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]
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