Lawyer Michael McAuley’s summary of the Pell case on Mercatornet is the best I have seen among many outstanding commentaries and analyses following the High Court’s 7-nil decision favouring the cardinal.
Pell’s kangaroo court
A Sydney lawyer dissects the arguments in Australia’s most famous criminal trial by Michael McAuley Apr 20, 2020
On 7 April 2020 the High Court of Australia (which is equivalent to the US Supreme Court) upheld Cardinal George Pell’s appeal, quashing a Melbourne jury’s conviction of five charges of sexual assault. Cardinal Pell was released from prison (to the cheers of other inmates, some of whom he had got to know) where he had spent over a year.
The experience of Cardinal Pell gives fresh meaning to the term ‘kangaroo court’.
Complaint
The assaults were alleged to have occurred on either 15 or 22 December 1996 after Solemn High Mass, and on 23 February 1997, again after Solemn High Mass. There was one complainant, formerly a choirboy, at St Patrick’s Cathedral Melbourne, the capital of the state of Victoria. There was a second alleged victim, but he had died before the first alleged victim made a complaint to the police in 2015. The second alleged victim had, as an adult, denied to his mother he had ever been the victim of sexual assault.