- Being involved with
Kathleen's tragic journey has been one of the most challenging and rewarding matters I've
actually ever taken on because Kathleen is a beautiful woman who lost her four children
to a complex illness, but instead of being able
to grieve for her losses, she was confronted with the
full institutional force of the New South Wales police, the judiciary, the prison system, and an extremely hostile
Attorney-General's office. Now, how Kath has survived this ordeal is a story in its own right. I mean, it is a great story of resilience. So, first of all, we now know, 'cause we've got all the backstory, right? I mean, we have got thousands and thousands of pages of information. A lot of it's confidential. It's never ever been made public. What we do know, though, was
Kathleen was actually targeted by the New South Wales police
and without any evidence to suggest that she actually did anything, 'cause, after all, three of her children had had incredibly poor health, epileptic fits, being
in and out of hospital. You know, these weren't
four healthy babies that, you know, she just whacked. That's rubbish, these
were incredibly ill kids, except for one. So, they targeted her. She was in prison then for 20 years, of which most of that time she spent in isolation for her own safety. Now, child killers are prison scum, and she became fully
aware of the consequences of this terrible title. How did we manage this? Well, first of all, it began through a true friendship from Tracy. Without Tracy, none of us would
be here telling this story. Now, we came together in this
incredibly effective team. Here is Team Folbigg, and
we managed to wrench open the Attorney-General's
office using tactics more commonly found, which
I used to use in my days when I raided corporate
entities, so hostile takeovers, which I've done quite a few of, but we used scientific skill, media network, and political pressure. And, of course, we had
a committed legal team, and that's how we righted Australia's worst judicial wrongdoing. - One of the things I've learned
in working with scientists and gathering their evidence
is that the more volatile our world becomes, the
more uncertain it becomes, the more we need science and
the more we need to be able to draw on science to guide
our actions and our decisions, and this was absolutely evident in the Kathleen Folbigg case. It offers a fantastic demonstration case of how science and the law should interact and how things could be
done better in the future, and an absolutely extraordinary
example of how science and scientists fought to
be heard in a legal system that is currently ill-equipped
to deal with the pace of scientific and technological change. We got involved because we are
all about bringing evidence to decisions, and this is no different. We're often associated
with bringing evidence to our parliament and to
assisting the decisions of ministers, but bringing
it to the justice system is something that is equally important. We were involved in the
independent selection of experts, so we were able to literally
look at where the experts were across the world in the correct
sub-disciplines to be able to give the most up-to-date
and best scientific evidence to that inquiry so it could be heard. Some of the reasons we need
independent scientific advisors is because there is great misuse of statistics in our courts. Prosecution often chooses experts often because they're
the people they know. They're good performers. They know that in interrogating them, they can get to a certain
point and that's where it ends. Defence often don't have
the resources to be able to come back, or even to identify
experts to bring forward. So, an independent advisor would be able to overcome some of that. These are some of the wonderful
people who came forward and signed a petition to petition the Governor of New South Wales to ask for a mercy plea
to have Kathleen freed. So, what have we learned from this? From the Australian Academy
of Science's perspective, there are three important
law reform opportunities that we are focusing on
and seeking to bring about. So, one of them is the introduction of a reliability standard for
the admissibility of evidence. The second is a mechanism
to select experts who are independent and
by reliable sources, and thirdly, the establishment
of a post appeals mechanism. Wherever decisions are made,
they need to be informed by evidence, including
in our justice system. - For the past 20 years, I've stood for my
friend, Kathleen Folbigg, a woman who was once considered Australia's most hated woman, Australia's worst serial killer, but through all that
noise and the accusations and the venom, I, along with
a small group of friends, Megan, Alana, I'm not sure
if they're listening tonight, but we all hung in there. Our close friendship and a handful of other
people believed in something far greater than the
stories told about Kath. We actually believed in the truth, and that's why we kept
going for all these years. This was about rewriting a narrative, about ensuring that justice was served and that the whole truth, including those damn diaries, prevailed. For the first time, I felt vindicated. These incredibly skilled, well connected, high-profile individuals
were standing beside us, willing to be counted,
and that was amazing, and for the first time,
I actually felt hope, and that felt pretty good. And I hope this case inspires you all to adjust your own worldviews, to reassess who you are and
what you're willing to see and do in this rapidly changing world. I hope it encourages you
all to expand your concepts of caring beyond yourself,
your family, and your work to encompass many other
things other than that. It's up to each of you to be the very best humane beings you can be. - I do want to tell you a
little bit about my experience with DNA profile evidence,
which is my main area of expertise, 'cause
I think it's relevant, and just to highlight,
Anna-Maria showed you a headline about, oh, the chances
of four babies dying in one family is one in
a trillion or something. Of course, the number is nonsense. You know, there are
instances of this occurring around the world, although, of
course, it's extremely rare. The one in a trillion, even if it's true, it doesn't really mean
anything on its own. There are a lot of, rare
events happen, you know. The rarity of an event on its own doesn't really say anything. What the, kind of, scientific
approach to evaluating evidence is, how likely is this evidence
if the prosecution is right, how likely is this evidence
if the defence is right? So, you've got to think about both sides. Just the unlikeliness of the event on its own doesn't tell you very much. You've got to weigh it up,
it's unlikely under this case, but it's also unlikely on the other case, and it's got to be much more unlikely under the defence case, in other words, much more likely under
the prosecution case, hugely more likely to get a conviction beyond reasonable doubt. In Kathleen's case, it's clear. You know, obviously I've now
read quite a lot about it. It's just astonishing, in retrospect, how little real evidence there was. We heard from Tracy
about the diary evidence that really doesn't amount to very much, but also, people can't
get their heads around this rareness of four
deaths in one family, and that also doesn't
amount to much on its own. I mean, possibly the prosecution could have made a case, but they didn't. There is a science of doing it properly, and we've just got to get this promoted more widely in the system. That's what I'm trying to do. - What I've realised, when you go through
appeals processes, too, you bloody well, excuse the language, but get it right at the trial, because whatever comes thereafter is "the truth", and
that's what you're trying to actually overturn. You only have limited
capacity to do stuff, right? And the outcome for the
trial meant that the truth was that Kath killed her
children and the diaries were the truest form of
evidence that said she did it. Garbage, to me, like, absolute garbage. We find then that we get an inquiry, and when I think that
perhaps we might actually get some experts in the
room, we get three days of some of the worst cross-examination I have ever seen in a courtroom, and if you haven't heard
it, it's all online. Do yourself a favour, go and listen to it. I'm sure your toes will curl. It was disgusting. So, you've got that, and then, you know, you get Blanch that says
he's even more convinced that she's guilty now,
and Kath and I just went, "How does this happen?" So, we actually had a
really robust conversation about whether we were
gonna go, and it was just that the diaries were brought
in this time, 'cause they go, "Hey, that's technically
new evidence, right?" If you actually stuffed up and didn't do it the
right way the first time, then if you're gonna do it
the right way, bring it in. Then that's new evidence, isn't it? So, we were really happy
that Kath's legal team then brought it in, and then we were able to bring in some of these other cases and actually have real conversations about this stuff and bring in the truth. - It will become ever more
important to have very accurate, meaningful, and accessible
science communication to those people making decisions,
that's judges and jurors, to put them in the best positioned place to be able to draw a
conclusion, and sometimes, that material will be
grey, will be uncertain. Scientists have no problem at
all dealing with uncertainty if it is presented in a
way where the boundaries of that evidence are well described, where, you know, margins
of error are described, the level of certainty
we have around evidence and material presented is well described. You equip and empower
decision-makers to make a best possible decision
with the available evidence. At the moment, that's not happening. So, I don't think we
should do away with jurors, I don't think we should
do away with judges. Our system mostly works for
us, but we do need to be able to give them the most accurate
and accessible information, with all of the parameters
around it, around the certainty with which they can take that information.