Supporters of Sue-Neill Fraser peddle untruths about the trial Untruths about the trial

Examples put forward by Sue Neill-Fraser supporters as evidence her conviction was flawed, do not stand up to scrutiny, argues the man who ran the murder trial,

THE latest contribution by Lara Giddings (Talking Point, September 15) compels me, reluctantly, to respond.

I conducted the trial of Susan Neill-Fraser, I responded to the first appeal to the Court of Criminal Appeal and to the application for Special Leave to Appeal to the High Court. I did not see Ms Giddings at any of those events, and what she claims to be the “material before me” which makes her “believe” Sue Neill-Fraser to be innocent has not been stated.

It is presumably the same misinformation that the convicted murderer’s supporters have peddled relentlessly, complete with regular personal attacks on anyone or any institution involved in the investigation or litigation who doesn’t share or suit their view.

Her “belief” is of far less consequence than that of all 12 members of the trial jury, a belief in guilt beyond reasonable doubt after a trial that has not been shown in any proper forum to have been legally flawed.

In her article, Ms Giddings gives only one example, that of the evidence of Peter Lorraine.

She suggests that Mr Lorraine gave different versions of the description of the dinghy he sighted to police and that the defence were only given his description of a small tender dinghy of inflatable or solid construction.

She says the defence were not told he once gave a version of a small yellow dinghy and she says “prosecution argued it was the Four Winds dinghy, that is, a blue and white trimmed inflatable Zodiac with a motor”, and “defence accepted Lorraine’s written statement of fact”. This is untrue. If Ms Giddings wishes to dispute that, she should give the exact passages from the transcript.

The transcript is easily available.

Further, far from Ms Giddings’ claim that the description given by Mr Lorraine of a yellow unmotored dinghy was hidden from defence, it was in fact given in evidence at the trial and therefore made known not only to defence but also to the jury.

I quote from the trial judge’s summing up to the jury (at page 1525, numbers in the extract are his references to transcript pages),

“(Mr Lorraine) said at 503 that he saw a very small dinghy, at 510 that it was somewhat dark and very small, at 511 he said he couldn’t see an outboard. Sergeant Conroy gave evidence at page 914 that he’d spoken to Mr Lorraine at the time of the initial investigation and that Mr Lorraine had said things to him when he happened to run into him that didn’t find their way into Mr Lorraine’s statement and that he said to him that the dinghy he saw was whitish cream to yellow.”

Ms Giddings’ sole “example” is thus untrue and misleading.

Refuting every NeillFraser’s supporters’ claim is like playing whack-a-mole.

Just last week one wrote in another newspaper that Neill

Fraser’s DNA was “not found on the yacht” – a complete untruth.

This is a new addition to the hardy series of untruths and half-truths which are constantly repeated in order to gain credence by their very repetition.

To give but one example, in the so called “Etter /Selby papers” much time and space is devoted to seeking to prove that the prosecution’s case that there was blood in the dinghy was wrong and that matters contrary to that proposition were hidden.

It was never the prosecution case that there was blood in the dinghy. I never said the jury could so find at any stage of the trial, and no submission invited them to so find.

Ms Etter knows this well. Ms Etter had complained to the Legal Profession Board (LPB) that I falsely denied after the trial that I had told the jury that there had been found to be blood in the dinghy.

That complaint was examined by the LPB who concluded that there had been no presentation of a blood in the dinghy case and no assertion of it by me and Ms Etter’s complaint was summarily dismissed.

I wonder if Michael

Gaffney MLC was apprised of this before he used parliamentary privilege to push the same barrow?

I wonder if he, or Ms Giddings or indeed anyone who, like them, was not at the trial and did not hear all the evidence, have actually read the Court of Criminal Appeal decision which sets out clearly and very readably the case which had been presented at trial?

It is at http:// classic.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/ tas/TASCCA/2012/2.html, and is far more authoritative reading than the so-called Etter/Selby papers, and should be considered to be essential reading for anyone wishing to be properly informed.

Ms Giddings concludes with the Neill-Fraser supporters’ catechism, “it was a circumstantial case, there was no body, no weapon and no witness to the crime”.

She knows that none of these things, together or alone, mean the conviction is unsafe at law.

None of them, together or alone, even diminishes the safety of the conviction. So why say it?

Tim Ellis SC was the then Director of Public Prosecutions who prosecuted the Sue NeillFraser murder trial.