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StephenJ on the Pell appeal process

The full transcript of the accusers evidence is still suppressed.
A guilty verdict can only have been returned because the jury believed his evidence.

Here is the provision covering the appeal (note the appeal is lodged after sentencing).

Screen Shot 2019-03-01 at 8.09.13 am
Screen Shot 2019-03-01 at 8.09.13 am

Apparently the appeal is based on paragraph 276 (1) (a); ie the verdict is unreasonable.
There is a subsidiary matter concerning the refusal to admit a diagram of the Sacristy; ie paragraph (b).

In deciding the appeal the Court does not speculate on what was in the mind of any jury.
It makes its own decision based on the transcripts.
This was summarised in a case concerning paragraph (b).
Note in particular points 7 and 10.

Baini v The Queen [2013] VSCA 157 (27 June 2013)


8 It is as well to begin by setting out our understanding of the majority decision. As we respectfully apprehend their Honours’ path of reasoning, it proceeds by the following steps:[9]
1) Ultimately, the question of what constitutes a miscarriage of justice for the purposes of s 276 of the Criminal Procedure Act is a question of statutory construction.[10] Paraphrases of the statutory language are apt to mislead. They cannot and do not stand in the place of the words used in the statute.[11]
2) The possible kinds of miscarriage of justice with which s 276(1) deals include, although they are not limited to, cases like the present where there has been an error or an irregularity in or in relation to a trial [but] the Court of Appeal [can] be satisfied that the error or irregularity did not make a difference to the outcome of the trial.[12]
3) In determining whether there has been a substantial miscarriage of justice in such a case, the Court of Appeal must consider whether the verdict was inevitable,[13] although an affirmative answer to that question will not always conclude the issue.[14]
4) So to say is not to reintroduce the proviso to the common form criminal appeal provision or impose on an appellant an onus of proving his or her innocence.[15] Nor is it to say that ‘observations made in Weiss about the application of the common form criminal appeal provision cannot apply to s 276 ... , but only if the statutory text so permits’.[16]
5) The inquiry which must be made, however, is whether a guilty verdict was inevitable, not whether the verdict was open.[17]
6) If the Crown contends that a guilty verdict was inevitable, an appellant may meet the point by showing no more than that, had there been no error, the jury may have entertained a doubt as to his or her guilt.[18]
7) If the Crown contends that a guilty verdict was inevitable (which is to say a verdict of acquittal was not open), the Court of Appeal must decide that question on the written record of the trial recognising ‘the “natural limitations” that exist in the case of any appellate court proceeding wholly or substantially on the record’.[19]
8) The fact that the jury has returned a verdict of guilty may assist in answering the question but, in cases like the present, where evidence has wrongly been admitted, and in cases where evidence has wrongly been excluded, the Court of Appeal cannot fail to be satisfied that there has been a substantial miscarriage of justice unless it determines that it was not open to the jury to entertain a doubt as to guilt.[20]
9) In deciding whether it was not open to the jury to entertain a doubt as to guilt, the Court of Appeal must determine whether ‘the result at trial may have been different (because the state of the evidence before the jury would have been different) had the error not been made’.[21]
10) That determination is not to be made by ‘by speculating about what a jury, this jury or a reasonable jury might have done but for the error’.[22]
11) ‘Nothing short of satisfaction beyond reasonable doubt will do’. The Court of Appeal ‘can only be satisfied, on the record of the trial, that an error of the kind which occurred in this case did not amount to a “substantial miscarriage of justice” if the ... court concludes from its review of the record that conviction was inevitable’.[23]

The second trial was by definition a separate trial from the first. It would not have followed exactly the same course as the first.
I would have thought that in a case where a guilty verdict could only be reached by an assessment of the accusers evidence as true it would have been paramount for the jury to have actually seen him give evidence in the context of the narrative disclosed by the new trial.
This may be relevant to paragraph (c).
Pell bears the onus of showing the verdict falls within one of the grounds set out in Section 276.
On the information so far disclosed there would seem to be much evidence that it was extremely unlikely that he could have committed the crime.
One would think that the evidence of the Accuser would need to be compelling in order for a conclusion beyond reasonable doubt to be reached.
That is what the Court of Appeal must decide on the transcripts.

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