(153) Just Lawful Podcast - The Road To Justice Pt.1

Published Jun 30, 2024, 10:15 PM

As the JL boys round the bend and onto the Road to Justice there appears to be light, however their first tragic example of this shows we still have such a long road to hoe.

There is a difference between deliberate actions and errant decisions. While nothing happens within a vacuum, not instigation, action nor consequence both can stop individual worlds within an instant. Likewise, when accountability is required for deliberate actions and errant decisions, the assessment of these also does not occur in a vacuum, so surely this exposure should breed consistency right Instead, at times we find ourselves in the vortex of a black hole of confusion rather than a vacuum of understanding as we investigate the road to justice here on the next episode of Just Lawful.

Adelie, it is the perfect police that a horror story. You know why all those films and books are always setting sleepy conservative towns Because sleepy conservative towns or would those things happen Exorcism, homs, shiny and pultu gasts, Adelie, Disameterville or Salem and things go bump in the night?

Welcome we go into Just Lawful, where things do indeed go bump in the night. My name is Daniel Prono and I'm joined once again by my co host Sean Fusta.

Thanks Daniel, Welcome back, everyone.

Absolutely welcome. Back and thank you to everyone who has listened to the show, whether it's been the broadcast episodes on five Double A or you've caught the podcast episodes in either Apple Podcast or Spotify. As always, of course, if you haven't heard our previous episodes, we would strongly recommend and greatly appreciate your heading over to one of those two platforms rating reviewing of course, leaving us five stars. It's how you help us get our work out to the masses, and also how you can catch up on our journey so far. I think journey is a fitting term to use in this sense, Suan, as we make the transition from dangerous driving, which is where we kind of left off in our last episode, and we move across to the concept of the road to justice in this episode, and at the end of our last episode, you left us with the concept of you were about to embark upon the road of justice, which meant you had to go away and do some research on that and understand what they looked for. So for me, I'm keen to understand what they look like, and so you've done. They gone away as you did all those years back then to actually get that together. And that's what we're kind of going to do over the next couple of episodes, right.

That's right. What I did at the time and what we're doing now is I went back through the archives and I looked at some of the biggest cases that i'd covered. I'm not going to say the most important, because every case is of equal importance, but trying to find cases that spoke to the issues that we've discussed on these episodes so far, about the inconsistency of sentencing, about the treatment of victims within the system, everything that we've already pulled apart. I wanted to find exemplars because if I was thinking that way from all my years of covering these cases, clearly there were cases that had informed that thinking, and I wanted to give readers of the Advertiser and now listeners of this show that same first hand call face education by listening to those survivors and their families and talking about what they had been through.

The other piece for this is we want to try to give you some examples. As you said across, I guess a spectrum here, and so what I mean by that is we're going to start out and look at some of those straight up death by dangerous driving situations and then we're also going to move across and look at some aggravated driving without due care, etc. So we want to try and separate those, but also look at the consistency of the inconsistencies around perhaps how these were looked at, assessed, the adjudicated and punishments for these. Is that right?

That's right? And some of these cases did appear during the Road to Justice publications within the Advertiser. Some of them are new cases that have happened since and speak further to that. So right off the top here I want to thank everyone that was involved in the Road to Justice campaign for being a part of it, for trusting me to tell your stories, and for trusting Daniel because at the time that we were doing Road to Justice, Just Lawful was in its infancy and we said we would come around to doing this again if it were needed. Sure it's needed, We're here and now we're doing it. And thank you to everyone that has been so kind as to speak to their experiences and let their trauma inform South Australia about why and how this needs to change.

Yeah, it is fascinating because it kind of does take us back to the beginning where we were in our embryonic stage of just lawful if you like, we kind of knew it, but it hadn't necessarily kicked off. So it was one of the very first engagements of myself being in that world with you. At the same time that said, I do want to give these cases the gravity and the exposure that they deserve. So where are we starting? Which one? How do you want to kick this off?

Okay, We're going to go all the way back to May of two thousand and three. At this point, I've been a court reporter for a year and a couple of months.

Sure, Okay, So.

This is one of again similar to the Abigail Ralf case, this is one of the very first cases of death by dangerous driving I'd ever tackled, and it came to me in an unique and unusual way. Okay, but I'll explain how in a moment. Sure, let me introduce first the most important person in this story, and her name was Sonya warn And. As of June of two thousand and one, so prior to me getting involved with all this, life was very good for Sonya and it was getting better. She and her husband David had been happily married for eighteen months. They had just bought their first car and their first home. Sonya was twenty eight and her life ended on June five, two thousand and one, when her car collided with a speeding car at the intersection of Dows Road and Doreen Street, Saint Mary's. The other driver of the car, Christopher Ian Clothier, was already on bail at the time.

Okay for what can ask for murder? Okay, immediately peaks in my mind and it creeped me from wrong. We talked about your first the case being kind of the first death by dangerous driving case you'd seen through descendancy. But you see there was one other but that had a slight wrinkle to it that was over and above again, is this is exactly that? Okay? So I am putting those pieces together. Yeah, okay, straight off the bat. I mean, that's a that's going to cast some thoughts, ideas, premonitions around that. As you say, the driver is already on bail for murder, for murder, not for another speeding charge, not for some other situation. We are talking kind of the worst of the worst, and it goes back to a whole other conversation we've had in another realm around how do you be charged with murder and get bail to be at home? And that's a whole nother.

Well, it's not. It's actually the same thing. Do you remember I said to you when we did our bail episodes. One day I would tell you when it changed so that you could no longer get bail for murder. Sure, we're here now.

The full circles that you and I run in. Sometimes sometimes they just say that we're falls running in circles, But that's another case. The idea that this wraps itself back around and we find ourselves at this is the case that was that linch pin as you talked about is I can't even say gratifying. It's somewhat chilling almost.

My wife always says that it's terrible to argue with me because I never forget anything. I have a mind for continuity. I remember what links to where and how. This is similar in the same way that Abigail Ralph was considered within the context of what was going on with NeiMa, which we talked about on this show years ago, that bail converse that you and I had that little remark that I left there saying one day we'd come back to it. Here we are right now, because at this point, on June five, two thousand and one, you could still get bail for murder in South Australia. It was not a prescribed offense yet.

Yeah, okay, I'm still grabbing with that content and I'm so glad it has changed. But as we speak in real time in this case, we're talking about a driver on bail for murder now, having caused this accident and the death of poor sonya Warm.

That's right. And he'd been given bail just two months earlier in the Elizabeth Magistrates Court, so he'd been given bail very early in the process. We know how bail works. If you get bail on the magstrates court level, it's pretty early in the process. So now we move from June fifth, two thousand and one, when this impact occurs, it's a fatal impact that takes Sonya Wan's life to twenty seventh of May two thousand and three in the District Court. Clothier, then twenty two years old, was slated to stand trial for causing Miss Warne's death by dangerous driving and for causing bodily harm by dangerous driving to Susie Cartwright, Sonya's best friend who was in the car with her. Okay, But on that day that trial was supposed to begin, Clothier instead pleaded guilty to the offense. Yeah, okay, And so the case moved obviously into sentencing submissions.

And look, you could say there's small mercies there that he didn't make that be extrapolated into a case he said he was guilty of that. But I just want to I'm not sure if anyone else was doing the mental math was It's just me being me. We're talking about two years on, so almost two years to the month where this family, the victims, those behind I dealing with the grief to Tromoila is to get to this point. The other part for me is Clothia twenty two is at the time, he's twenty two, which means when he was on bail for murder, he was twenty.

Yeah.

Sometimes I hate the fact that my maths is half decent.

Well, here's some more numbers for you, because the reason that this trial was happening so late on is because the murder trial had to happen first. Yeah, okay, And Clothier by the time of this day on the District Court, had been convicted in the Supreme Court of murder and he'd been given a life sentence for stabbing Shane Mueller near swan Reach on April first, two thousand. So at that point he was given, as I said, a life sentence with a seventeen year non parole period. Do you remember I told you there was a point where the law changed in a minimum for murder became twenty years where prior to that point as.

Well, Oh so much.

We are in the embryonic stages here of modern South Australian law.

We sure ah born the birth of a new millennium and birth of some new laws in his state obviously.

So let me tell you a little bit about Shane Muller. Clothier and Shane Muller had been drinking while playing pool at the swan Reach Hotel. Both were under the influence of cannabis. When a fight broke out at Clothier's campsite on the River Murray. He pulled out a knife, he stabbed and he killed mister Miller. As a result of that, he's got this life sentence with the seventeen year non parole period. Now we've talked about this before. This is bringing all your legal knowledge back around. Judges. He then was Michael David, who we've seen since as Justice Michael David. The only option he had in sentencing now that Clothing had pleaded guilty was to extend Clothier's non parole period, because of course you can't put anything on top of a life sentence. It's life. So now we're just adding on to the seventeen years.

Look that, yeah, okay, so much about that. I mean, obviously we're not talking about the current minimum we have around murder to start with, such less than that. We're now talking about the fact that we can't add to that because you know, it's just impractical to have beyond life, right, so.

You can't impose a crushing sentence, have to think about, you know, totality.

So we have a life sentence with the seventeen year non parole period, and now all we're going to do is extend that non parole period. Is that are you telling me.

That's all that the judge has the option of doing.

So Look, and I know that you know, I will take things out of their face value that we were doing the best we could as we knew at the time. But wow, this how fortunate are we that things have moved on, and yet at the same time there's a reason we're still doing this case right now.

Let me tell you a little bit more about Sonya warn She was, as I told you, twenty eight years old at the time, and she was from a very close family in Peterborough. Her mother Chris, father Roger, and brother Greg. They were all there at court that day and that was the first time that I sort of met them and got to interact with them, and this whole thing was a bit of a shock for them. They turned up being prepared.

To sit through a trial, okay.

And instead everything turned into sentencing submissions very quickly. As we know, that doesn't always happen. But I think because there'd been a bit of conversation behind the scenes between prosecution and defense counsel, and that was before Judge David. Everyone knew Judge David likes to get on with things. Let's get on with things. So Prosecutor Lisel Chapman, who we now know as District Court Judge Lisel Codelka, was handling the case and she explained that on the night of the incident, missus Cartwright and miss Warn had eaten dinner together at the WARN's new homes and Mary's. Miss Warren had been driving Miss Cartwright home very carefully on the night of the accident because the roads were wet from heavy rain. She said. Miss Warren had stopped her car at the intersection and was waiting for a large gap in the traffic. She was on her pea plates and was taking extreme caution on that night. She got to about the center of the lane and by that time Clothier's car had come up at a very quick speed and collided with her car. Both vehicles spun down Doors Road before coming to a stop. Clothier later told police he had been traveling at eighty kilometers an hour. That section of Doors Road is a sixty kilometer an hour zone. Miss Cadelka said Miss Warn died later that night as a result of head injuries. Ms Cartwright had fractures to her ribs and fractures to the bones in her back.

Yeah, okay, look the Taylor. Two different stories there. You've got one party here taking extreme caution because of the weather, waiting for that longer gap in traffic, as you said, also recognizing she's on their pea plates, which for those who don't know that's the probationary piece just before you get your full license. So clearly not an overly experienced driver in tenures, so taking all the precaution necessary. Another person traveling at admitted speed above what the standard road limit was under the conditions of a very wet road at the same time. So two tails are very different sort of elements here.

And something that exercised my mind right then at the time. If Clotha was on bail for murder at the time, what was his state of mind? Was he necessarily taking as much care on the road as he should or was he thinking I'm done anyway? So I don't care, it doesn't matter like this is all speculation, clearly, But is there a question about someone who's prepared to drive that fast downdoors road when they're facing a potential life sentence? Are they perhaps not being as careful as you would normally expect, especially in wet weather like that.

And look, I do not that Again, I'm going to sound like I'm not justifying or excusing this or providing anything like that. But we're talking about a twenty year old young man at the time, a twenty year old young man who is on bail for murder, not knowing any of his background or circumstance. To your point, what is his state of mind? How much consideration care does he have for himself, beyond himself and the wider community under these circumstances. He knows he's at this stage, at some point going to face trial for taking another person's life, what does he feel his prospects might be for longer than tomorrow, for example. So I do get it, and I'm not excusing that. But a young man with clearly a relevant recent history of turmoil going on, what was he thinking at that point?

You're not there to defend or excuse, but someone was, of course, and he had a barrister. Grant ALGKC was his barrister. What happened next is one of those moments that goes down in the annals of my memory, because I'll never forget what happened next. Mister Algie stood up and effectively said that the sentence didn't really matter, okay, because his client was already going to serve a life sentence with a seventeen year non parole period. And he pointed out that under law, whatever non parole period. Judge David opted to add on to that seventeen years would not activate for seventeen years time, right, because you have to serve the full sentence for murder before the sentence for death by dangerous driving was deemed to kick in. Right, And what mister Algie said was the court needs to consider that fact in determining whether or not there's any utility to add a on to the non parole period because and I quote, that's a very long time to wait to kick the dog for chewing a slipper.

Okay, I'm going to come back to those that choice of words right there, that phraseology in a moment, I want to go back to the initial point there. How dare you think there's no need to affect a further sentence here? Tell that to poor Sonya's family, Tell that to her husband that she's just brought a home in a car with Tell that to those people. Tell that to the poor other victim that was sitting in that car that is now living with the concept. Back to Abigail and Lauren, for example, going oh my god, what if we were two feet to the right, two feet to the left, What if it had to be me? What would that what victim survivors guilt. Why am I sitting here and my friend Sonya isn't How dare you say there's no utility in a sentence and then tack on the fact that, well, even if there is, you're gonna have to wait seventeen years, So what's the point And then I'll we'll come back to as I said, that concept of how dare you use that phraseology to equate the concept of taking a life while you're on bail for murder under conditions you said that you were taking no regard for to boil that down to the concept of scolding a puppy for chewing on your slipper, how dare you say that in any context, especially in the court of law.

That reaction that you've just had was universal. Within the court room. Sonia's brother Greg was physically overcome. Oh so father Roger was not much better. Her mother Chris, burst into tears. I later find found out that Chris did not actually fully hear what was said, but she heard enough of it to get upset. The prosecution was outraged, the media was outrage and Judge David said, mister Algae, that is impertinent and disrespectful and you will withdraw that remark immediately.

Haven't apologize for that remark?

Also, you don't apologize for what said from the bar table.

Well, I can tell you now, bar table or not, I reckon, I can clear a bar table pretty quickly. Sure, And even the age I am now, I would have had been restrained. I think I certainly would have been vocal on that point and probably would have been reprimanded by the judge himself. But how do you. I'm incredibly pleased that we see judge over here taking that step to demand he retracted that statement. But still you.

Can see why it's unforgettable. Oh why that has lived with me for years since.

Yeah, you tee those up, and I always know this something has stuck with you. There's a good reason. The unfortunate thing of what you do for a gig is nine times out of ten it's for less than favorable reasons. But I'm still a little bit shocking. Flabbergasta, that's the comment you'd make.

So I stopped and spoke with the Warren family afterwards, And as I said, this was really my first interaction with them. They are lovely, lovely people. I still know them to this day. One of the things that they brought up that I didn't even think about at that time was they weren't able to talk about Sonya's death for years because it would void Clothier's right to a fair trial on the murder because if a potential jury pool heard that he had gone on while on bail. You should all see the face Daniels making right now. If the jury pool heard that he had gone on to commit an offensive death by dangerous driving while awaiting trial for murder, it would potentially prejudice that jury's mind and view of his charge. So that meant that effectively, the Warren family had been silenced, censored, and all but suppressed from talking about the circumstances of their own daughter's death for almost the full two years since it had happened.

Yeah, I am making that facial, and for a couple of reasons, because how distasteful and almost disrespectful palatable that that concept is that you've just laid out. The other side to that is I totally understand that. At the same time. Yeah, that's the part that I think a noise and frustrates me the most, so that I get.

Why why it's necessary.

Absolutely, because you've got another pending case. And that's that's the harsh part. I mean, and beyond all those things you said to be Yeah, okay.

I.

Can't imagine what that family went through on that day and subsequent to that. But hearing all that understanding of that, in that that moment, in that vacuum, I struggled just to comprehend how do you process and navigate that?

Well?

Just remember, up until this moment, Clothier was supposed to stand trial. Yeah, so they've been caught off guard again. The circumstances have changed around them on a heartbeat. Yeah, they don't have time to reconcile and reckon with anything because it just keeps changing and changing and changing. And somewhere along the line, Clothing or his counsel have clearly gone, well, the murder's done, we're in jail. Now, we're going to make this argument that we shouldn't have much more jail time. So let's not even bother defending ourselves anymore. Let's just plead guilty and hope for the absolute bare minimum that we can get.

Oh yeah, I mean, after seventeen years, what's a few extra months, right?

And that's exactly why mister Algie made the submission he did, which was unpalatable to everybody.

But I means, and I do understand that argument that he puts forward under the law, he's playing the rules.

I get that better way of phrasing it, though, thank you that thousands of better.

That's my point. The manner in which you got about that is just reprehensible.

Yeah, I mean you should say something along the lines of, you're hon a one must question the utility given the delay before this sentence will begin. Yeah, there's much better ways of phrasing it than that shock and or factor.

Yeah, totally, absolutely so. We have a family here who has gone through the traumatic loss of a family member. They then had this all turned on them. As you said in a heartbeat in this incident, expect going to court expecting one thing, having it changed, then having to listen to that reasoning that that disrespectful remark. If you're like in that sense, where does it on? What happens from here on?

Sonya died on June five of two thousand and one. Clotha was sentenced on June four, two thousand and three. Yeah, okay, so just before the second anniversary. Yeah, but that wasn't the end of the surprises because on the day of sentencing we found out that killing Sonya and severely injuring this cart Right was just one of five crimes Clothier committed while on bail without having his bail revoked.

Song, so it's a murder. As if murder isn't bad enough to have bail revoked or not be put back into the community. There were four other charges.

Here, there were four other charges. So mister Mueller's murder was committed while under the influence of cannabis. Right, yep, we know he's then responsible for the death of Sonya and the injuries to miss Cartwright in this crash.

Right.

We then find out that five days after that crash, he was pulled over twice for crossing the center line of Springbank Road at Panorama and for driving between fifteen and twenty nine kilometers out an hour over the speed limit on Stert Road at Seacam and found in possession of cannabis and drug equipment.

And somehow he's still in the community.

His bail was not revoked. He was fined.

Each time, shall you talk about a fine? Every time? We'll tell you what's not fine every time is every time I think about this situation and those like it, but in this circumstance in particular, we're out on bail with five other five charges while we're on bail in this one for murder. Mind you, we cause a crash to someone that takes their life and injures another passenger, and we have a defense lawyer here that's going to turn around and almost insult us by saying the census just doesn't matter, it's almost irrelevant what we do here. Help me make some sense that, you know what, don't help me make sense of this. Help me make sense of where you are, because let's not forget we're talking about two thousand and three, so you are very junior in the role in this sense and off air. We've talked before, and you've even made a comment to me that it is situations like this at that age for your own personal development, that this is the sort of thing that's molded and calcified you at the core of your understanding and I guess experience within the core system. What are you doing, thinking, feeling at that point, at that young age around this.

Look, I'll go one step further. This is what radicalized me. Okay, for everyone out there and going through this case is making me remember it. For everyone out there that says, why does Sean think the way he does about the justice system, it's cases like these being exposed to these things before the age of twenty five, you know, before the frontal cortex develops or whatever it is.

They say, it's about twenty eight for us men. But moving on.

There you go. These are the things that are informing my understanding of the justice system because I'm seeing all of these pieces of legislation that interact in ways that don't make sense. You said a little while ago. Things are better now, but we're still talking about this. Absolutely, look to put the cart before the horse. What came out of all of this was the change that meant that you no longer necessarily got bail for herder. You had to satisfy special circumstances. It was a prescribed defense. The McEwan family went on a tear after this and became very activist in trying to get that change and succeeding in getting that change. And that's where I was, because you're asking me what I was thinking about at the time. I was thinking about the bail situation. I wasn't thinking about deathbad dangerous driving sentencing. Yet I was thinking, the next story here is how unfair it is that Clothier was on bail. That needs to stop.

Yeah, for sure, that's.

The immediate problem here. And then while all of that's going through my head on the fourth of June two thousand and three, is I'm listening to Judge David talk about these other things that have happened. He drops the sentence. The sentence for Clothier is two years jail.

Yeah, yep, I'm just stunned. Okay, yep.

One woman is dead, another has back injuries. It's two years. It is well below that average we're talking about. That won't even be discussed for several years time when we get to Abigail Ralph's death. Wait a minute before you say anything else, let me tell you what the effect of that was. Because the two year sentence doesn't matter, as we know, because it's being absorbed into that life sentence. All that matters is the extension to the non parole period. The extent to the non parole period. It was ten months. Yeah, all of this boiled down to an extra ten months in jail.

Do you know It's fascinating because as you're talking there's a piece for me that I'm remembering the conversation that you and I had and we spoke about it on the previous episodes around the concept of the charges that are available under the circumstance, and you talked about being comparable to the concept of murder down to manslaughter. Right, how is this concept any different to a manslaughter You didn't necessarily mean to take that life, but you did. And as you've said, it could be anything down from the fact of I meant to cause harm but didn't mean to kill, all the way down to we were doing a funny prank and something went wrong. Right, if you want to take that context, if you were to put these circumstances under that context, don't tell me you get two years and a ten month a sentence here, that is a sentence. Well beyond that, you've taken that life like that. There was no justification. There's no sensibility of this. I'm struggling on any level to make any comprehension here.

And this is one of the fallacies of death by dangerous driving, because death by dangerous driving was created because juries were not convicting for vehicular manslaughter. Yeah, Okay, the problem is that judges don't sentence for vehicular manslaughter. No, it's the same thing. It is literally one part of the manslaughter charter taken out and given its own, separate life. Yep, but the sentencing did not go with it.

It's I'm stunned, and that was I said. That was raling around in the back of my head, going this doesn't one on one doesn't equal to here.

Now, in my research for all of this, I've discovered that the earliest stories that the Advertiser had questioning the validity of death by dangerous driving sentencing was nineteen ninety eight, Okay, long before I started working there, But other journalists had already been poking at this at the time. Let's keep that in mind for a minute. But I want to tell you about the reactions to the sentence here, please, Greg McEwan, Sonya's brother, said, my family realizes everyone is innocent to a proven guilty, but Christopher did not deserve to be on bail. When you're on bail, you should have to be on your best behavior, and when you break the law four more times, you should be put away. Mister Muller's sister, Melina, came to court total strangers to the Warner McEwen families, just to support them because both their lives had been affected by the same man. She said, seventeen years and ten months is not enough for killing two people and injuring a third. How lucky were we that he didn't kill a third person? Absolutely, But the one that killed me was Roger McEwan, Sonya's father. He said, Sonya never told us that she'd gotten her driver's license. She kept it a secret. She wanted to surprise us. And he said, if this had to happen, at least she went out when she was the happiest she'd ever been married, having just bought a car and just bought a house.

That is some grand version of optimism. And more power to that man to be able to even comprehend the navigating process that piece of information under the circumstances.

Told you, they're amazing people.

How I'm crushed at the situation that you have to even get to that point. But as you said, how wonderful that mister Muller sister was there and her commentary around how lucky we were there was a third person that was killed here, and it's incomprehensible seventeen years and ten months, agether that you've broken the law four times after being on bail already, Like, it's just it's nonsensical here.

So the bail thing turned into its own thing, turned into its own immense thing, leading to change, and the McEwens got the change that they were after. But young Sewan was also starting to think about this death by dangerous driving stuff, sure for the first time in his life. So I went back into the archives way back then, as I did in the research for this, and I found a story that had been written before I got involve that had a whole bunch of statistics. So let me tell you about the statistics. I told you. The first story I could find was dated nineteen ninety eight. Someone had gone back and gotten the statistics all the way back to nineteen ninety seven. Remember at the top of this series we talked about the average length of sentences. In nineteen ninety seven, the average prison sentence for death by dangerous driving was seventy two months. A year later it was forty four months. Right a year later it was twenty nine months. Ye the following year, the year two thousand, there were no death by dangerous driving sentences, and in two thousand and one it was thirty seven months. There's your inconsistency literally in front of you. But then we get to non parole periods nineteen ninety seven forty eight months, nineteen ninety eight, twenty two months, nineteen ninety nine, six months, again no sentences in two thousand and in two thousand and one it was back up to twenty six months.

Yep. The interesting for me is I want to understand what happened between ninety ninety seven ninety ninety eight. I look at that really quickly, and what's clearing to me is you're talking about the average prison sentence being seventy two months or six years, dropping down the next in nineteen eight to forty four months, so essentially just under four years. What happened there? Because if I look at the average non parole it was forty eight months, which is four years, you know, dropping down to twenty two which is just under two years. They've almost a third's just been what third to half has just been wiped off of both of those situations. What happened there? That's hypothetically because I don't know, but that's that's bizarre to me.

And I couldn't find an answer to no. But just think in nineteen ninety seven, seventy two month prison terms. Yeah, and at that point in nineteen ninety seven, the community is saying this is not enough. We don't even get near that now.

And I can't think that there's been a drastic change in the perspective from our community either around that short.

Not at all. And if anything, cars have gotten faster and stronger and heavier and more dangerous, but they've got.

Safer and they look after themselves and they do most of the driving for you these days. Sea.

And surely, yeah, you and I have been in your car when it's reverse parallel parked itself.

We were terrified, I know, And I get that, and I say that to cheat, because you're right. They are faster, they're heavy, they all those things. There is a whole heap of new safety regulations, I get.

It, and a whole heap of new features, as the Alexander Campbell case proof.

However, my point to that is, and there is something we will touch on down the track that hasn't changed. Obviously. It hasn't brought down the deaths on our roads in any significant numbers.

So not at all.

That isn't a factor in regard to a precautionary or reactive to that. It's not causing anything better.

But if this point in two thousand and three is where I get radicalized and I start talking about this, the fact that years prior to that, sixty years prior to that, three years before I'm even working full time as a journalist at The Advertiser nineteen ninety eighth, before i even start working part time as a paid journalist, people are already saying this is no good. We're recording this in June of twenty twenty four. Yeah, this is what we're dealing with. So that takes us to January sixth of twenty twenty one, when Road to Justice kicked.

Off, right, Okay, I was wondering what that job was. Okay, yep it.

I had spent the years intervening, covering all sorts of different cases, and when Road to Justice came about, I wanted the McEwan family involved, because, as far as I was concerned, that was ground zero for me and for my understanding of the way this worked. I'd kept in touch with them over the years. I'd spoken to Chris a fair bit here and there about different things, and again lovely people. I said to Chris and Roger, I'd like to talk to you about this, about Sonya, about the case, about where everything is, and they said, the person you need to talk to is Greg, because he's still carrying this in a way that he could really do with the opportunity to speak. So Greg and I met up at a cafe in the city and we did an interview, and then subsequently you would meet him when we did the big photo shoot for all the members of the Road to Justice campaign. And this is what I wrote. Almost twenty years later. Missus WARN's brother, Greg McEwan is still angry, but not with Clothier. His fury is focused upon Essays laws and its courts, which gave Clothia bail for his first crime and therefore allowed him to commit another. Clothier should never have been out at all, Greg said, But if they put him on even home to tension, he would not have been behind the wheel that day. I don't fully blame him. I still blame the people who set the rules, the government for allowing him to be on bail. All these years later, I don't think anything has changed. Seeing new cases upsets me just knowing nothing's been done to fix this. I'm not an advocate for always sending people to jail, because prison can ruin lives. People come out worse than when they went in. Everyone makes mistakes while driving, and some of us make mistakes that cost life. Jail is not always the answer to that. But when you're driving without a license, really drunk or really drugged in a police chase, or have a history of offending, there's no reason you shouldn't go to jail. We're talking about recklessness, not about accidents. Greg said the government had a responsibility to ensure public expectations for justice were met. If there's a minimum and a maximum sentence for aggravated causing death by dangerous driving, same as there is for murder and other offenses, then judges can set appropriate penalties. He said. It shouldn't be up to us and the advertiser to campaign for this. There also needs to be more support for families during and after trials. Once you walk out of court, there's no one to help you. There's no one to call, no one to discuss things with, no one to hear your grievances. There should be someone within government or public service whose job it is to do that.

Yeah, I think you and I have mentioned that a number of times, haven't.

We seen from the same hymn book? Right there now? Chris McEwan saw and his mother also spoke, and she said there's no reason to spare the worst of the worst a prison term, and she was very specific on that, she's not wanting to see every single dangerous driver necessarily go to jail.

Sure.

Her feeling was when we're getting into those aggravated cases, those high end cases, that's where prison needs to attach. She said, it's been almost twenty years and we've become a little hardened. The pain is still there, but you don't feel it all the time. But then a new case happens and the pain starts all over again. You remember what it's like, and you worry about the person who's going through it right now.

That's heartbreaking to hear that part, Isn't it like, it's not even it's no longer yours, but you know it's happening again and someone else. It's literally you're pulled back to that same vortex and understanding that someone else is now in that vacuum that I talked about right at the start of this. It's just how heartbreaking that you know you're almost retraumatized knowing that someone else is now traumatized from the same circumstance.

Chris said, in some ways where the lucky ones Sonya's killer was proper held to account, but really that only happened because of the murder. Chlodia got seventeen years for murder and ten months for killing my daughter.

We've spoken about this before. When you talk about that concept, and we've accounted for that courtroom mathematics time and time again. When you look at it like that, you are effectively saying, my daughter's life was only worth ten months.

Yeah, and not even ten months because her best friend's injuries had to be part of that calculation as well.

And that's only as an extension to a non.

Parole period for a man who died and only got seventeen years in terms of his value.

I just struggle so much of that massive admiration to Greg and to Chris, and just knowing you can hear that they are carrying that twenty years on. This hasn't left them. It doesn't go away. It's something that always eats away at you. At that point. Four credit to them for being part of that Road to Justice campaign that you involved in.

Do you remember the day that we did the photoshoot, family very much assumed the role of being the senior members in the audience. They were going around and introducing themselves to everyone else. There were so many hugs, there was so much shared empathy because for a lot of these people it was the first time they'd ever met someone else who had been through something comparable to themselves, and the McEwan family were the old hands at this and the strength and empathy that they lent to everybody else that was in that gathering that day was beautiful to see.

It was. And you know the funny thing from my memory, and that is take away the tragedy that brought all those people together. It was just a really lovely coming together of groups of people and sharing that time space. It's such a horrible circumstance that the commonality, that thread that binds them together is the tragedy of that loss of life around people they loved. Because take that out of it, it was just a lovely occasion.

So it's lovely occasion for the worst of reasons.

This is the thing, and it's horrible. You know get as you said that twenty years on, they still feel that and they still want to do something to make a difference around that. So that it does lead me to a point, though, Shan, that we have to do this. We do, and I'm not sure so how deep this one's going to run, to be honest, but do we find this just and or lawful?

Look, we find it lawful because it follows all of the sentencing regimes that existed then and thanks to Jared Payne, still exists to this day. Just definitely not.

Yeah, okay, And look the key elements you put in there were the legal the legal parameters of the day, many of which still carry on. As he said, just I mean that that last statement sums it up there, you know, seventeen years for murder and ten months for killing Sonya, that statement alone tells you everything you need to know. Whether you or I think it's just, we know firsthand from the mouth there that is absolutely so far from just. It's just it's unbelievably even think that's possible.

And what detractors of change will say straight away is no sentence will ever make victims happy one hundred percent. You are correct, that's not what victims are looking for. They're not looking for bespoke sentences that match exactly what they want. They're looking for some kind of consistency that they can point to and say, my loved one has been lost through these circumstances. This is what I can expect, and what I can expect is in with a realm of feeling just correct.

It's just it's a horrible circumstance all way around. And again for Greg to talk about the fact that his focus is on the actual people who are allowed this to happen and not the person who was responsible for it, admirable. Again. This then leads to, I guess Seawan to the next example that we want to bring, and I'm keen to understand not just the situation, the example, which I'm sure we will pull apart. I want to understand why this was the example that you bought out and why this situation was the one that made it to the Road to Justice campaign as well, because there's like there's always a backstor is a reason that these stories fit to the concept of the story that we're telling at the time for the narrative we need right.

So as much as they're personal, there still need to be archetypes. They still need to be exemplars of the broader problem.

Absolutely, And when we've just had a there was a classic example of that in that last tailing, as tragic as it was. So what is the next example and why is this one the one we need to understand?

One of the other families that was there on that sunny day under the trees at North Adelaide when we did the photo shoot for Road to Justice was the Curtis family, and they and their case was indicative of different parts of the problem. So we've just finished talking about Christopher Clothier. Like it or not, Christopher Clothier was legally on the road at the time that the crash occurred. He was eating, which was itself illegal, but his bail conditions didn't stop him from driving. Clearly, he was out of custody lawfully, there was no restrictions on him driving around. Sure, clearly shouldn't have been, but there were no legal, lawful restrictions stopping him.

Sure.

I wanted to include the Curtis family because their case speaks to what happens when someone is not on the road lawfully, where someone is misbehaving in a criminal manner. Having already committed criminal offenses that mean they shouldn't be behind the wheel, where someone takes liberties with the law, shows complete and wilful disregard for the rules of the road, for the orders of the court, for things like licensed disqualifications, still gets behind the wheel, decides they know better and they're going to go out and do whatever the heck they want to and damn the consequences. Literally, these consequences being damning.

So how does I guess this case become part of road to justice and what's the connective tissue there?

So Ashley Curtis is one of the members of this family, and after this case occurred, there was a case that was very similar to it, and Ashley contacted me, emailed me, and said, we need to do more about this. We want to do more. At this point I said to Ashley, look, I understand, and I empathized, but I'm not sure what else I can do. Remember, it was similar to the conversation that I would eventually have with Lauren Ralph by this point sort of twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen is I was bashing my head against the brick wall. I'd been writing an article every year, including the updated statistics of what the sentences were doing, how they were going up and down, how inconsistent they were, and I just wasn't getting any traction, and it was getting to the point where people within the Advertiser editorially were saying, we don't see the value in doing more stories of this kind. So I had to explain that to Ashley in a polite manner and say, look, you know, you guys have spoken publicly, We've done all. We can not really sure where else to take this. And Ashley said to me, we'll look keep my details on file. If you ever figure out a way forward, let me know, because my family and I would dearly like to be involved in this. And that's why Lauren's contribution to this was so pivotal because unlike so many other survivors and families, she'd never spoken before. Okay, yeah, it was a new news angle, and we keep talking about that intersection between journalism and commerciality. Sure, Lauren brought the commerciality you've never heard this person talk before. That meant that the paper could get behind it. When I then suggested the things that would become road to justice that Lauren had come up with like, that's a great idea. Let's get completely behind that. The other thing that helped was Road to Justice ran in early January, right after the Christmas period, right after when the road tolls at its worst, because the perfect time, the perfect combination of circumstances, and I thought, here's my moment where I can platform Ashley and his family. I can turn over some of the Road to Justice to them and everything they've been wanting to say, they can finally say in a manner that means they're going to be heard and listened to and afforded the space in the paper and in the community mindset.

No coincidences, only convergences, Sean, And it's great that that sort of comes together, and as you said, Lauren, reaching out with that new take on the situation that hadn't been heard before. The idea to be able to think, okay, this now is this concept road to justice? Okay, So that makes understandable sense about how I guess we meld these and other examples we're talking about, but how this case fits this narrative. So with that stage, and you said the Curtis family was a lovely family. Dare I say, how does the Curtis family become involved in this.

So let me tell you about Brenton Curtis. Brenton had a great life. The loves of his life were his children, his grandchildren, his job, and his Sunday bike rides, but most especially his wife, Wendy. Wendy and Brenon were a near beatable team, working around their commitments and Missus Curtis's health issues to forge a life that was filled with love, family, and by twenty seventeen, plans for their future. Missus Curtis said to me, I was fourteen when Brenton and I started dating. I don't really remember a time in my life before he was in my life. It was nearly our fortieth anniversary. We were planning on going to Kangaroo Island and staying somewhere nice to celebrate. To be honest, I was waiting for him to retire so we could have even more time together now. His daughter, Kimberly Gilmore, was pregnant at the time and she couldn't wait for her father to meet the latest member of their growing family. Dad was sixty two, she said, and he was fitter than all of us. He would have plowed on for decades and decades more, But then came October of twenty seventeen, mister Curtis was struck and killed by a driver while he cycled in a Salisbury Plains by Clean. That driver was gerrang Luk. He was nineteen years old. Look was speeding. Look at a blood alcohol level of point one two and Look was suspended from driving at the time, and he neither tried to help mister Curtis nor called Triple zero after the impact. So in an instant, the Curtis family had been robbed of their.

Patriarch and with that and to understand what is the entirety of this Curtis story, how does this tie in and what is the next step along our road to justice? We'll pick this up in our next episode until we get there. As always, a massive thank you to everyone who has listened to either the broadcast episodes on five Double A or you've caught the podcast episodes on neither Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Please go, rate, review, subscribe. We desperately would love to know your feedback, thoughts, feelings, all of that around all of these cases so far in this series. To do that, you can, of course give us your feedback at Just Lawful podcast on Facebook and Instagram. You can follow Sean all of his work with Adelaide and It's True Crime through the advertiser at Shaun Fust on Facebook and until we pick this up to understand how much further down the road to justice do we travel. Enjoy our work, but don't become our work, and we'll speak to you on the next episode of Just Lawful

In 1 playlist(s)

  1. Just Lawful

    182 clip(s)

Just Lawful

Just Lawful - true crime like you've never felt it before. Co-created and co-hosted by Daniel Panozz 
Social links
Follow podcast
Recent clips
Browse 182 clip(s)