Foxy links to the article she relies on to claim Pell got off on a technicality. That of course was the article I was referring to. Its written by a highly partisan journalist (not a lawyer) who, like Foxy was seeking to salve their butt-hurt that one of their nemeses was found not guilty.

We see a lot of this these days. You can pretty much find something somewhere on the WWW which will tell you what you want to hear no matter how crackpot the view might be. If you're looking for the truth, the trick is to filter these myriad views to sort the wheat from the chaff. If, like Foxy, you're looking for something, anything, to give your prejudices a veneer of impartiality, then the trick is asking Mr Google the right questions to find that one piece that you can pretend is definitive. Foxy has mastered that approach.

shadowminister,

No, you started your last comment off claiming that Pell was found innocent by all seven High Court judges, which is not true.

An acquittal on a legal technicality typically occurs during or after a trial where a court finds that there's a flaw in the legal process, or some aspect of the law has not been appropriately applied, leading to the dismissal of charges.

In Shorten's case, the matter did not proceed to a trial, as the police found insufficient evidence to lay charges, which is a common outcome in many investigations when the available evidence does not meet the required legal standard to support a charge or a potential conviction. In other words, Shorten’s case did not even reach the point where he could get off on a technicality.

In Pell’s case, however, it was determined by the police that there was sufficient evidence to lay charges, and the court determined that there was sufficient evidence for the matter to proceed to trial.

You claim that Pell’s case also case lacked enough evidence for any charges to be laid, but do not explain why. You can’t possibly be basing your opinion here on the outcome of Shorten’s case, because Shorten’s case never went to trail and so the specifics of it are not known.

"claiming that Pell was found innocent "

Australian, indeed all British-based legal systems, don't find people innocent. They start off innocent and are found guilty or not guilty. If not guilty then their previous status of innocent remains unchanged. Having worked its way through the legal system, the system found Pell not guilty. Therefore he remained innocent.

The difference between Pell and Shorten was the actions and decisions of the Victorian Police. In neither case did they have evidence to satisfy a guilty verdict, but in one case they proceeded anyway. To my mind its impossible to view the different decisions as anything but political, with one being from a favoured group and one not. Using the decisions of the police to excuse the decisions of the police is rather fraught.

mhaze,

You again appear to be conflating the presumption of innocence with a positive affirmation of innocence.

Pell maintained only a presumption of innocence. Once charges have been laid and a matter has gone to court, the individual in question can, at best, only be found not guilty, and, by extension, maintain a presumption of innocence as a shield to protect them from being treated as guilty. There is never a positive affirmation of innocence. Therefore, it is inaccurate to say that Pell "remained innocent".

It is not the job of police to obtain a level of evidence sufficient to "satisfy a guilty verdict." Police only need to find enough reason to lay charges, which is a far lesser standard than the reasonable doubt required to find an individual guilty in a court of law.

I don't know how, to your mind, it could be impossible to view the different outcomes in the two cases to be anything but political when we don't know the specifics of one of them.

Syoksya,

The Aus legal system has only two outcomes, guilty or innocent and one is innocent until proven guilty. The 7 high court judges unanimously found that there was insufficient evidence to reach a guilty verdict and threw the case out.

The Legal technicality was the incompetence and political bias of the Victorian judges and prosecutors who should have known better and waved through a flawed decision of the jury. "legal technicalities" normally mean because of illegally gained information or procedural missteps none of which occurred here.

The police can lay charges on the basis of a complaint, but the prosecution is not supposed to take a case to court unless there is sufficient evidence for a conviction. That there was a stronger case against Shorten but still insufficient to convince the DPP to prosecute. The same DPP decided to prosecute Pell with a substantially weaker case.

In the case of Higgins, again there was only the word of a single witness with a wildly inconsistent story and the DPP proceeded with the case even against the advice of the police. Fortunately, here the ACT attorney general got fired for this.

As for Jones, there is not one named witness or charge laid.

"There is never a positive affirmation of innocence. Therefore, it is inaccurate to say that Pell "remained innocent"."

Of course when I wrote: "Australian, indeed all British-based legal systems, don't find people innocent" it might have occurred that indeed I was saying there is never an affirmation of innocence.

Pell was never found innocent. He was innocent until proven guilty. And he wasn't proven guilty.

QED.

Outside the courtroom there is also the general public's perception of the issue and of similar issues. In Shorten's case the general public's perception was massaged by being kept completely in the dark by compliant media and politically motivated police force. Then they were presented with fiat accompli that rejected the claims of the purported victim. Contrast that with the very public investigation into Pell and the very public agitation from the ABC and Fairfax media expounding his purported guilt to the point where it was no longer possible for Pell to receive a fair jury trial in Victoria.

We see a similar gearing up of the hate in regards to Jones.