Cahill investigation gets serious

I think the side issue is the supression order and the real issue is: Is it OK for a magistrate (or any other court officer) to provide a brief of information to a visiting magistrate on an upcoming case? Is this standard operating procedure when magistrates are called in to our courts? Do our magistrates just turn up each day and get presented in court details etc of each case as it appears?

If it isn’t standard then a reasonable person might believe that some form of influence was being exerted by Mr Cahill. This would of course depend on the contents of the brief provided.

Time will (might) tell….

If Mr Cahill wants to take them on, doing so as a private citizen would have some advantages.

Article is here:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/11/17/2744775.htm

Looks like a deal has been done, so we might never know the truth of the matter.

The smug coterie are starting to drop like flies.

he resigned this morning citing long running medical problems.

Tattler40. My bet is that Cahill will be found to have done nothing out of the ordinary in this case. I post here regularly and will have to wear it if I’m wrong on this.

If his behavior was appropriate, (and I am absolutely convinced it was), then the only issue left is the appropriateness of the A.G’s actions. And pigs will fly before they ever see a judicial inquiry. If you have better information, why not put it out there with your name on it rather than throw accusations of paranoia from behind a newbie’s moniker?

This whole business has the unmistakeable stench of Stanhope’s pathetic, vindictive malice all over it.

I thought Jack Waterford’s article was a bit smug and ‘I know something you don’t know’.

But then I haven’t got a clue what this is all about.

“The man is still restrained from public speech by his holding office. I’m damn sure it wasn’t him who tipped off the media that his office was to be ‘raided’.”

Sorry, but I am struggling to understand how Mr Cahill’s statements to the Canberra Times and his lengthy interview with Ross Solly on ABC radio immediately after the Police executed a search warrant on the Magistrates’ Court demonstrate how his office prevents him from speaking publicly on the issue.

Where and when has it ever been stated that the media were tipped off about the so-called police ‘raid’ on his office?

This type of conspiracy theory nonsense says much about the paranoia of the writer and contributes nothing to the overall debate regarding the appropriateness of a senior judicial officer’s behaviour – which is the real issue.

I disagree abc. I think the sideline is the suppressed case. (Which if done to protect a vulnerable victim I heartily endorse). The real issue is whether a soon-to-retire judicial officer was planning to dump a bucket on the Governments handling of justice in the territory. Is this a trumped-up pre-emptive strike on the man’s character? The man is still restrained from public speech by his holding office. I’m damn sure it wasn’t him who tipped off the media that his office was to be ‘raided’. Regardless of the findings of the Judicial inquiry, and any post retirement observations made by Ron Cahill will be countered by the government as the sour-grapes ranting of a bloke who ended his career under ‘some sort of a cloud’. (Supported by the general public’s poor memory and dislike for detail)
The fix is well and truly in on this one.

Footloose said :

Does any of this have anything to do with the following whole bunch of crazy? >
the-riotact.com/?p=6853

No it doesn’t… maybe in the long battle between Corbell and the judiciary as a sideline… but directly …… no.. post number 9 above details the matter very well… just minus the name.

There’s only one degree of separation in Canberra – don’t they know this by now? I’ve heard about this from a friend of a friend as I am sure loads of people have.

Seems this is rather bordering on the ridiculous that is has come so far.

Does any of this have anything to do with the following whole bunch of crazy? >
the-riotact.com/?p=6853

Don’t worry your pretty little heads. The little people don’t need to know why the chief magistrate is under investigation. Nor do they need to know who the identity of the “prominent Canberran” who is now a defendant.

Hmmm, what to believe – the editorial independence of the CT or a ruling-class coverup?

Suppression orders seem to be increasingly anachronstic things in the digital age. For example, you had the Victorian suppression orders that stopped the first series of Underbelly being broadcast there because one of the minor players in the Gangland Wars was being tried at that time. Fat lot of good that suppression order did in keeping the accused person’s identity secret, because Victorians happily BitTorrented the TV show anyway. More recently, there was the Trafigura incident in the UK, where Twitter and the Internet unravelled a “super” suppression order that tried to stop The Guardian reporting particular parliamentary questions. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, this surprisingly informative column from The Punch is a good starting point).

Anyway – on the topic in hand – in September this year journalist Noel Towell, on behalf of the Canberra Times, applied for the narrowing of a suppression order (made previously by Chief Magistrate Cahill) in a case involving an alleged physical assault against a teenage girl by her adoptive father. The decision on the Times’s application is on the public record, here.

The teenage girl is described by the presiding magistrate as “emotionally vulnerable and somewhat fragile”. The evidence described in the magistrate’s decision is, I think, compelling about that. The Canberra Times wanted to be able to identify “the fact that the father had been charged and consider the effect this has had upon the organisation where he works”. The magistrate refused to amend the suppression order because he was gravely concerned about the girl’s welfare should her father’s identity and in turn her own be publicly revealed.

Now, Canberra may be a big enough small town to have several separate court cases on the simmer concerning the Chief Magistrate, a so-called prominent public figure and a vulnerable child. But, the involvement of The Canberra Times seems a rather close coincidence to me – what with recent police inquiries at the newspaper’s offices.

I have not read Jack Waterford’s column. But how do his facts compare?

In another coincidence, the magistrate who made the decision on The Canberra Times’s application seems to be one of the complainants against what Chief Magistrate Cahill emailed to the visiting Victorian magistrate.

It’s all BS

I suspect JB that you also know less than half the full story.

Very rare that I would agree with Waterford but on this occasion he has written a very balanced piece presenting the facts that can be reported in a very reasonable way. Suppression Orders are relatively infrequently issued and always after careful consideration of all the relevant issues by the judicial officer making the order. Just because the media and the gossips amongst us want someone named does not mean they should be.

Well if the judicial commission doesn’t publish all the relevant names and details then it will be an establishment white wash.

Having met Mr Cahill and finding him to be an excellent bloke, the secrecy surrounding this frustrates me to no end.

NickD, you don’t know the half of it. And I’m sorry I can’t tell you it. But that’s not my call.

Waterford’s column did a great job of explaining what was going on and why the suppression orders are in place – in short, it’s because the trial in question concerns the abuse of a young person who’s considered to be at serious risk of self-harm, and there’s a high likelihood that if any details were reported the child could easily be identified and he/she would harm themselves. I was concerned about the level of suppression before I read the article and fully supported it by the time I finished it.

The number of suppression orders issued by courts is really out of control. You can bet everyone at the Canberra Times and half of Canberra’s legal community knows what’s going on but they can’t actually publish it.

Waterford’s ‘Addendum’ column in todays CT is probably as close as the public will get to being told the story.

Apparently less to do with the ‘well known person’ as the fact a ‘young person’ is involved as well.

But apparently a very well and widely known person. Still dificult to see what form of ‘suspect action’ could be displayed by Cahill’s correspondence.