Cardinal Pell wins his appeal
Cardinal George Pell will be released from prison after the country's highest court quashed his child sexual abuse convictions.
The unanimous decision has been handed down less than a month after the High Court of Australia heard two days of intense legal arguments from the Cardinal's lawyers and Victorian prosecutors.
The full bench's ruling was handed down by Chief Justice Susan Kiefel in an almost empty High Court registry in Brisbane, due to physical-distancing measures introduced in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
The public gallery, which can seat up to 16 people, only contained three journalists to hear Chief Justice Kiefel deliver the ruling at 10:00am.
Cardinal Pell, 78, had been serving a six-year jail sentence after he was convicted in 2018 of abusing two choirboys in the 1990s, when he was the archbishop of Melbourne.
He had been accused of committing the crimes after he found the boys swigging altar wine in the priests' sacristy after mass in Melbourne's St Patrick's Cathedral.
A jury convicted him in 2018 — a decision that the Victorian Court of Appeal upheld in a two-to-one decision.
But his lawyers went to the High Court, arguing the appeal court failed to take proper account of evidence that cast doubt on his guilt.
Today the High Court handed down its decision, granting Cardinal Pell's application for special leave and acquitting him.
If you have the best legal team that money can afford you can get out of most things. My Dad always said
"The law is an Ass". I think he was right.