28 November 2006

Not guilty of being deliberately misleading, it's just an episode of lazy reporting [In Boomacat's incompetent opinion]

| boomacat
Join the conversation
26

If you’d read a recent post of Johnboy’s from a few days ago [ED – Not only am I such a nice guy that I’m letting Boomacat’s grossly unfair attack on me run, I’m also fixing he/she/its incompetent hyperlinking], you could be forgiven for thinking that our criminal justice system was riding the fast train to hell in a handbasket.

For those of you who didn’t catch the story, here’s a quick synopsis Johnboy’s version of events: Peter John Gibson, who admitted to assaulting a couple of women, a police officer and even a dog, received a “not guilty” verdict from Justice Connolly of the Supreme Court of the ACT and effectively got off scott free because he was in the grips of a psychotic episode at the time the acts took place.

Outrage cried the masses! According to my fellow RiotACTers, this proved once and for all that “in the ACT, if you suffer a mental illness, you can get away with anything”, that our Judges were too soft and out of touch with the community and also that in Canberra pleading mental illness was equivalent to a “get out of gaol free card”.

It’s a shame that my RiotACT friends (who are ostensibly internet savvy) didn’t bother to conduct a bit of rudimentary online research before accepting this version of events as gospel and riding off into the sunset to lynch the culprit like a bunch of vigilante thugs. If they had, they’d might have visited the court’s judgement themselves, and they could have discovered that the way in which Johnboy presented the story is unfortunately inaccurate.

Peter John Gibson did NOT receive a regular verdict of “not guilty”. Quite the contrary. He received a ”special” verdict of “not guilty by reason of mental impairment”. This is the modern version of the old common law defence of “insanity” and in no way results in the perpetrator getting off scott free. Justice Connolly explains the distinct nature of this special verdict in his judgement, which can be found on the Supreme Court website.

Paragraph 61 of the judgement explains that under the old common law rules the consequence of such a verdict “was indefinite detention at the Governor’s pleasure”. Under the current law, “the default position is that…the accused should be detained…until the Mental Health Tribunal has had the opportunity to review the matter and determine otherwise. [T]his might be a matter of months or years, if they are a continuing threat to themselves or the community”. Hardly a get out of gaol free card.

As Justice Connolly further explains, there is provision for the Supreme Court to avoid detention and allow the person to be supervised by the Tribunal in the community. His Honour, who acknowledged the disturbing nature of Mr Gibson’s “frankly violent” behaviour, concluded that such an arrangement was the most appropriate option for him. Factors affecting His Honour’s decision included the fact that the defendant’s actions were an aberration unlikely to reoccur and also that “the Mental Health Tribunal did make an order for involuntary detention immediately after these offences, but it lifted this order after one week” (see paragraph 69 of the judgement).

Rather than being the work of an activist, bleeding heart, out of touch judiciary, His Honour’s verdict was actually supported by the Prosecution. See paragraph 55 of the judgement for confirmation of this fact.

The truth about this unfortunate matter is this: Justice Connolly genuinely understood these disturbing events and sentenced the perpetrator, who will now benefit from the careful supervision of the Mental Health Tribunal, accordingly. The judgement is not a transient and ill-conceived outrage; it is actually the well reasoned product of a few hundred years of English law.

I guess the big picture for me is that a great deal of reporting about the law is utter crap, especially when it comes to criminal justice issues, which is unfortunate because it unnecessarily undermines the public’s confidence in the justice system. The reporting of Mr Gibson’s situation is a prime example of this. Don’t allow yourselves to be manipulated, check the facts yourselves and do some independent thinking about the situation next time you stumble across one of these stories.

OK there’s my rant for the week thanks for indulging me.

[ED – At the time of writing the judgment was not available and my “lazy reporting” involved linking (not hashing up a link like Boomacat) to the ABC’s reporting, which Bommacat was unable to find fault with at the time, enjoy]

Join the conversation

26
All Comments
  • All Comments
  • Website Comments
LatestOldest

If Connelly was the Master for some time, where’s Dr Who?

Kudos to you Johnboy for publishing the post, especially given my terrible hyperlinking abilities.

I’ll leave it at that cos I reckon I’ve probably already had more than my fair say in connection with this post.

Here, here, Boomacat.

The neither the Criminal Justice System nor the Mental Health System are perfect (and are probably both at their worst when they intersect), people don’t get slotted when they should and vice versa, however the decision in R v Gibson was sound.

Although His Honour Justice Connelly is relatively new to the criminal law (having been the Master for some time) he is not currently presenting as a soft touch, it should be remembered that he sentenced Sean Michael Burke to 37 years last month (and interestingly in his judgment he noted that sentences should not be “crushing” implying that 37 years wasn’t crushing, although I think he was really just trying to appeal proof his decision).

The judgement (R v Gibson) was up on the SC website by the middle of the afternoon of the 24th, I happened to read it prior to either the ABC or RA being pieces being published (Where do you think ABC got the story it’s not like they had staff at court, and I very much doubt His Honour read out anything more than the Orders in court anyway).

Cheers for that heavs, slightly better understanding after reading through comments. And Seepi, seems like a good idea to have a mental health facility in the new prison.

While I do agree somewhat that mental illness should be taken into consideration when passing down a verdict. It makes me worry just how many people are ‘mentally ill’.

Perhaps it shouldn’t be the Mental Health Tribunal that should be liable should someone reoffend, but rather the treating doctor. For it is the doctor who provides the reports that the Mental Health Tribunal base their decisions on.

He was temporarily unable to comprehend rules of society due to a mental illness. According to registered professionals, he’s capable of comprehending them now, and his behaviour will not recur.

Now, unless you believe you have a greater level of knowledge about mental health issues than the mental health tribunal, how can you claim with confidence that this is going to recur?

Having said that, I’m also in favour of the Mental Health tribunal being completely legally liable for malpractice should he reoffend…

it’s just having had enough, has boomacat directed he/she/its complaint to the ABC which was the acknowledged source of the item?

Make any effort to engage us in discussion rather than abuse?

What concerns me is that under the current system people who are demonstrably unable to even comprehend the basic rules of society (the ones that stop us all killing each other) are left wandering the streets.

No, it doesn’t make me feel safe.

Woody Mann-Caruso3:11 pm 28 Nov 06

I’m also fixing he/she/it’s incompetent hyperlinking

Is that anything like incompetent use of an apostrophe?

So where will this clown be in two years time? No doubt wandering the streets with the odd violent outburst (sorry, mental ‘episode’). The the left wingers will then be complaining about how society has let him down.

If I was running the show there’d be none of this horse shit going on. He and the rest of his ilk would be spending time in the big house for a very long time.

Whoops, there was meant to be a direct quote before that one as follows

Loadedog again rides forth to contend that all who disagree with his ancient and discredited leftism are evil.

Because of course, locking them all up and throwing away the key is neither ancient nor discredited?

Can we assume that mental health professionals actually do know what they’re talking about for a second? Or is that too radical a concept for you?

You’re dead right Seepi. A secure facility would be great. Both the Judiciary and Magistracy have been screaming for gummint to build one for years. Nothing has happened. Shock me.

He isn’t in custody:
As Justice Connolly further explains, there is provision for the Supreme Court to avoid detention and allow the person to be supervised by the Tribunal in the community. His Honour, who acknowledged the disturbing nature of Mr Gibson’s “frankly violent” behaviour, concluded that such an arrangement was the most appropriate option for him.

I would prefer him to be in a locked mental health facility, and I think they should put one in the new jail.

Well you know, the Mental Health Tribunal is hardly likely to supervise him at all…meaning that he’s still out there posing a risk to you and I. The Mental Health Tribunal is nothing more than a bunch of old fogeys wanking around in a meaningless meeting, reading crap-arsed court-ordered neuropsych reports that usually bear little resemblance to the person they’re reporting on – to those who know the person.

I’ve supported people who’ve appeared before the MH Tribunal, using their mental health issues to effectively ‘get off’ charges such as armed robbery. After the 5th or 6th armed robbery, you can’t tell me it’s an aberration or MH problem only. I’ve also been the victim of someone having a purportedly psychotic episode – he intended to kill me, and it was sheer good luck that he didn’t (at least, I think so!). But as it all panned out, he was found ‘not fit to plead’ by the MH Tribunal. That same person is still out there, threatening and intimidating others, and is currently the subject of two Personal Protection Orders (AVO’s) and a Workplace Protection Order. He regularly threatens to kill and/or rape various people and stalks them. His best mate is on bail for an attempted murder charge. Tell me he shouldn’t be locked up??

The MH Tribunal did.

Loadedog again rides forth to contend that all who disagree with his ancient and discredited leftism are evil.

Only in the morisettian sense.

Whinging about the level of editing that people should be able to do for themselves is par for the course with most editors…

Is it Ironic when the editor complains about having to do some editing?

Thanks, Boomacat, for an alternate view (and if creating a bum link is your worst crime, you shouldn’t need to plead insanity). Looking back through the comments on the original article and some above, it’s astonishing the amount of ignorance that persists about mental illness generally and mental health services in the ACT (for instance, there is a ‘mental institution’in the ACT: at Canberra Hospital).

Psychosis can happen to any of us, even you bighead. While hardly perfect, the Mental Health Tribunal is the body best suited to assess, treat and possibly contain those suffering from short or long term mental illness. Prisons, while good at containing people, are not well placed to deal with the seriously mentally ill and tend to exacerbate mental illness in their inmates, a result that is a loss for us all.

Finally, congrats Johnboy. Controversy equals attention and we all crave that. I just wonder whether you have to take the Tim Blair route to get it.

Stuart Littlemore is that you?

Jail/Nut House. Nowadays they are the same thing. Mad or bad, you need to be off the streets. It just seems that we have more ‘mad’ than ‘bad’ people.

Instead of building a prison we should have invested in nice, secure mental health facility.

IMHO, 90% of crimes have an element of mental health as a cause/contributing factor.

Bighead – you have to have an intent to commit the crime to be found guilty. If you’re nuts you can’t form intent. Therefore, not guilty by way of insanity.

Assuming for a second that what boomcat wrote is accurate, he wasn’t released into the community -according to the order, he’s in dentention until he can prove he’s not a danger to the community.

Which could be for considerably longer than he would have been sentanced in the first place had he been found guilty.

was he released into the community because they couldn’t do anything else with him?

did the prosecution agree because they are an overworked, understaffed dept with an abysmal win, loss ratio if someone pleads “not guilty”?

Give him a frontal labotomy – ah for the good old days

While im not exactly law savvy as such, he may have a mental illness at the time, that should still not cover his actions. He is essentially getting off in my view. I understand some cases in which people suffer a permanent mental illness that in most cases was detected years before a misfortunate even may have happened.

But in the ACT atleast, is seems you can just plea that you were ‘insane’ at the time. He should have gone to jail, he did the crime, he should do the time. *sorry to use such a god awful cheesy thing at the end*

Daily Digest

Want the best Canberra news delivered daily? Every day we package the most popular Riotact stories and send them straight to your inbox. Sign-up now for trusted local news that will never be behind a paywall.

By submitting your email address you are agreeing to Region Group's terms and conditions and privacy policy.