Patriot Realm - Beyond Reasonable Doubt

Details: Written by: Op-Ed Flysa; Published: 02 April 2022

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Reginald Woolmington was a twenty-one-year-old farm labourer from Castleton, Dorset in the UK. Three months after he married seventeen-year- old Violet in November 1934, she gave birth to a child and left Woolmington following a dispute and returned to her mother. In the December following, Woolmington stole a double-barrelled shotgun and cartridges from his employer, sawed off the barrel and hid the weapon under his coat. He then bicycled over to his mother-in-law's house where he shot and killed Violet.

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In January 1935 he was arrested and charged with Violet’s murder. Woolmington claimed he merely wanted to frighten Violet by showing her the gun with which he intended to commit suicide unless she returned to him, so that she would return to him with their child, He claimed that the gun discharged accidentally and shot herin the heart while he was removing it from under his coat to show it to her. He denied that he had any intention of killing Violet.

The judge at first instance at the Bristol Assizes ruled that the case was so strong against Woolmington that the onus rested on him to show that the shooting was accidental. The jury found that Woolmington was guilty, and in February 1935 he was sentenced to death by hanging.

Woolmington appealed to the Court of Criminal Appeal on the grounds that the trial judge had misdirected the jury. The appeal judge dismissed the appeal, relying on the common-law precedent as stated in the authoritative legal textbook Foster's Crown Law (1762).

... In every charge of murder, the fact of killing being first proved, all the circumstances of accident, necessity, or infirmity are to be satisfactorily proved by the prisoner, unless they arise out of the evidence produced against him; for the law presumeth the fact to have been founded in malice, unless the contrary appeareth...

As a last resort, Woolmington appealed to the ultimate authority, the House of Lords,

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questioning whether the statement of law in Foster's Crown Lawquoted above was correct in stating that where a death occurred at the hands of the accused, it is presumed to be murder unless proven otherwise. That effectively places the onus of proof on the accused.

Viscount Sankey, who decided the appeal after reviewing all of the facts and authorities, articulated his famous Golden Threadruling, which is taught to all law students:

Throughout the web of the English Criminal Law one golden thread is always to be seen that it is the duty of the prosecution to prove the prisoner's guilt subject to ... the defence of insanity and subject also to any statutory exception. If, at the end of and on the whole of the case, there is a reasonable doubt, created by the evidence given by either the prosecution or the prisoner ... the prosecution has not made out the case and the prisoner is entitled to an acquittal. No matter what the charge or where the trial, the principle that the prosecution must prove the guilt of the prisoner is part of the common law of England and no attempt to whittle it down can be entertained.

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The conviction was overturned and Woolmington acquitted. He was released three days before his scheduled execution date and vanished into obscurity. It is thought that he may have perished serving his country in World War II.

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One so-called victim came forward who is still unidentified today. He alleged that in the 1990s the Cardinal sexually abused him and another boy in the sacristy immediately after Mass, at which they had been choirboys.The ABC jumped on the bandwagon, seeking the conviction of the Cardinal at any cost, publishing after the conviction of the Cardinal:

It was one man’s evidence that ended the career of Australia’s highest ranked Catholic, who had climbed so far up the hierarchy of the Catholic Church he had once been considered a possible pope in waiting.

The allegations were that in 1996 the unidentified Witness (A) and another choirboy had entered the off-limits sacristy immediately after Mass, and were swigging altarwine (as I did when an altar boy many, many years ago). A stated that the Cardinal appeared at the sacristy door dressed in his full archbishop’s regalia.

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With the Cardinal attired as pictured above, A allegedthat the Cardinal pushed the head of one of the boys down to his penis. A further alleged that after a few minutes the Cardinal moved on to the other choirboy and forced him to have oral sex, prior to fondling the choirboy and masturbating. That is not only impossible in those robes, but as a past altar boy I can attest that the sacristy after Mass would have people coming and going all the time. A further alleged that on a later occasion while the Cardinal was in an actual procession in the Cathedral, the Cardinal pushed him up against the wall and sexually abused him. What a lot of unbelievable rubbish.

The first jury trial against the Cardinal was aborted, while the second trial jury found the Cardinal guilty. A was allowed to give evidence by video link from a secret location. He was permitted under Victorian to have supporters seated beside him. Whether this occurred is not recorded.

The trial judge permitted the sentencing of the Cardinal to be televised, although that is uncommon. The Cardinal was sentenced as a Serious Sexual Offender. He was registered as a sex offender and required to report as such for life. The judge sentenced the Cardinal to a total effective sentence of six years, with a non-parole period of three years and eight months, backdated to the day he went into custody. He was to eventually serve 405 days in solitary confinement, the latter part in Barwon Prison near Geelong, which he bore with great fortitude while forgiving his accuser.

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The Cardinal appealed his conviction to the Victorian Court of Criminal Appeal, which dismissed the appeal by a majority of 2:1. Tellingly, the single dissenting judge had this to say, which is of course correct:

Objectively speaking, this was always going to be a problematic case. The complainant’s allegations against the applicant were, to one degree or another, implausible. In the case of the second incident, even that is an understatement.

The Cardinal then appealed to the High Court which unanimously upheld his appeal. The Cardinal was released and immediately left Victoria to avoid being further victimised.

The High Court stated the following in its reasoning:

When it came to applying the M test, their Honours' subjective assessment, that A was a compellingly truthful witness, drove their analysis of the consistency and cogency of his evidence and the capacity of the evidence of the opportunity witnesses to engender a reasonable doubt as to his allegations. Their Honours reasoned, with respect to largely unchallenged evidence that was inconsistent with those allegations (the "solid obstacles" to conviction), that notwithstanding each obstacle it remained possible that A's account was correct. The analysis failed to engage with whether, against this body of evidence, it was reasonably possible that A's account was not correct, such that there was a reasonable doubt as to the applicant's guilt.

AND

It may be accepted that the Court of Appeal majority did not err in holding that A's evidence of the first incident did not contain discrepancies, or display inadequacies, of such a character as to require the jury to have entertained a doubt as to guilt. The likelihood of two choirboys in their gowns being able to slip away from the procession without detection; of finding altar wine in an unlocked cupboard; and of the applicant being able to manoeuvre his vestments to expose his penis are considerations that may be put to one side. It remains that the evidence of witnesses, whose honesty was not in question, (i) placed the applicant on the steps of the Cathedral for at least ten minutes after Mass on 15 and 22 December 1996; (ii) placed him in the company of Portelli when he returned to the priests' sacristy to remove his vestments; and (iii) described continuous traffic into and out of the priests' sacristy for ten to 15 minutes after the altar servers completed their bows to the crucifix.

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The assumption that a group of choristers, including adults, might have been so preoccupied with making their way to the robing room as to fail to notice the extraordinary sight of the Archbishop of Melbourne dressed "in his full regalia" advancing through the procession and pinning a 13 year old boy to the wall, is a large one. The failure to make any formal report of such an incident, had it occurred, may be another matter.

It is unnecessary to decide whether A's description of the second incident so strains credulity as to necessitate that the jury, who saw and heard him give the evidence, ought to have entertained a reasonable doubt as to its occurrence. The capacity of the evidence to support the verdict on this charge suffers from the same deficiency as the evidence of the assaults involved in the first incident.

The High Court ordered that:the appellant's convictions be quashed and judgmentof acquittal be entered in their place.

It came to light following the High Court decision, that the impossible allegations made by A, mirrored closely equally impossible allegations made against a priest in the Philadelphia diocese, published in the Rolling Stone magazine in 2011. An extract is as follows:

“BILL" was a 10-year-old student at St. Jerome School in 1998, and an altar boy just like his older brother before him. A sweet, gentle kid with boyish good looks, Billy was outgoing and well-liked. One morning, after serving Mass, Rev. Charles Engelhardt caught Billy in the church sacristy sipping leftover wine. Rather than get mad, however, the priest poured Billy more wine. According to the grand jury, he also showed him some pornographic magazines, asking the boy how the pictures made him feel and whether he preferred the images of naked men or women. He told Billy it was time to become a man and that they would soon begin their "sessions." A week later, Billy learned what Engelhardt meant. After Mass, the priest allegedly fondled the boy, sucked his penis and ordered Billy to kneel and fellate him - calling him "son" while instructing him to move his head faster or slower - until Engelhardt ejaculated. The priest later suggested another "session," but Billy refused and Engelhardt let him be.

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The chances of the two accounts which are so similar being mere coincidence are small indeed, and most likely the Philadelphian invention gave rise to the Pell invention.

THERE IS NO GOLDEN THREAD IN VICTORIA, AT LEAST IN THE LEGAL SENSE

It is said that the Calabrian Mafia was involved in the Pell frame-up, as the Cardinal was getting too close for comfort in investigating the Vatican’s finances in which the Mafia was involved. It is said that the Vatican transferred $2.3b to Australia during the frame-up. The Church authorities deny all knowledge. It has all gone very quiet. One can well ask why.

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