News came to me last week (Nov 06) in New York of the tragic death of Queensland police officer Stewart Kerlin. It is sad to hear of anyone having their life cut short by such an horrendous circumstance.
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But I wonder too if Officer Kerlin was not a victim in other ways. I was distressed to hear of reports by private detectives of the practice of “trawling” by the Argos Task Force (Queensland Police. In plain language, this means that police set out to get a conviction by ignoring all favourable reports of the suspect, and only searching out those items of evidence, which are unfavourable.
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The Revelation of “trawling” in Great Britain and elsewhere has led to the overturning of many false convictions, especially in sexual crimes/allegations of the “Recovered Memory” kind.
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I attended one of the trials of William Theodore (Bill) D’Arcy, in which Officer Kerlin gave evidence. One of D’Arcy’s barristers wanted to cross-examine Kerlin about the trawling practices of the Argos Task Force. Judge O’Brien would not allow the questioning! I wrote a respectful letter to Judge O’Brien asking why he did this. He did not reply.
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Maybe he is not allowed to.
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