Terry Irving was jailed for a crime he didn't commit. After 30 years, he'll learn the price of freedomTerry Irving was imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit. Now the justice system will be asked to answer the ultimate question: What's the cost of loss of liberty?
But as the stares followed him into the courtroom, a crushing realisation consumed him: he would not be walking back out that front entrance a free man. Local shopkeepers, who had been alerted to the commotion, managed to tail him and sneak a glimpse of his face. The avid pool player had been chatting with other pubgoers when a man he'd seen around every now and then approached him and struck up a conversation.
They had made the hour-long drive to Atherton, where Terry was working, with questions about the robbery. While in custody, Terry was investigated and charged as the bank robber. His lawyers maintain that during this time police had begun a "fishing expedition" to find evidence that would frame him as the prime suspect.
His lawyer had pulled out that morning due to a scheduling conflict, and evidence that was "supposed to have been disclosed" to Terry and his new defence council before the trial "was handed across the bar table" after proceedings had begun, he says. In sentencing, the judge remarked the trial had proceeded far quicker than anyone anticipated because of the defence lawyer's "efficient" cross-examination of the witnesses.
After decades spent working overseas and establishing his legal practice in Canberra, he uprooted his life in the early 1990s to move to north Queensland, where he began a job with legal aid in Townsville.In Michael's line of work "you tend to develop an in-built bullshit detector", he muses. Over 18 months, the seasoned lawyer compiled hundreds of pages of documents to take the case to Australia’s highest court, eventually securing the money needed for legal representation.
Terry's name had been cleared but, as he was about to discover, the battle for vindication had only just begun. It would take another two decades for the Queensland Court of Appeal to determine that Terry had been the victim of a "malicious prosecution"."In Terry's case, it was a specific finding by the court that a detective investigating that matter had acted with malice — she'd intentionally done the wrong thing," says Melissa Meyers, the principal lawyer from Maurice Blackburn for Terry’s case.
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Source: SkyNewsAust - 🏆 7. / 78 Read more »