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THE High Court has overturned a time-honoured belief that a convicted person will be free once they have completed their full jail sentence. Six of seven High Court judges ruled yesterday as constitutionally valid a Queensland law that allows dangerous sex offenders to be jailed indefinitely after they had served their full sentence. State Parliament passed the Dangerous Prisoners (Sexual Offenders) Act in 2003 because it was alarmed that a group of dangerous rapists, sexual predators, and pedophiles were about to be freed with their terms in prison up. The Act was conceived after the public outcry in January 2003 when child rapist Dennis Raymond Ferguson, then 54, was freed. It was originally designed to cover offenders sentenced before judges in Queensland were given an option to put them away indefinitely. The law was not needed in Ferguson's case, as he was behind bars on fresh charges after reoffending in NSW. However Attorney-General Rod Welford has applied to have seven dangerous sex offenders jailed indefinitely. One of the first is Robert John Fardon, who has been convicted of rape twice. In 1978 he raped a 12-year-old and bashed her 15-year-old sister. Ten years later, just 20 days after he was released on parole from prison for the first crime, he raped, bashed and sodomised a 20-year-old woman. He was due for release in June 2003 after completing a 14-year sentence for the second rape. Premier Peter Beattie said he was delighted at the High Court's decision. Mr Beattie said the State Govsrnment could not ignore the real possibility of sexual predators reoffending. "It's the right decision for the safety of Queenslanders - particularly women and children," Mr Seattle said. He urged civil libertarians not to oppose it. However Australian Council for Civil Liberties president Terry O'Gorman expressed dismay at the decision. "There is a real risk that Queensland and other state governments will use today's High Court decision to keep other categories of prisoners beyond so-called dangerous sexual offenders in prison after their full-time prison release date," Mr 0'Gorman said. Mr Beattie said the law would not be extended to other categories of offenders such as murderers. Mr Welford had to argue to the Supreme Court that Pardon remained an unacceptable risk and get the court to agree to jail him indefinitely. It did. This saw the Prisoners Legal Service on Pardon's behalf challenge the validity of Mr Welford's law. It challenged it first in the Queensland Court of Appeal and when it lost 2-11, secondly in the High Court. The High Court's decision means Pardon will stay in jail subject to reviews of his indefinite sentence conducted through the court. In his judgment, Chief Justice Murray Gleeson said concerns such as civil liberties were broader than what the High Court considered. "This case, however, is not concerned with those wider issues ... the outcome turns upon a relatively narrow point," he said. Justice Gleeson said the legal case was about whether the Queensland law impinged the integrity of the Supreme Court. He concluded it did not. In his dissenting judgment, Justice Michael Kirby said the Dangerous Prisoners (Sexual Offenders) Act was unique in Australia because it allowed a person to be detained because of a potential to break the law. "Experts in law, psychology and criminology have long recognised the unreliability of predictions of criminal dangerousness," he said. "The Act deprives people ... of personal liberty, a most fundamental human right, on a prediction of dangerousness, based largely on the opinions of psychiatrists who can only be, at best, an educated or informed guess." The Courier Mail (2-10-2004) Chris Griffith |
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