Magistrate O'Shane transcript shows a professional judge, not so Iemma or ABC TV news
Mood:
a-ok
Topic: legal
Last night the 7 pm news carried Premier Iemma (starting to look alot like an Uncle Tom for white supremacists) and his plan to change the NSW Judicial Commission from 3 judges to add 2 members of the community (whatever that means).
Magistrate OShane was again mentioned as a reason for this, but the report failed to mention her recent decision involved evidence of racist provocations resulting in a reaction and assault charges. Iemma and Watkins thought they had OShane on toast until that came out.
SAM's editor obtained a copy of the transcript from the Chief Magistrate's Office. It reveals evidence in different directions and material potentially damaging to the reputations of the witnesses in the case both transit officers and the defendant. In other words there are issues of privacy that on balance mean this writer prefers to not publish the transcript and move on.
Suffice to say my summary of the transcript which I put in correspondence last week reads as follows:
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, January 18, 2007 2:02 PM
Subject: my view Re: transcript request
Confidential
I think I will let this detail in the transcript fade rather than web post again subject to Big Media movement. In my view the transcript shows a
- a complexity of health and cultural situation,
- as well as OShane's sophisticated synthesis of the rival evidence going against the officer [....] who lacked corroboration,
- professionalism of the to and fro process in her court,
- also an astute analysis of the defendant as "getting older" not necessarily getting more innocent
- but yet a sensitive approach to the allegedly more positive trajectory of his life .... hopefully
- a searching interest in the state of the law in terms of appropriate powers of transit officers versus fully trained police.
All in all, a quite satisfying reflection on the Magistrates court, actually. Call me a bleeding heart.
The reported jubilation of the defendant in the press suggests also he was scared he would actually go down before OShane, which bodes well for the authority of that court.
What all this does call up for me is that John Watkins, a sympathetic sensitive pollie till now, has either gone cruelly ambitious, or cynically was seeking to pre empt the police numbers announcement by Debnam today, or is being played by his police dept, or all three.
He is after all Deputy Premier now and power does change people, from my experience having tasted the poison.
Yours truly
Tom
Posted by editor
at 2:38 PM EADT
Updated: Tuesday, 30 January 2007 8:41 AM EADT
