Following his guilty verdict in 2018, Cardinal George Pell will walk free from prison and have all his convictions quashed following an appeal to the High Court of Australia.
According to ABC News, this decision was handed down by Chief Justice Susan Kiefel at the near-empty High Court in Brisbane (due to social distancing measures implemented to combat the coronavirus pandemic) less than a month after arguments were presented by George Pell’s lawyers and Victorian prosecutors.
Australia’s highest-ranked Catholic, George Pell was found guilty in December 2018 by a jury and convicted of five criminals relating to the abuse of two choirboys in 1996 when he was the Arch-Bishop of Melbourne.
This decision was subsequently upheld by the Victorian Court of Appeal in a two-to-one decision before the Cardinal’s lawyers went to the High Court. Prior to the overturning of his convictions by the High Court, George Pell was serving a six-year jail sentence.
The High Court’s judgement summary states that the Court of Appeal “failed to engage with the question of whether there remained a reasonable possibility that the offending had not taken place, such that there ought to have been a reasonable doubt as to the applicant’s guilt.”
While the High Court found that jury acted rationally and “assessed the complainant’s evidence as thoroughly credible and reliable,” they were required to “have entertained a reasonable doubt as to the applicant’s guilt in relation to the offences involved in both alleged incidents.”
The High Court concludes that there is “a significant possibility that an innocent person has been convicted because the evidence did not establish guilt to the requisite standard of proof.”
With the High Court of Australia’s decision to quash George Pell’s conviction, this is the conclusion of the legal process with no more trials or appeals and the Cardinal will walk free from prison today.