Carl Williams and others charged in the wake of the Melbourne gangland war, was on the same panel of speakers. Justice King famously banned the high-rating Underbelly television series from being aired in the state of Victoria during Williams’ trial because of the prejudicial effect it might have on the deliberations the jury. Naturally, the ban caused quite a stir and upset a lot of people, not least of all the producers at Channel 9. But in the end it probably had significantly less effect than Justice King had hoped it would. Despite the television ban, the first episode of Underbelly was available online, everywhere throughout the world wide web, within 20 minutes of it being aired on television in states outside Victoria.
Ten Years On
10 years ago today, on 27 November 2004, the indigenous community of Palm Island erupted. The islanders had just heard read out at a public meeting the autopsy report into the death of the local man known posthumously simply as Mulrunji. He had been arrested a week earlier and taken to the Palm Island police lock-up, where he died a short while later following a scuffle with a Senior Sergeant of Police. A medical examination found he had sustained a cut above his right eye and four broken ribs, his portal vein was ruptured and his liver was split almost in two.