Alan Hall: Inquiry clears Crown Law of wrongdoing in miscarriage of justice case

An independent report has cleared Crown Law of any wrongdoing despite it failing to act on evidence of Alan Hall's innocence four years ago - but the family says it is not good enough.

Hall spent nearly two decades in prison, but his murder conviction was quashed by the Supreme Court in June last year.

The court conceded Hall's 1986 trial was profoundly unfair and constituted a miscarriage of justice.

Evidence was deliberately altered and interviewing was unfair.

It said there was either extreme incompetence or a deliberate, wrongful strategy to achieve a conviction.

The court found the prosecution did not disclose relevant information to the defence, including a witness statement about the ethnicity of a person seen in the area at the time of the the violent 1985 home invasion.

In December last year, Nicolette Levy KC gave her report to Solicitor-General Una Jagose KC, who then referred some matters to police for more investigation.

She did not release the report publicly, saying she did not want to jeopardise any police investigation, but said a redacted version could be eventually be released.

It has been made public on Friday and shows Crown lawyers were given detailed information in 2018 by journalist Michael Wesley-Smith about the alleged (then later ruled) miscarriage of justice in the case.

Crown Law correspondence said the information was "nothing to do with us".

At the time, the lawyers were aware, the report found, that Hall was being represented by a lawyer and was looking to file another appeal.

The journalist provided a substantial amount of information, and Crown Law staff only gave it a "cursury" look, believing the issues raised by Wesley-Smith could be looked into during the appeal process.

A statement from the Solicitor-General said: "Ms Levy KC has found that lawyers at Crown Law did not fail in their responsibilities when they received information about this case between 2018 and 2020.

"Given this, and the history of the case - Mr Hall had already been to the Court of Appeal, and had been unsuccessful in three applications for the Royal Prerogative of Mercy - Ms Levy does not consider Crown Law was in a position at that point to have seen the miscarriage or taken other action."

The report finds this notion cleared the Crown of having a responsibility to pass on the information or escalate it further.

Levy KC concluded that at that point in time Crown lawyers were not in a position to have identified the miscarriage or taken other action.

'Nothing to do with us'

Wesley-Smith conducted an extensive investigation into the conviction of Hall and gave the evidence to Crown Law, including the prosecution failure to include evidence from a witness about the ethnicity of the person he saw.

The report shows discussion within Crown Law after Wesley-Smith contacted them with information, including that the issues he raised had "nothing to do with us".

It said the material sent by Wesley-Smith was not perused by a lawyer at Crown Law in more than a cursory way in 2018, 2019 or 2020.

"Because of this, the full suite of findings, which later caused the Crown to concede that the appeal should be allowed, was not reached by them."

A detective inspector told staffers the case was "a bit ugly" and outlined problems with it, leaving it up to the discretion of the Crown as to whether there needed to be a proactive assessment of any actions taken.

Crown Law said: "It's all a bit untidy, and we really have no way of knowing what happened after so many years."

"I don't think there is anything we can usefully do at this stage. If/when they bring an appeal we will have to deal with it then. If they go down the prerogative of mercy route then MOJ will do a full investigation, and would likely engage a QC to look into it. I think that would be better than us doing it, given [redacted]."

In replying to Wesley-Smith, Crown Law said in this country it was not possible for the prosecutor to appeal against a conviction.

"However, in practice, it is not uncommon for prosecutors to suggest to convicted persons (or more usually their lawyers) that an appeal be filed if the Crown considers there has been a miscarriage of justice."

Levy concluded that in the circumstances there was no failure by the Crown Law Office lawyers to take appropriate steps to follow up the information provided.

"Those circumstances include that Crown Law Office lawyers knew that an appeal was being initiated by a lawyer instructed by Mr Hall.

"In my view, there was no obligation on the Crown lawyers to fully absorb and analyse the material presented by Mr Wesley-Smith, either for the purpose of commenting on it to him, or in pursuit of a remedy for Mr Hall."

The report outlined how it was not until later that the Crown Law staff understood the significance of the issues raised.

It noted a staffer then wrote about what it implied about the basis of the prosection case: '[It's] just extraordinary (ie extraordinarily bad!!)

The report noted that the original Crown trial file could not be found, and was likely destroyed in 1987.

It said the police file was also incomplete, and some of what would be expected to exist (in particular contemporaneous records of police communications with the Crown Solicitor's office) have not been found.

Only some of the defence file was available.

Levy's report said - as was the procedure at the time - neither the prosecutor nor the Crown Law Office were notified about Hall's appeals to the Governor-General to exercise of the royal prerogative of mercy.

"I have not seen any evidence that a Crown lawyer learned about Mr Hall's case in the course of acting for the Crown before Mr Kaye and Mr Wesley-Smith approached the Crown Law Office in September 2018."

Crown response 'passive' at best - investigator

The Hall family's investigator, Tim McKinnel, said while the family was grateful for the report, they did not believe it was good enough and the Crown should have been forthcoming about the evidence.

"If you are the state agency that is in receipt of information that suggests a miscarriage may have occurred, you should be proactive about that, not passive. And it appears Crown Law were, at best, passive, and in Levy KC's view, that's acceptable, but I think the Hall family disagree," McKinnel said.

Overall, the report was a "pleasing development", McKinnel told Morning Report. Although, it raised a wider issue of the responsibility of the Crown Law office when dealing with miscarriage of justice cases, he said.

McKinnel questioned whether it was their job to resist and be passive or be proactive about information it received.

The report had given the Hall family more information which helped them to understand what happened to Alan, although there were areas they disagreed with - relating to the "highly credible" information the Crown Law office received in 2018 from Wesley-Smith - he said.

"When you have somebody sitting in prison for murder decades after an offence and those are your views, we think that you should be obligated to do something about it," McKinnel said.

The Crown lawyers the family dealt with last year were different to those in 2018, he said.

"The Crown Law office's conduct last year was exemplary. They did everything they could to make sure justice was done. The same can't be said for what happened in 2018.

"If the people who we dealt with last year ... had received the same information in 2018, Alan would've spent substantially less time in prison as an innocent man, we are sure of it."

Hall family responds

Alan Hall's brother, Geoff Hall, told Morning Report the family was not too happy with parts of the report that show Crown Law did not act when they had information that proved Alan's innocence.

Evidence that showed Alan had "nothing to do with this" was given to the Crown four years before his release - meaning he spent a further four years behind bars.

"It's not good enough for our country at this time."

Geoff Hall said he was comfortable with the redactions that had been made to the report as any future trials related to the case needed to be fair.

The public would see the report in its entirety in time, he said.

Geoff Hall told Morning Report his brother was doing "all right" and with another four reports to be released, he knew it was a long road ahead.

He was looking forward to the other reports, including police inquiries, being released.

Alan Hall

After fighting to prove his innocence for 37 years, Hall's murder conviction was quashed June last year in the Supreme Court.

A panel of judges made the decision after even the Crown admitted there had been a miscarriage of justice.

Hall spent a total of 19 years behind bars for the 1985 murder of Arthur Easton - a crime he always maintained he did not commit.

In the nearly four decades Hall and his family spent trying to clear his name, his mother sold the family home to fund his defence and died fighting to prove her son's innocence.