Home Boston Malicious Prosecution, Flour in the Fire, and Mark Tedeschi

Malicious Prosecution, Flour in the Fire, and Mark Tedeschi

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(L to R) Mark Tedeschi, Carmen Ortiz, and Damian Bugg

by Mary W Maxwell, LLB

In Sydney in 2016, I slept around. I mean I sampled various backpacker hostels, as I was stuck in that city to attend the Inquest of the Lindt Café siege.  Hostel-living was so much fun, especially the cold showers, that I decided to stay on in Sydney a bit longer to attend the trial of Amirah Droudis.

My reportage of the Droudis trial was written up in an 8-part Gumshoe series, a wrap-up of which can be found here.

In a comment under that wrap-up I said:

“The clue to all the fake cases is found in the behavior of a Prosecutor or a Defender. They give the game away when they break normal procedural rules [such as declining to cross-examine dubious witnesses].”

Briefly I’ll remind you of one dubious – not to say preposterous – witness at the Droudis trial. He was a neighbor who caught Droudis in the act of murder. Well, not exactly Droudis but “a person” wearing full Muslim lady’s garb.

Recall Man Haron Monis from the siege? He had previously been married to Lois, the mother of his two sons. At times during the Coroner’s Inquest for the deaths of Katrina Dawson and Tori Johnson, we were reminded that Monis was “involved” in the death of Lois in a stairwell. (Hello? Involved in a murder and not arrested?)

At Droudis’ trial we learned that the stairwell was not a stairwell. It was the hallway in an apartment building. There, the Muslim lady (Droudis?) who had never before been violent and who had no reason to kill Lois, stabbed her to death and set her aflame.

Oh come on. That’s silly enough, but who witnessed it?  Why, the man in the apartment nearby, of course.  He looked though his peephole and saw it, fire and all. Did he then make it out his back door faster than a speeding bullet?

No, he had too much civic responsibility for that! He went to his kitchen and got some flour – and threw the flour on the flames. (So he said in sworn testimony, but what’s a little perjury among friends?)  Seems he didn’t think that the murderous Muslim, still with knife in hand, was any danger to him. Brave fellow.

The Defense attorney, who more or less went along with everything, Judy-Clarke-style, did not criticize the flour-on the-fire bit.  The prosecutor was Mark Tedeschi.

Besides being a QC, Tedeschi is also a crime writer in the misnamed genre “true crime.”

Two of his three books are about very old cases. Eugenia is about a transgender man living in Sydney in 1920. Murder at Myall Creek is about the trial in 1883 of 11 white men charged with the murder of 28 Aboriginal Australians.   Kidnapped: the Crime That Shocked a Nation”, is about a 1960 death of an 8-year-old boy (allegedly taken for ransom).

Malicious Prosecution

I recently learned from a book by Andrew Urban, entitled Murder by Prosecution, that a case against Tedeschi was brought by a man who spent time in prison for murder but was later acquitted.  That man is Gordon Wood.

Malicious prosecution is a tort. You can seek damages against someone who maliciously prosecuted you.

(So why isn’t Jahar Tsarnaev, or many of his fellow inmates, doing this?  Because you have to win your case first.  Theoretically, while you are still locked up, the prosecution was a proper prosecution.)

Judge Elizabeth Fullerton was the judge in the Wood- Tedeschi case. She seemed to agree that many of the points made by the plaintiff were valid.

I have no interest in the case for which Gordon Wood was originally prosecuted – a girl named Caroline died either by jumping or being thrown off a cliff into the ocean.

Indeed I have no interest in the lawsuit against Tedeschi, as such. But it is worth thinking about out what facts might be considered in similar cases. Let’s begin by quoting Plaintiff Wood’s attorney in court, Bruce McClintock, and then the judge’s remarks.

McClintock, addressing state prosecutor Tedeschi in the dock:

“You failed in your duty to alert the jury to the problems with your case. Your duty is not to chase convictions but to put your case fairly. You assumed my client was guilty and you set out to prove that.”

Could have fooled me! I am so used to the war-like tactics of the adversarial system that I hadn’t even noticed that a prosecutor is not supposed to go for a win at all costs.

Anyway, here is what the judge said. (I’m copying it from a Buzzfeed.com article by Lane Sainty):

Fullerton criticised Crown prosecutor Mark Tedeschi at length, saying he had a “flawed” approach to the prosecution and had been either unable or unwilling to reflect on his errors.  But, she concluded, Wood had not proved to the required standard that Tedeschi acted maliciously as a prosecutor.”  Her ruling says”

“Ironically, it is the fact that Mr Tedeschi continues to have no insight into his impropriety as a prosecutor in material respects, or to accept that the trial miscarried because of his misconduct, that reinforces the conclusion that I have reached that malice is not proved,” [Emphasis added]

Wow, that’s a lot more than ironical in my opinion.

“Throughout his evidence, Mr Tedeschi remained committed to his assessment of the strength of the evidence against the plaintiff for murder, and persistently showed himself unwilling or unable to accept any of the criticisms of his conduct as a prosecutor at the plaintiff’s trial or to accept that his approach to the assessment of associate professor Cross’s reliability as an expert witness, both in preparation for trial and the way his evidence was adduced at trial, was flawed.” [Emphasis added]

Poor old Wood, having lost, was ordered to pay the government’s costs. Interestingly, the judge withheld her judgment for a year. We wonder why.  And during that time Tedeschi retired as state prosecutor, in December 2017.

So Who Is Malicious? – See the Cases of Tsarnaev and Bryant

We all know of many malicious prosecutions. That is, where charges were deliberately brought against the wrong person. To name one case, Jahar Tsarnaev. To name another, Martin Bryant. It’s not clear to me who should be held responsible for what transpired in court.

In Jahar’s case, the prosecutor was Carmen Ortiz. But she took her marching orders from the US Department of Juctice and that means the Attorney General (who always heads the DoJ). Eric Holder was the attorney general in 2015. In Martin’s case it was Damien Bugg, the Director of Public Prosecutions, in 1996.

In both of those cases, the whole program of setting up a  patsy for the Marathon bombing and for the Port Arthur massacre, was much bigger than the courtroom scenes that followed.. The entire event was planned years in advance.  For Martin, I doubt that any prosecution was included in the plan, as Martin was meant to be burned to death by the fire at Seascape cottage, and Jahar was surely intended to die from 228 bullets, no less, shot at his boat in Watertown.

When an aggrieved ex-prisoner, such as Gordon Wood, sues for his time spent wrongly imprisoned, what he is looking for is justice.  Did Tedeschi cause the injustice (by, say, manipulating the argument about Wood’s ability to throw a female body into the water)?  I don’t think so.

Who Causes the Prosecution?

I also don’t think Tedeschi “caused” the prosecution of Amirah Droudis. I have no idea who concocted the nonsense about the neighbor throwing flour on the fire. The entire point of the Droudis trial, I speculate, was to firm up the reputation of Lindt Café hostage-taker Monis as a man capable of murder.

And what was that in aid of? In aid of the general plan of smearing Muslims so Australia could feel good about sending its military to the Middle East.

Droudis is unlikely to file a lawsuit for malicious prosecution.  For one thing, she has not been acquitted.  For another, I imagine she was “in on the deal” and agreed to be imprisoned. (Is she still there?) But were she to file, and if it can be shown that the flour-on-fire thing is untrue, is Tedeschi the correct target? I don’t think so.

Still, he, like Ortiz and Bugg, played a role. I don’t let them off the hook. I would charge them with crimes related to obstruction of justice. And yes I would be delighted to offer Ortiz and Tedeschi immunity in exchange for the names of the real baddies. (I would not do that for Bugg as he is high enough in the system to qualify as one of the real baddies.)

Other Relevant Torts: False Imprisonment and Abuse of Process

It is beyond the scope of the present article to entertain a discussion of other remedies available for a prisoner who gets acquitted and wants compensation – or vengeance. Two torts that are well-settled in Australian law are false imprisonment and abuse of process. Perhaps also defamation.

I hope to write a separate article on how such torts may be used for cases in Gumshoe’s other area of interest – the child-stealing racket.

 

No time for a “Go-Fund” campaign. Gumshoe is putting out an urgent request for donations this week-end to assist a protective parent in her the legal battle. Her case will hopefully become a landmark and important case, as it represents the classic malfeasance and wrongdoing by several government departments (including fake ID passes). To add to the legal fighting fund, PLEASE GO TO THE DONATE BUTTON in the right-hand column at the top or bottom of the page (to the Gumshoe/Jammed Films Paypal account),and this will be forwarded immediately. (We are not using her paypal email for privacy reasons.) Please!!!

Or please try this link DONATE

 

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23 COMMENTS

  3. In the high profile cases here in South Australia was Edward Splatt, Emily Perry in the Perry poison case and Lindy Chamberlain from NSW to name just a few. There are many more as you already know Mary. the police and the prosecution would not entertain anything but murder in all 3 cases. Dogmatic bastards they are and they ruin peoples lives!

    “That is, where charges were deliberately brought against the wrong person.” No one has acted on behalf of Bryant unfortunately to right the injustice, the perjuries, the cover-up, the false allegations and the false accusations, and conspiracy to add a few more charges

  6. Slightly off-topic re that other country. Senator Rand Paul has introduced a bill that says Trumpie Boy can’t cut off communication.
    .
    “On Wednesday, I introduced the Reforming Emergency Powers to Uphold the Balances and Limitations Inherent in the Constitution (REPUBLIC) Act with Senator Ron Wyden (Oregon). This bill will continue to allow the president to take immediate action in necessary situations but also require expeditious and continual congressional review of declared national emergencies to ensure the separation of powers is preserved.

    “The REPUBLIC Act’s reforms include requiring Congress to specifically approve of a national emergency declaration in a timely fashion (no more than 72 hours …) It would also prevent a president from taking over the internet and other means of communication.”

  8. “They give the game away when they break normal procedural rules”

    As lawlessness has become the norm I’d say it was more about violating written requirements.

    Interesting how such violations always goes hand-in-glove with cooking up a pack of outright lies: In fact you don’t have to see any more than the former to know that the latter is lurking somewhere or other

    • Funnily enough, Berry, that’s how I got into “9-11” in 2005. I was an innocent law student and was reading on a law website how Lord Hutton — of the Hutton Inquiry into the death of bioweapons man Kelly — was deviating from procedure in the courtroom by calliing witnesses in the wrong order.

      OMG — to think some practices were so clean in those days, merely 14 years ago, that a small deviation indicated that almost certainly something was very wrong.

      But now, as you say, it’s not “wrong.” This is so frightening to me. I have no idea if there is any lawyer in Oz who will play it clean re Family Law. Has “conscience” disappeared?

      Today I googled for the Law Society of SA website. It came up saying “approx 9,980 miles from you by drone.” Well that’s OK, but the website no longer has that “We will help you if a lawyer is giving you grief” type page. It’s every man for himself. Eeks!

      Notice to Adelaideians: The website says the Law Society has moved to Myer Ceter on North Terrace. Could this mean that they have a “shop” type premises where you can swan in and get information? Give it a try.

      • Imagine if surgeons, plumbers,electricians, auto repairmen etc started cutting corners in such a way !

        No doubt the inertia and passivity re wayward judges stems from plain ignorance re the obligations of the job, which in turn goes to the notion that they’re some sort of deity class from some other planet.

  9. Dee, please put this part of the article in Bold [Judge talking to Tedeschi]:

    “You failed in your duty to alert the jury to the problems with your case.” [!!!!!]

    “Your duty is not to chase convictions but to put your case fairly.” [!!!]

    Is she from Mars?

  10. Pardon me if I introduced confusion into the Wood-Tedeschi case. I think Judge Fullerton should have awarded the case to Wood WITHIN THE CONTEXT of his plaint. He only asked that Tedeschi be punished for having “gone after him”. Wood had found him to have been in cahoots with the “expert witness” whose “scientific tests” (about hurling bodies a distance) were meaningless. Etc.

    Naturally my mind is always on you-know-what, so I jumped into a contemplation of whether a Tedeschi type should be punished for malicious prosecution when the whole gig was a fraud. (Answer: no.) But the death of Caroline perhaps was not of that type, and so I assume Wood sued appropriately. The judge said she did not find sufficient malice. What would amount to “sufficient”?

  11. Mary, I am glad that you are not relenting in letting the legal fraternity know, that we the public, know of the of the many misdeeds, of their profession’s involvement, along with Governments, concerning the Boston Bombing, Port Arthur Massacre and Sydney Siege escapades.

  12. Question that should have been put to so called witness in Droudis case: “Why did you think to go to the pantry for flour to throw on fire, but not the more common reaction, to grab a blanket to smother the fire?”

    Too easy! (For the prosecution, or judge I mean.)

    • In 1988 I was leading my children’s choir into a concert carrying lit candles. My husband did not approve, as one kid might let the flame stick into the hair of the girl in front. I foolishly fought for the right to use the candles. We had a bit of a “marital.”

      Anyway, at the concert George walked alongside the singers, discreetly carrying a folded-up blanket.

      Thank you Mal.

  13. The Treasurer of Gumshoe Paypal (Her Treasurerness?) reports having a flash of great happiness as a kind donation came in. I mustn’t say from whom but it was from west of the Mississippi.

    Or west of the Murray. Or whatever. Defo west.

    • If its the same version I read, just an unaffiliated Australian getting around with funds for running a cult, access to University strong LSD, and darn near impunity from legal consequences. Rested in peace here anyway.

      • Simon, thank you for mentioning Anne Hamilton-Byrne’s impunity. She was fined only for a sin of fraudulent document, and only $5000, at a time when her cruelty to 14 children had already been exposed.

        Impunitas semper deteriora invitat. Impunity always invites worse.

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