Queensland police acted maliciously in wrongful jailing of Indigenous man, court finds
A Queensland court has ruled an Aboriginal man was maliciously prosecuted by police when he was wrongly jailed for a bank robbery almost three decades ago.
The court of appeal ruled on Tuesday that Terry Irving had wrongly spent 1671 days in prison for an armed bank robbery he did not commit.
On 19 March 1993, a robber armed with a sawn-off shotgun and wearing a beret, dark glasses and a scarf partially covering his face entered the Cairns ANZ branch and stole about $6,000 cash.
Irving was charged less than two months after the robbery, and spent more than four and a half years in prison. He was released in December 1997 after the director of public prosecutions conceded during a high court hearing that he had not been given a fair trial, and the court quashed his convictions.
He had firstly been charged with being an accessory after the fact to the robbery, and was investigated while he was in custody for the first charge. It was the accessory prosecution which the court agreed was malicious.
The Townsville man said Tuesday’s decision, which means he can seek compensation for police misconduct, underlined issues with the treatment of Aboriginal people within the justice system that continue to endure.
“The police culture at the time of my conviction meant that they could do whatever they wanted to secure a conviction,” Irving said in a statement.
“Aboriginal people continue to be overrepresented in the Australian prison population and we continue to confront very particular challenges in having wrongful convictions recognised and remedied.”
Court of appeal justice Hugh Fraser said in the decision on Tuesday that while judgment for Irving had been given in relation to the malicious prosecution claim, and that the proceedings would be sent to the supreme court to assess damages, other aspects of Irving’s claim were dismissed.
Irving had sued the detective who investigated the robbery and the state of Queensland.
Melissa Meyers, a senior associate at Maurice Blackburn, said in a statement that it should not have taken so long for Irving to achieve justice.
“In Terry’s case it was clearly shown that [police] guidelines were ignored and that there was cherry-picking of evidence and the downplaying or deli
berate omission of evidence,” she said.
“Today the Queensland court of appeal agreed with us that Terry should be compensated for his traumatic ordeal.
“Unfortunately, no amount of compensation can take away from the emotional and physical abuse that he suffered whilst falsely imprisoned for a crime he did not commit.”