Calls for Tas Attorney-General to re-open SNF appeal

[caption id="attachment_41933" align="alignleft" width="300"] How The Mercury reported MLC Mike Gaffney’s Upper House revelations.[/caption]

A Member of Tasmania’s Upper House, Michael Gaffney, has used the Parliament on 31 Aug 2021 to expose massive, newly-discovered flaws in the the original (2010) and subsequent appeal cases presented by the Crown against Sue Neill-Fraser. She is in her 12th year of a 23-year sentence for allegedly murdering her husband, Bob Chappell. CLA and most independent observers believe the woman was wrongly convicted and should be freed, immediately, and acquitted. A formal criminal appeal is under way, awaiting the verdict of three judges.

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Legal, police experts want SNF appeal re-opened

Two experts, Hugh Selby and Barbara Etter, have formally asked Tasmanian Attorney-General Elise Archer to re-open the ‘in limbo’ appeal by Sue Neill-Fraser into her 2010 conviction for murdering her husband, Bob Chappell, aboard a yacht moored in Sandy Bay, Hobart, in 2009. The appeal has been heard, but a decision is awaited. The experts say police incompetence, or worse, has never been examined in the SNF case: if it was, she may well be acquitted.
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Another police shooting, just as the dingo was declared innocent

Forty years ago, there was a police shooting in the NT. With Constable Zachary Rolfe facing a murder charge in 2021, its interesting to look back on what happened in the case of the shooting death of the Anmatyerre man (with the skin name of Jabanardi) and Constable Clifford. Here’s Russell Goldflam’s account.
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Top cop confused on legality of police actions

Was Operation Ironside illegal under Australian law? There is doubt, created by the AFP Commissioner Reece Kershaw, whether the much ballyhooed Operation Ironside was carried out according to the law of the land. The first duty of our police is to obey the law, even before enforcing it. We need open and honest answers rather than confuseed bluster and PR spin, CLA says.

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Police infiltrate iPhone privacy

Once again, for the umpteenth time during the Covid-19 pandemic, police appeal to have gone overboard the moment a new restrictions regime is implemented. They seem to be pre-ordained to use excessive intrusion and invasion of privacy in the first instance, before public complaints eventually force them to take a more reasonable and balanced approach. Why is there always a problem? Is it bad leadership, or bad training…or both?
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CLArion Mar 2021: Sue Neill-Fraser appeal to start, at last!

Today’s the day! Risdon prisoner Sue Neill-Fraser’s long-awaited, long-thwarted, and long-delayed appeal is due to start on 1 March 2021, this CLArion issue’s cover date. The tortuous, uphill climb to today began on 2 August 2013 when CLA President Dr Kristine Klugman and CEO Bill Rowlings briefed then-Shadow Liberal AG Vanessa Goodwin on the need for Tasmania to ‘mirror’ the then-new law in South Australia allowing a second appeal. On 2 November 2015, the now-deceased Goodwin was true to her word: the second ‘Right to Appeal’ became Tasmanian law too. Since that date – 5 1/2 years ago – SNF has been striving for an appeal court to overturn what CLA believes is her wrongful conviction for murdering husband, Bob Chappell, on their yacht moored in Sandy Bay on the night of 26 January 2009.

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Appeal court could call for alleged police failures dossier

Sudden, dramatic apologies by the Tasmanian Premier and Police Commissioner over investigative and management failures by Tasmanian Police since 2009 have added a possible late-breaking, new dimension to the appeal by Sue Neill-Fraser against her murder conviction, which begins in Hobart on Monday 1 March 2021. The apologies bring back to public notice a 60-page critique of alleged police failures in the SNF investigation: it was submitted to a coroner’s court in 2014, but its contents have never seen the light of day. The appeal court could be better informed if it demands to examine the dossier.

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