Falsely Convicted – Neil Mercer

In Falsely Convicted, Walkley Award-winning journalist Nick Mercer unravels nine serious miscarriages of justice and judicial failures of the Australian legal system. These are nine back-to-back stories of people who were wrongfully imprisoned, publicly shamed, and later exonerated, with the fight for justice often led by journalists or dedicated loved ones. My friends at Allen & Unwin were kind enough to send me a copy for review.

The first, and most disturbing, thing I learned from Falsely Convicted is that there is no clear process or established protocol for redressing a miscarriage of justice. Once someone is released from being wrongfully imprisoned in this country, they rarely receive so much as a “sorry”, let alone any compensation for the years lost and trauma endured. They are abandoned by a system that has already failed them in the most horrifying of ways.

That’s because Australia, on the whole, has yet to adopt Article 14(6) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights – the right to be compensated after exoneration. The ACT is the only Australian state/territory that has adopted Article 14(6), so if you’re going to be the victim of a miscarriage of justice, best to do it there, I suppose.

Another confronting element Falsely Convicted is the fact that a miscarriage of justice can happen to anyone. As these nine stories illustrate, anyone – from respectable semi-retired schoolteachers to hardened criminals – can find themselves caught in the clutches of the ‘justice’ system at the whim of cops and prosecutors who don’t want to admit they got it wrong.

Given that it’s kind of a bummer, I think Falsely Convicted could have done with a strong introduction and/or conclusion, some kind of unifying message that’s a little more hopeful than “it could happen to you or your loved ones, and if it does, you’re on your own, kid”. As fascinating as these stories are, I finished Falsely Convicted feeling rather discouraged and despondent.

Read Falsely Convicted on audiobook via Libro.fm here. (affiliate link)