Justice Denied

By John Suter And Bill Linton And Hosking

In this tell–all book, discover how the justice system works and why, at times, the innocent are convicted and the guilty set free.

Bill Hosking looks back at his career as a criminal barrister in a candid account of his time at the bar. He tells the true story behind some of his most famous cases, including the Hilton bombings, 'Toecutter' Jimmy Driscoll's attempt to avoid prison time, and the Anita Cobby trial.

At Bill's side we also meet some larger–than–life characters, such as Carl Synnerdhal, a professional bank robber who successfully convinced everyone he was blind and hoodwinked the system, as well as adversaries such as disgraced former detective Roger Rogerson.

Bill Hosking's clients have included, '…the notorious, the oppressed, the young and the old…the wise and the foolish…'. In the company of his colleagues, judges, prosecutors and defence lawyers, he reveals how the law courts give us an insight into human frailty and the dark side of human nature.

Justice in any courtroom can be elusive. Yet, as Bill Hosking explains: '…a calm, composed, careful and competent judicial process is to what we aspire…when it is achieved, justice is never denied.'

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
• Release date: Mar 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9781489211071

John Suter And Bill Linton And Hosking

Born in Broken Hill, William (Bill) Hosking became a clerk in the Petty Sessions branch of the Department of the Attorney-General and of Justice in 1954, serving in courthouses all over New South Wales. In June 1961, at the age of twenty-three, Bill embarked on a different career path when Jack Mannix, the Labor member for Liverpool and Minister of Justice, appointed him as his acting private secretary. In 1965, the new Minister of Justice, John Maddison, retained Bill on his personal staff. Soon, he became assistant private secretary to Sir Robert Askin, the Premier of New South Wales. Within months, Wal Fife, Assistant Minister for Education and soon-to-be Minister of Mines, selected Bill as his private secretary. In 1970, Bill commenced practice at the private bar in Chalfont Chambers, which Jack Mannix had once occupied. Mr Mannix had loaned Bill his wig and gown to wear when he was called to the Bar in 1968, and gave them to him when he joined Chalfont Chambers. In 1973, he became a public defender and in 1980 he was appointed Queen's Counsel and Deputy Senior Public Defender. As a leading QC appearing in a large number of notable trials, and as a District Court judge from 1987 to 2000, Bill has garnered some fascinating stories which bring to life the drama of the courtroom and lively exchanges of the participants. In 2014 Bill was appointed as a reserve judge of the County Court of Victoria, continuing his love of the law and justice. John Suter Linton has worked extensively in radio, television and print media, and as a writer, journalist, researcher and producer. He wrote for the TV shows 'Sons and Daughters' and 'Neighbours' and developed the pilot for 'Australia's Most Wanted'. John has also written five true-crime books, including MURDER AT ANNA BAY, AN ALMOST PERFECT MURDER and BLOOD TIES. John's interest in crime came from his father, a printer on the Sydney Morning Herald in the sixties and seventies, who would recount details of gruesome crimes of the times to friends not knowing his young son was listening.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Public defenders are briefed in the most serious criminal cases, particularly when clients can no longer afford to retain the Bar’s elite. My clientele was wide and varied. The notorious, the oppressed, the young and the old. The wise and the foolish. My clients included solicitors, police, schoolteachers, doctors and nurses, underworld heavies and prostitutes.

These memoirs recall some of the many notable cases in which I appeared as a barrister. They provide a rare insight into the emotion and complexity of a defence barrister’s role. I have appeared in cases at all levels, the Local Court, District Court, Supreme Court, Court of Criminal Appeal, and six times before the High Court of Australia as leading counsel—only once successfully—and once for the Crown as junior counsel to the Solicitor-General, Harold Snelling QC. These are narratives of my clients’ misfortunes.

It is rare and more interesting to read a barrister’s frank admission of his own mistakes and errors of judgement, rather than accounts only of courtroom triumphs. There are both in this book. The emphasis is categorically, and unsubtly, from the defence viewpoint. Human frailty and its dark side underline the criminal trial process.

These are not impartial narratives, but my memoirs. There are none drawn from my years as a judge. Enough has been written about that period by the Court of Appeal and the Court of Criminal Appeal.

Justice is an elusive end, and not always achieved. Hence the title Justice Denied.

* * *

Whenever I drive past a gaol I feel a sense of sadness and fear. Going inside the forbidding walls and hearing the inevitable clanging of gates is worse. The Victorian-era East Maitland Gaol, Parramatta Gaol, Goulburn Gaol and the sprawling Long Bay complex are the worst. Thankfully, the first two are now closed.

Imagine entering the prison, handcuffed, from the back of a stuffy, windowless prison van. Being stripped naked, washing in the communal shower, and then being handed the drab prison green garb. Each stage of the ‘welcoming’ is designed to destroy your self-respect. This is the start of days, months and years of personal danger and torment.

This is the fate of some of the worst villains who falsely claim membership of the human race. As this book tells, it is also, sadly, the fate of too many innocent people.

How many is too many? One is too many.

From time to time, innocent people are convicted. That is the flaw in our system of justice. There can be no greater injustice than a person being convicted of a crime they did not commit. Justice is not infallible and sometimes it is denied. When it is denied, we are all somehow diminished. Traditionally, the mythical goddess Justice is depicted blindfolded, which is said to portray even-handedness and impartiality. The great English advocate Sir Edward Marshall Hall KC told juries the blindfold was to shield her look of infinite pity from public gaze. When an innocent person is sent to gaol, justice truly is denied, and there have been far too many instances of that in Australia.

On 29 October 1982, a pregnant Mrs Alice Lynne Chamberlain received the mandatory life sentence for the murder of her baby, Azaria, and was sent to gaol. Her appeal to the Federal Court of Australia was dismissed. By majority, her appeal to the High Court of Australia was also dismissed. Years later, she was exonerated by a royal commission and paid some money and released. Scientific evidence had proved she was innocent. No crime had been committed by anyone.

The system had well and truly failed her. Mrs Chamberlain is not a lone figure. On 27 May 2008, in an Australian first, the Victorian government pardoned Mr Colin Campbell Ross. Scientific evidence proved he also was innocent of murder. It was too late to pay any money to Mr Ross. In a brief but solemn ceremony, he had been hanged by the neck until dead at Melbourne Gaol in 1922. He was thirty years of age when his life was ended. The system had well and truly failed him.

For a murder committed in 1936, in central western New South Wales, a trial was held at Bathurst eleven years later. The death sentence was passed upon Mr Frederick Lincoln McDermott. The Court of Criminal Appeal dismissed his appeal and so did the High Court of Australia. Fortunately, the death sentence was not carried out. In 1952, after a royal commission, Mr McDermott was cleared. He was given the princely sum, in today’s money, of $1000 as compensation after serving more than five years in prison. He died a broken man in 1977.

In 2013, DNA evidence confirmed Mr McDermott’s innocence. The Court of Criminal Appeal not only quashed the murder conviction but, even though McDermott was dead, found him not guilty. This is the only time in Australian history this has ever happened. Sadly, in Mr McDermott’s lifetime, the system had failed him.

All three of these trials took place in the twentieth century. Two resulted in the death sentence. In all three cases, the jury verdicts were later proved to be wrong. The appellate courts, all the way up to and including the High Court, also got it wrong. In each case, years later, the government sought, in vain, to make amends with a pittance.

Two other monumental jury miscarriages of justice involved Alexander McLeod-Lindsay in 1964 and Ziggy Pohl in 1973. Mr McLeod-Lindsay was convicted for the attempted murder of his wife, even though she tried to exculpate him at his trial. Likewise, Mr Pohl, a humble and gentle migrant, had been the victim of circumstantial evidence, and convicted of the murder of his wife. He too had served more than a decade in gaol.

Unscientific scientific evidence was the forensic rock on which Mr Alexander McLeod-Lindsay perished. That happened at his trial, on appeal, and at a specially set up judicial inquiry in 1969. It was the so-called expert, but wrong, explanation of his wife’s bloodstains on his clothes that convicted him. The police, court and jury all disbelieved his wife when she claimed it wasn’t her husband who had bashed her and their four-year-old son. Mr McLeod-Lindsay was cleared, but not before he had served his entire long sentence. He never gave up. It took a second judicial inquiry in 1991 to eventually clear him. But it was not until 26 July 1994 that the Court of Criminal Appeal finally quashed the conviction. Mr McLeod-Lindsay passed away in 2009.

The denial of justice to Mr Pohl, which was not finally recognised by the Court of Criminal Appeal until 17 December 1993, was almost as complete as Mr Ross’s tragic and wrongful death by hanging. At all times Mr Pohl had protested his innocence, but in vain. He received a life sentence. His case was simply closed until, years later, the actual killer came forward, confessed and was sentenced. Otherwise, the injustice would have remained unrecognised to this day.

* * *

Miscarriages of justice do not recognise national or state boundaries.

On 22 August 2014, a full bench of the Australian Capital Territory Supreme Court quashed the murder conviction and life sentence of David Eastman. At that stage, Mr Eastman had served nineteen long years of his life sentence. The decision followed a top-level judicial inquiry, which found there had not been a fair trial and the conviction was a miscarriage of justice. It must be said, any blemish in the Eastman trial was not through any shortage of talent at the bar table. For the Crown was Michael Adams QC, soon after to be a Justice, and for Mr Eastman, the future leader of the New South Wales criminal bar, Winston ‘The Hat’ Terracini SC.

The Crown did not hoist the white flag of surrender. Instead, it exercised its right to require Mr Eastman, after all those years, to stand trial again. Not surprisingly, Mr Eastman and a procession of lawyers provided for him by legal aid resisted this decision. A distinguished and experienced trial judge from New South Wales was objected to and eventually stood aside. Senior counsel for Mr Eastman were dismissed. One silk became seriously ill. At the time of writing this book, the prolonged, unresolved, unhappy Eastman saga continues to occupy the Supreme Court of the nation’s capital. Justice again denied and heavily delayed.

Mr Eastman was not a once-in-a-generation aberration. On 22 December 2014, the South Australian Court of Criminal Appeal quashed the murder conviction and life sentence of Henry Keogh, who had served, like Mr Eastman, a shade less than twenty years in gaol. The Crown elected to put Mr Keogh on trial for a third time. Bravely, Mr Keogh elected to set aside a jury trial and be tried by a judge. The Crown rejected this challenge and discontinued the prosecution in November 2015. Keogh’s defence was an unusual but not an unprecedented one. He argued there had never even been a murder, as the deceased had died of natural causes.

Roseanne Beckett, formerly Catt, was convicted by a jury in the Supreme Court in 1991 for attempting to kill her husband. She was sentenced to twelve years gaol with a non-parole period of ten years and three months. Her appeal was dismissed. Ten years after going to gaol, she was released on bail when evidence came to light that she had been framed. It was a hollow victory. Her non-parole period was weeks away from expiry and, thus, she was due for release anyway. A new trial was ordered, but this time the DPP hoisted the white flag.

Roseanne Beckett sued the government for malicious prosecution. She won. In 2015, the Supreme Court awarded her $2.3 million plus costs, which will exceed $1 million. Over $3 million for all those wrongful years in gaol. Adequate compensation? No. Ten times that amount and more would not be enough for what she suffered.

As Justice Harrison so succinctly and eloquently put it, there is no way of knowing what Ms Beckett’s life would have been had she not been charged. That applies to all those unfortunates to whom justice has been denied, with Colin Campbell Ross the ultimate, tragic victim.

It was the famous jurist Sir William Blackstone who wrote in the eighteenth century: ‘It is better that ten guilty escape than one innocent suffer.’ It must be remembered that this presumption in favour of the innocent is never absolute.

CHAPTER

1

Jimmy Driscoll—The Death of the Police Verbal

In the early 1970s a gang known as the Toecutters became active in the Sydney underworld, torturing fellow criminals for information as to the whereabouts of stolen loot. The method was simple and effective: amputate fingers and then toes to force disclosure of the treasure’s hiding place; when the information is revealed, stop amputating. The loss of blood usually resulted in death. The bodies, it is believed, were then weighted and taken out past Sydney Heads and fed to the sharks, never to be seen again. A few, however, did wash up along Sydney’s shoreline and panic set in. A lot of gangsters on both sides decided it was better to hide than risk becoming a victim.

One alleged member of the Toecutters was John Patrick ‘Jake’ Maloney. He was forty-four years old, and was holed up in a safe house in Revesby, a southwestern suburb of Sydney on 24 November 1972. Shortly before midnight, Jake Maloney was alone in the house, his lover having just left. While the house was securely locked, a window was partially open. He went to the bathroom before going to bed and was shot dead. Death was instantaneous from two bullet wounds to the back of his head. The murder weapon was a .22 machine gun pistol. There was no sign of a struggle and the murder had all the hallmarks of the work of a professional hitman.

Two of New South Wales’ top detectives, Detective Sergeant Noel Charles Morey and Detective Roger Caleb Rogerson, were assigned to investigate the Jake Maloney murder and related crimes. The Morey–Rogerson pairing was not by chance. They had worked together for over six years. In the seventies, that duo bestrode the Sydney law enforcement world like a colossus. Modesty and diffidence were not hallmarks of their style, but efficiency and success were.

Roger Rogerson had not yet reached forty, but he was so admired there was talk of him as a possible future commissioner of police. In his heyday, Rogerson was the perfect, unshakeable witness. The judges liked him and his style and it showed. His image was that of a dependable pillar of truth, duty and authority. Accordingly, he was able to stretch the rules to the limit. Not yet fifty, Morey was destined to rise to the very top as chief superintendent in charge of the CIB.

Initially, suspicion for Maloney’s death fell on two men: Linus Patrick Driscoll, known as Jimmy the Pom, or just Jimmy to his friends, and Richard Kaczmarek. There was no suggestion the two men were acting together. In fact, they were enemies. But both, police believed, had their reasons to want to see Jake Maloney dead.

On the morning of 19 October 1972, Jimmy Driscoll had found a bomb made with ten sticks of gelignite fitted with a remote-controlled detonator hidden under the back seat of his car at his Oatley residence in the southwest of Sydney, just over ten kilometres from Revesby as the crow flies. Driscoll immediately called the police, and Sergeant Ross Nixon from the New South Wales Police ballistic unit and an army disposal expert, Major Morrison, attended the scene. Detective Sergeant Brazel and Detective Senior Constable McMillan from the consorting squad also responded. Brazel and McMillan alleged Driscoll told them, ‘I’ll handle it in my own way,’ and made mention of the Maloney brothers, Jake and Billy. He had a motive to kill them, no doubt.

A month earlier Richard Kaczmarek’s Paddington residence, in Sydney’s east, had been peppered with a fusillade of shotgun blasts, blowing out windows. Again, police believed Kaczmarek blamed Maloney for the attempt on his and his family’s lives.

After Maloney’s murder, Morey and Rogerson pulled Kaczmarek and his brother Kazimierz—‘Kaz’—in for questioning. After some initial unwillingness, they sided with police and claimed that about a week before Maloney’s death, Driscoll had said he intended to shoot Maloney.

He may have been a polite and well-mannered expat Englishman, but Driscoll had a scary side. And there was more, albeit circumstantial, evidence against him. Driscoll owned two machine pistols that fired bursts of .22 bullets and he had a reputation for brandishing the modified pistols at people he didn’t like. He called his little pistol machine guns the Silent Ones because each was fitted with a silencer and could send out a lethal spray of bullets without making much noise. His associates later claimed they had seen Driscoll test fire the Silent Ones in the backyard; while neighbours hosed their gardens, ‘Jimmy hosed his plants with lead’. No need for weed killer.

Less than a month after the murder, by sheer chance, an abalone diver found the murder weapon and the silencer. The machine pistol was wedged in a rock crevice under the sea off Sydney’s iconic Bondi Beach. Bondi, it just happened, was where Driscoll had been working as an assistant manager at the Astra Hotel around the time of Maloney’s murder.

If Driscoll did kill Maloney, the only question was why? Driscoll and Maloney were friends. What would have caused them to fall out and for Driscoll to believe Maloney had planted a bomb in his car? And then execute Maloney a month later? Friendships in the underworld are tenuous at the best of times and can change in a minute over the slightest disagreement. Police learned Driscoll’s soon-to-be sister-in-law, Gaye Dauroff, was having an affair with Maloney. Other than the killer(s), Gaye was the last person to see Maloney alive. Had the affair been known to Driscoll, police ascertained, it would not have endeared Maloney to him and, therefore, given Driscoll yet another motive.

In reality, Driscoll couldn’t have cared less about the affair.

After Maloney’s death, Driscoll immediately went into hiding. This, Morey and Rogerson believed, was an admission of guilt. To them, innocent men don’t hide from the police.

The police certainly didn’t entertain the idea Driscoll may have fled out of fear. The bombing attempt on his car had proved not only he but also his family were in danger. And if he hadn’t killed his friend, was Driscoll fearing he’d be next, or that an attempt would be made to frame him for the murder? Another reason to run. Against that, if Maloney’s death was Driscoll’s version of vengeance upon the would-be bomber, then the source of danger had been extinguished by Maloney’s death, and there would not have been any need for him to run away.

The Maloney murder was a murky underworld case with more than one suspect but the police seemed determined to get Jimmy Driscoll. Morey and Rogerson had no witnesses and the case was built around one criminal’s word against another, a possible motive or two, and a bit of suspicion, but no proof. None at all.

But Morey and Rogerson were patient men; they knew their day would come and it did.

Using an alias, Jimmy Driscoll lived in Melbourne for a little over eighteen months until an informer alerted police. At 6.45 pm on 5 July 1974, a cold, wintery Friday night, Driscoll was arrested by Victorian police without incident in the heart of the Melbourne CBD. The police then notified Sydney.

A search was conducted of Driscoll’s residence and certain property seized, including one .22 machine pistol. As it was bagged, Driscoll pleaded with the Victorian police officer, Detective Senior Sergeant Lalor, to take particular care and note of the gun, and Lalor did. Driscoll didn’t trust NSW Police not to interfere with it and try to link it to Maloney’s murder. At this time, perhaps, Driscoll was unaware of the discovery of a .22 machine pistol at Bondi, which police had established was the murder weapon.

Driscoll was taken to the Russell Street police headquarters.

When notified of Driscoll’s arrest, Detective Sergeant Morey dropped everything and prepared to fly to Melbourne. He had been waiting a long time to interview Driscoll and, presumably, held a faint hope he would make some admissions and they could extradite him to New South Wales.

On that same night, solicitor Colin Heazlewood was halfway through dinner when he received an urgent phone call. It was from his senior partner, David Baker, with the news that Jimmy Driscoll had been arrested and telling him to ‘get to the airport and get to Melbourne fast’.

The firm Baker and Heazlewood was a two-man practice operating from a shopfront in Liverpool Street opposite Central Court. Baker, when he rang Heazlewood, was too far away at his Kurrajong property at the foot of the Blue Mountains. David Baker was a rotund character. His love of prime beef steaks and vintage red wine, not necessarily in that order, was legendary. His burliness masked a shrewd criminal law brain and a fierce dedication to his clients’ interests. Money was never Baker’s motivation—he was an idealist. Justice for Jim Driscoll remained his crusade long after the money ran out.

Heazlewood was the opposite of Baker in personality. He was an urbane, rugby-playing young man who was a foil to the ebullient Baker. He was later called to the Bar and built a highly successful common law practice.

On arrival at the Ansett Airlines domestic terminal, Heazlewood recognised the famous Detective Sergeant Morey immediately. The reverse was almost certainly not the case. With the ink barely dry on his practising certificate, Heazlewood solved that problem by plucking up the courage to introduce himself. Morey was with Detective John O’Hagan. Detective Roger Rogerson had not been able to make it. Had he been there, Rogerson, a renowned tactician, may have counselled caution to his boss. As it was, Morey’s vanity probably prevented him from acknowledging Heazlewood’s unwelcome arrival on the scene as important.

‘I suppose you are going to Melbourne to speak to Driscoll?’ Heazlewood nervously asked.

Morey replied, ‘I am going to Melbourne to make inquiries about him.’

‘He was arrested today.’

Sergeant Morey acted surprised. ‘Was he? I didn’t know that.’

That was untrue. Morey did know. Sergeant Morey’s professed ignorance of Driscoll’s arrest was a downright lie designed to mislead Heazlewood.

Colin Heazlewood was very much the new kid on the block. His experience, if any, of this tense sort of situation would have been a tiny fraction of Mr Morey’s, who obviously underestimated Heazlewood’s resolve. Detective Sergeant Morey was a strong character, the embodiment of power and authority. No one in his presence dared doubt it. He was not one to be trifled with. Heazlewood, however, was obliged to put duty before self-interest and summoned the courage not to confront Mr Morey but to challenge him.

‘If he is to be interviewed I would like to be present.’

‘No way,’ Sergeant Morey quickly responded.

Heazlewood refused to back down. ‘I am asking you formally if I can be present when he is interviewed?’

‘No.’ Morey was adamant.

‘I suppose I will see you at Russell Street, but hopefully not tonight … in the morning?’

‘No, not tonight,’ Morey agreed. There was no ambiguity in that reply.

Anyone would have accepted Morey meant he would hold off conducting any interview until a reasonable time the next day and, if Driscoll so wanted, Heazlewood would be invited to sit in. It is the client’s right, not the solicitor’s, to request legal representation at a police interview.

Before boarding the plane, Morey decided to dictate his version of the brief exchange with Heazlewood for O’Hagan to record in his notebook. At the time, the police notebook was considered sacrosanct in giving accurate accounts of events. Police were taught to write down all conversations with the date and time and, if possible, to have all parties sign the book before ruling it off. The credibility of the information in the notebook comes from the recording of events prior and after, showing them in true chronological order. Recording a conversation at the time it is happening, or very soon after, gives credibility to the accuracy of that recording. If the account is false then the credibility is obtained by deception.

Perhaps the usually astute Morey had realised the importance of that meeting at the time. Heazlewood’s swift arrival at the airport had seriously compromised Morey’s plans and was a major setback to the police cause. A year’s work was in jeopardy. Morey knew permitting Heazlewood to be present at any interview would allow Driscoll to be reminded of his right to remain silent, not that Driscoll wouldn’t have known it for himself. Time was the enemy and that was what forced Morey’s hand. Morey did, at least, keep his word he wouldn’t interview Driscoll ‘tonight’—Friday, 5 July.

* * *

The new day, 6 July 1974, was all of ten minutes old when Morey and O’Hagan began their typed record of interview with Driscoll. The next few hours would prove decisive. Morey had consciously excluded Heazlewood from the process and concealed the solicitor’s presence and availability in Melbourne from Driscoll. Denying the young solicitor any access to his client was a grave step. Not only was it an unfair one, it was also against the law.

The five-page script would take about two hours to produce. According to Driscoll, who was in the room, Morey dictated it to O’Hagan from start to finish, Morey composing both the questions and the answers, which were attributed to Driscoll. The end result was a quite tentative narrative without a direct admission of guilt. What Morey had created was like an amateur stage play with Detective Sergeant Morey as the protagonist and Driscoll a reluctant costar.

It starts with Driscoll refusing any legal representation and, instead, putting his trust in Morey. It ends with Driscoll thanking Morey for his fairness. A neutral onlooker would have given longer odds of Driscoll putting his life in the hands of Morey over his solicitor than of the Yarra River freezing over, even though it was winter.

The claim that police will be untruthful and break the law to secure the conviction of guilty criminals is

Reviews for Justice Denied

[austcrimefiction · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Bill Hosking is well known in legal circles, probably less outside of them, but his many years of experience, and sheer number of cases that he appeared in - mostly as defence counsel, is a telling testimony about this man's standing, and understanding, of the law.JUSTICE DENIED is a look back through Hosking's career as a criminal barrister - defending rogues and crooks through to the seemingly indefensible. Using a very low-key, formal style of story-telling, he outlines many of the tools of the trade of a criminal barrister, and the efforts undertaken to ensure that everyone - even the worst of the worst, get a fair trial. It seems too easy for many to forget that fair trial, competent defence and the right for anybody to be considered innocent until proven guilty might be an uncomfortable reality, but it's a necessary fundamental of law-abiding society. The cases he's describing range between those that demonstrate points of law, those that talk to court-craft and the nature of barrister appearance. There's also some lighter-hearted moments, including the story of the blind bank-robber referred to in the blurb. On the other hand, Hosking appeared as defence counsel for one of the (now proven) Anita Cobby killers. As he puts it 'Everyone in the car that dreadful night had a passport to doom'. He doesn't at any stage shy away from the circumstances of Ms Cobby's death, but is careful to be reserved about the details. He's also very carefully explaining the principles of justice and has some extremely valid points to make. The only time that he does veer slightly from the reasoned and careful approach taken throughout the book is in one statement made in reference to the "Never to be released" sentencing of the Cobby killers (I quote as much as feasible to hopefully provide sufficient context):

"No one had expected this bombshell. Not even the hardline Crown Prosecutor had asked for it. The judge then added more gratuitous, emotive remarks designed to influence authorities long into the future. As the law then stood, it was wrong for the judge to do so. It would be misleading to suggest this directive by the respected judge was greeted with anything other than overwhelming community approval. But that is not the test. Calm judgement is.Then came a sombre The Sun newspaper front-page headline, JAILED FOREVER. The article quoted the vastly experienced Justice Maxwell's statement that this crime ranked with the worst he had encountered in his forty years with the law. Sadly, this was undoubtedly true. On reflection, there is perhaps little value in seeking to classify murders. Each has one awful feature in common: a valuable, innocent life has been needlessly and irrevocably taken. Except in cases of domestic violence, there are seldom any mitigating factors."Needless to say that last sentence rocked much of my perception about how this book had proceeded until that point. JUSTICE DENIED had been so measured, so careful and so considerate of all involved in all cases and was careful to place credit where credit was due towards other members of the legal profession. Yet, in one sentence there appears the suggestion that there could be mitigating factors in domestic violence - over and above those in any other "class" of murder. Try as this reader might to analyse that in the light of the "calm judgement" that Hosking insists is required under the law, it doesn't jell. Why the insistence that domestic violence is somehow different from any other form of violence? Perhaps that statement provides a crystal-clear glimpse into the thinking that has contributed to huge failings in our country's response to domestic violence.Whilst this reader won't pretend that the passage referred to above didn't detract considerably from what, up until then, had been a most interesting book to read, JUSTICE DENIED does have it's upsides in the explanation of the role of criminal defence, the way that the court system works, and the nature of trial by judge and/or jury as a cornerstone of our justice system.