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No compo for wrongfully convicted woman

By Tony Barrass

3 June 2008 - A PILBARA Aboriginal woman who spent more than two years in prison for murder before being acquitted of the crime will not receive any compensation for her wrongful conviction and incarceration.

West Australian Attorney-General Jim McGinty told The Australian yesterday that he agreed with advice given to him by Solicitor-General Robert Meadows QC not to make any ex gratia payment to Jeanie Angel, now 47.

This follows a decision by West Australian police in January not to launch a cold-case review of the investigation into the killing of another itinerant Aboriginal woman, Jean Richards.

Ms Angel, who was found guilty by an all-white jury in Port Hedland in 1989 of murdering Richards, was subsequently acquitted of the crime in 1991. Ms Angel never received a formal apology nor compensation, and her four-year-old son, Wayne, died of a brain infection at Perth's Princess Margaret Hospital while she was in prison.

Through her Geraldton lawyer, George Giudice, Ms Angel has sought compensation from a succession of attorneys-general for a murder conviction that the Court of Criminal Appeal found was unsafe.

When the Crown did not challenge Ms Angel's appeal, it conceded it "would be in a genuine quandary as to being able to prove beyond reasonable doubt who it was who caused the death of the deceased".

Ms Angel, while admitting she slapped Richards during an altercation, has repeatedly claimed she was bullied by detectives and hit over the head with an empty plastic cordial bottle during questioning, a claim vigorously denied by police.

Police have acknowledged that it was not until after Ms Angel's acquittal that several other Pilbara Aboriginal women were identified as suspects in the case. Ms Angel was unavailable for comment yesterday.

Source: The Australian

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