The prosecutor’s remarks to the jury were “contrary to his responsibility to the court”. But the man jailed as a result still can’t get compensation for how these decisions ruined his life.
Geoffrey Ferguson was just doing his job. One windy day in October 2015 he was driving his semi-trailer along the Katamatite-Shepparton Road, delivering pork in his usual, careful way.
And in his closing address, the prosecutor openly scoffed at the key evidence, asking the jury: “Are you going to fall for that?” “And I still have this ... subconscious expectation at some point, the police are going to come along and gather me up and pull me back into custody and get their claws back into me. I live with that fear,” Ferguson told me.
Ferguson and Chamberlain suffered one of the greatest injustices the state can impose on a citizen: the wrongful removal of their freedom. For him, the errors have been life-changing. So you might expect that the state would offer Ferguson some compensation.In 1980, Australia signed up to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. It says in the case of a miscarriage of justice, people “shall be compensated according to law”.
In Ferguson’s case, even though the court of appeal said in its judgment that the prosecutor’s comments to the jury had been “a contravention of his responsibility to the court and to the system of justice”, King believes his case does not get over the bar. And prosecutors are protected by yet another layer of the law: the doctrine of prosecutorial immunity.of throwing his girlfriend, Caroline Byrne, off a cliff, tried to sue for malicious prosecution after three years behind bars.
“They’re the ones . So the very people who created the law that screwed me over and protects the prosecutors and police are now going to be the ones to decide whether they give me something for my trouble.In any event, according to lawyer Jeremy King, the Victorian government is tighter than most in handing out compensation. They are extremely reluctant to make a payment if there is still a legal remedy possible – no matter the unlikelihood of success. It’s a classic catch-22, says King.
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