Shadow Minister,

As for people hoping for substantial pay outs?

That will depend on the courts won't it.
In the past, as we've witnessed - some receive
payouts, others have to pay out, some end up
in jail, and so it goes.

Be patient. The Jones case will take time to resolve.
He too may just get off on a technicality.

S,

Now who is getting pedantic about semantics?

In a criminal case even if the defendant were proven 100% innocent the verdict would be "not guilty". There is no "completely innocent" verdict possible. Until proven guilty there is a presumption of innocence and logically the verdict of non-guilty merges entirely with innocence and the defendant is treated as such irrespective of his actual innocence.

When in the case of Pell there is one person claiming rape and one denying it, with zero other evidence either scenario is possible and without corroborating witnesses or physical evidence, not guilty is the only logical verdict. Any idiot who tries to claim that he was not proven innocent is spouting a personal opinion that is valueless.

"When in the case of Pell there is one person claiming rape and one denying it, with zero other evidence either scenario is possible and without corroborating witnesses or physical evidence, not guilty is the only logical verdict."

Actually there was one other person in the room that day. A second boy who, it was claimed, was also assaulted by Pell. By the time of the trial, that boy was dead from an overdose, accidental it was asserted.

As the boy spiralled out of control in his late teens, his parents, looking for reason asked him out-right if he'd been abused by anyone. On multiple occasions, he flat out denied that he had be abused by anyone.

So if the event happened (and that's a big if) then there were three people in the room that morning. Two of the three said nothing happened. Nothing happened. Yet 12 jurors were able to be convinced to believe the third despite what the high court called the ‘compounding improbabilities’ of the boy's account. It was due to these ‘compounding improbabilities’ that the court found the jury hadn't acted rationally and vacated Pell's guilty verdict.

Again three in the room. Two say one thing. One says another and despite contrary evidence, he's believed and Pell spent 404 days in gaol. Such is Victorian justice in the age of Andrews.

"Pell got off on a legal technicality."

I know Foxy isn't interested in the truth here but I just thought I'd share this to show that the claims of it being a legal technicality are rubbish. The article is written by a rooly-trooly barrister rather than a partisan who tells Foy what she wants to hear.

http://lsj.com.au/articles/understanding-the-high-courts-acquittal-of-cardinal-george-pell/

eg "Even assuming that the jury assessed A’s evidence as ‘thoroughly credible and reliable’, the ‘compounding improbabilities’ caused by the unchallenged evidence required the jury, acting rationally, to have a doubt about Pell’s guilt (at [119]). Put another way, notwithstanding that the jury found A to be credible and reliable, the evidence as a whole was ‘not capable of excluding a reasonable doubt’ as to Pell’s guilt (at [58]). Echoing the formulation used by Deane J and later Mason CJ in years past, the Court referred at three points in the judgment to the ‘significant possibility that an innocent person has been convicted’ (at [9], [119], [127])."

Read the full paper to see what those 'compounding improbabilities' were.

Reasonable doubt isn't a technicality. It's the very basis of our judicial system although some, who just want to convict based on who they hate, might wish it otherwise.

shadowminister,

These are important distinctions in law, not mere exercises in pedanticism. I haven't suggested any pedanticism on your part, either, so I'm not sure why you would word your opening question to me like that.

You are correct in saying that even if a defendant were proven 100% innocent the verdict would still be "not guilty", and that there is no such thing as a "completely innocent" verdict. These are well known principles in law.

However, you then shift to mere logic to assert that a "verdict of [not]-guilty merges entirely with innocence". This is incorrect and somewhat contradicts what immediately preceded it. A verdict of 'not guilty' intersects a presumption of innocence, it does not merge with it - let alone "entirely".

Hopefully now you understand why Pell was not found or proven innocent by the High Court, and that pointing this out is not indicative of a personal opinion that is valueless.

S,

A tenet of criminal law is that a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty. It is not presumed not guilty until proven guilty.

Thus as Pell was not proven guilty he is presumed innocent. Was that too hard?

Several posters on OLO assume that a defendant in a trial is guilty until proven innocent and automatically assume that a verdict of not proven guilty is a legal technicality to protect the guilty.

While not practising as a lawyer I did a few semesters of law focusing mostly on commercial law but with a few months focusing on the principles of evidence wrt civil and criminal law. The time spent on the reliability of witnesses, especially children was very interesting.