I didn’t do it, I wasn’t there

In 1984, Derek Bromley was convicted of murder on the say of a schizophrenic and disputed forensic evidence. Now, his appeal may finally be heard, writes Mark Whittaker.

Robyn Milera was at a funeral in 1991 when she noticed a guy walking around with a couple of neat-casual whitefellas. A schoolteacher in her early 30s, Milera was newly married into the Aboriginal community and was already accustomed to too-frequent road trips to scattered missions for the mourning of her new in-laws. She’d been to enough to know that there was something different about the thin black man with the clean-cut entourage.

The family had stopped for a picnic at Lake Bonney, in South Australia’s east. She asked her husband, or someone – she’s not quite sure who, some 22 years later – “Who’s that guy over there?”
Derek Bromley – file photo

Thirty long years … Derek Bromley, convicted of murder in 1984.

Instead of an answer, she was taken to him. “Robyn, meet your brother-in-law, Derek Bromley.” He was friendly, yet didn’t reach out to shake hands. His arms remained hidden under a coat. Milera was puzzled until she caught a glimpse of silver bracelets. He was handcuffed.

As she describes these events while we sit in an Adelaide Chinese restaurant, her phone rings. “And this will be Derek now,” she says.

“Hello,” she says, nodding at me to confirm that it is him. “Go away, I’m having lunch. I’m sorry I had to hang up. I was in traffic. Yep, yep, we’re just starting to have a chat now. You okay? … Because I want to know if your bald patch has gotten any bigger.” She is playful and familiar with the 57-year-old convicted murderer, who is one of Australia’s longest-serving prisoners.
GW – Derek Bromley Story Portrait of David Szach, take in Adelaide. October 2013

Hanging up, she explains that Bromley is allowed to make as many phone calls as he can pay for. “It’s his lifeline, staying in touch with everyone. Especially now, because it’s so stressful.”

The stress, after almost 30 years in prison, is that Bromley’s campaign to have his 1984 murder conviction overturned might be finally gaining some traction. And while he is six years beyond his minimum sentence, he has said previously that he doesn’t want to be released with the taint of being a convicted murderer. It’s a decision that sees him still in jail after his co-accused walked free on parole in 2004. Bromley was required to do courses addressing his criminal behaviour. At first he refused, because doing such a course would require that he admit having committed the murder. If you maintain your innocence, you cannot show remorse, so you cannot be “rehabilitated”.

About three years ago, however, he relented and did the courses. “He did them all, but it made no difference,” says Milera. “We just don’t know why he’s still in there. He’s seen lots of people come and go. People who have admitted to pretty vicious stuff. The thing about the system is that nobody has to give any reasons. A bunch of politicians make these decisions.”

…

Bob Moles, tall, grey and just a little dishevelled in the way of a pin-striped law boffin, is a one-man innocence project. He has quit his job as an associate professor of law at the University of Adelaide to pursue his crusade to free the innocent, particularly those who’d been put away by the evidence of South Australia’s former chief forensic pathologist, Dr Colin Manock.

It had started when a student came to Moles with a project that examined Manock’s evidence in a murder trial. “I wasn’t particularly interested in miscarriages of justice,” says Moles. “I said, ‘Can you bring me any evidence?’ The student brought me a barrow load. I read it and thought, ‘This is crazy. It can’t be right.’ But it was, and because Manock was the chief forensic pathologist, we thought there must be more cases like this. So we had a look and quickly came up with a dozen more.” One of those cases was Derek Bromley’s.

When Moles met Bromley in prison, he knew he was someone he could work with. “Derek’s very much on the front foot. He’s intelligent, articulate … Sometimes he’ll ring me up and say, ‘You have to talk to this fellow and that fellow.’ Half an hour later he’ll ring me back and say, ‘I’ve talked to the other fellow and he’s agreed to meet you.’ Then, half an hour later, he’ll ring back and say, ‘I’ve arranged the meeting for Friday at 10.’ ”

The thrust of Moles’s argument – tabled by the South Australian Parliament’s legislative review committee – is that Manock, as the chief forensic pathologist for the state, performed 10,000 autopsies and yet was not properly qualified as a forensic pathologist. “It’s important to appreciate that the so-called scientific evidence he gave at the Bromley trial was utter nonsense,” says Moles.

Read the full article, SMH, here

EARLIER ON TASMANIAN TIMES:

Bob Moles (Above) on the astonishing story of Dr Manock … Derek Bromley and David Szach (and Sue Neill-Fraser):

• The Case for a National Criminal Cases Review Commission
Concludes here

• Australia Needs a National Response to Miscarriages of Justice
Concludes here

Dr Bob Moles is a joint author of Forensic Investigations and Miscarriages of Justice (Irwin Law, Toronto, 2010) which deals with miscarriages of justice in Australia, the UK and Canada. He has also published books on miscarriages of justice in South Australia. He previously taught in law schools at Adelaide University, the Australian National University and Queen’s University in Belfast. He has developed the Networked Knowledge website at http://netk.net.au