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[This edited version of the report has been prepared by Dr Robert N Moles]

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Article: Australian law on miscarriages of justice
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30 August 2007 Daily Telegraph / AAP “Killers lose appeal over confessions”

It said that the High Court today dismissed an appeal by four convicted killers over a controversial technique used by Victoria police to extract their confessions. The killers challenged the legality of the so-called "Canadian model", whereby undercover police recruit a suspect into a phoney crime gang, win their trust and persuade them to confess past wrongdoings. The applicants were child-killer Malcolm Joseph Thomas Clarke, who killed six-year-old Bonnie Clarke in 1982; Shane John Hill, a heroin addict who beat his stepbrother to death with a brick; Alipapa Tofilau, who killed his girlfriend and Matthew Joseph Marks, who murdered his great-aunt.

All were convicted after making admissions to undercover police who had befriended them months or years after initial investigations. In a majority of six to one, the full bench of the High Court, sitting in Canberra today, dismissed the appeals, finding the confessions were voluntary and admissible as evidence. The court held that the confessions of all four were procured by inducements, but that the people holding out the inducements - police officers posing as criminals - were not persons in authority.

The court found that although the confessions were obtained by deception, there was no duress or intimidation and the confessions were voluntary. Kim Romeo, the mother of one of the victims, said today's judgment allowed her and her family to finally move on. Belinda Romeo, 24, was strangled by Tofilau in June, 1999. "I made a promise to Belinda at her grave that I wouldn't rest physically or emotionally until the person was charged and convicted," Ms Romeo said."Now I feel I can let her go and that finally myself, Belinda's father Tony, her brothers and sisters and our extended family can finally move on ... I know Belinda would have wanted that."

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