Gene Gibson
The Case of Gene Gibson
Our legal system is built on key principles and beliefs that are designed to help protect the rights of all Australian citizens. There are seven principles of justice that we follow to create a just and well-functioning society. These include equality before the law, presumption of innocence, an independent court system, the right to an appeal, the right to silence, high quality of evidence and everyone having the right to a fair hearing. Principles like this help ensure that all people who go to court receive a fair-minded and unbiased trial. These principles are important because without them, our justice system would be reaching the wrong verdicts and sentencing people to jail for the wrong reasons. For example, equality before the law is a key principle in the Australian legal system. Whatever your background is such as race, income level or sex, everyone should all be treated equally. All police, court personnel, legal authorities or representatives should treat the accused or defendant equally no matter what. This main principal links to another law which is that any individual is treated equally by police when they are being questioned. This includes their right to remain silent and not answer any questions from the police. Police shouldn’t force or pressure the accused into a confession without outlining their specific rights first. Everyone is given the right to be warned before questioning that anything they say can be used in court and their right to an interpreter. Although our system is designed to help protect the rights of all Australian citizens, sometimes the system can fail certain people and disadvantage them greatly. Factors like, coercion of suspects and witnesses, trials by media, court delays, language barriers and mental health issues can fail to bring justice to the right person. The case I will be writing about today is the case of Gene Gibson. The justice system here in Western Australia failed to treat him equally and caused a lot of wrongdoing to him.
Gene Gibson was an indigenous Australian man from the western desert community of Kiwirrkurra and suffered from cognitive impairment along with suspected foetal alcohol spectrum disorder. FASD affects a person’s reasoning, judgement and thinking. It makes people with this condition much more susceptible to suggestion. Since he was a young child, he was neglected and forced through hard times. English was his second language, and he was not entirely fluent in understanding and speaking it. On February 2010, a young 21-year-old man named Josh Warneke was found dead on the side of a road after leaving a nightclub by a taxi driver in the early hours of the morning. It was speculated that Mr Warneke was beaten to death in the Kimberley town that morning. 2 years later from his death, police arrested Gene Gibson and took him into custody to be interviewed and charged with murder.
One of our main key principles of the Australian legal system is equality before the law. It means everyone should have an equal playing field when they deal with the law. Mr Gibson’s rights for equal treatment were extremely compromised during his investigations with the police. During the police investigation, many of Gene Gibson’s rights were violated and the principles of justice were not followed. He was forced into a false statement confessing to the crime due to the pressure the police put on him. He was completely clueless to the system and didn’t understand what was happening to him. Police asked him over and over, “if he killed the white boy”. Mr Gibson only agreed to make them stop. At first Gene said he hit Mr Warneke with a car and kept saying a different murder weapon until the right answer was provided to the police. This was an extremely botched handling of the investigation not picked up by any supervisors. It has been found that the detectives who interviewed Gene Gibson were extremely inexperienced in interviewing Aboriginal people from remote communities. This fault was also not picked up by their superiors. There are extremely strict rules to follow especially when dealing with indigenous people to make sure they are treated equally and understand what is happening to them. At first, Gene was interviewed as a witness and then as a suspect. There are very different rights when you are interviewed as a witness compared to a suspect. We can see from evidence that Mr Gibson was not explained his different rights. An interpreter was not used during this first interview and the interview was unrecorded. Due to the fact that Mr Gibson was taken in as a witness, it meant he had limited rights. Allegedly, Mr Gibson made an admission of guilt therefore allowing him to be arrested on suspicion of murder.
In this case Mr Gibson’s right to an interpreter and legal advice were compromised. It led to his police interviews being admissible due to these rights being violated. Evidence was extremely mishandled from the police officers. They eventually faced disciplinary action through an internal investigation that found they had the “knowledge” and “capacity” to do better. During his trial, the judge ruled his confessions as inadmissible meaning his guilty pleading could not be used as high-quality evidence. Justice Hall claimed Mr Gibson’s interview as “They were not voluntary, were obtained in breach of the CIA and to admit them would, in any event, be unfair to the accused.” The police did not explain his rights to remain silent and failed to allow him to understand the case against him along with the implications of his guilty plea. This was because the police officers did not offer an unbiased opinion and were not impartial during the interview processes. Due to his cognitive impairments and language difficulties, he was extremely vulnerable in this situation. He is also extremely susceptible to suggestion meaning he was easy to manipulate without a lawyer or interpreter present. Due to him being extremely susceptible to suggestion its more likely he would have said things to please the police. Mr Gibson had a right to an interpreter during his interview but was not given one. Despite the fact Mr Gibson’s primary language was Pintupi he was not given an interpreter to help him understand. Other sergeants offered to provide an interpreter for Mr Gibson, but this option was declined by the police officers. They decided to keep going with the interviews fully knowing he should have gotten the right to be offered an interpreter. During the interview Mr Gibson made a comment saying he struck the deceased with a vehicle with no relevance and significantly inconsistent to his earlier comments. His interview went on for many hours without understanding he had the right to obtain legal advice. After this, he exercised his right to not answer any more questions whilst the interview stilled continued without any clarifications from the detectives whether Mr Gibson was willing to do so. There was a failure to cease this interview after Mr Gibson’s lawyer advised police that Mr Gibson no longer wanted to answer questions. It was extremely inappropriate for police to dismiss this right Mr Gibson had and continue the interviews.
Another violation of a principle of justice in this case washigh quality evidence. Gene Gibson’s case and prosecution was based off incriminating evidence by two witnesses. He was also speculated to be seen in the car or driving the vehicle. It was recommended through Senior Sergeant Baddok, other witnesses to be interviewed before Mr Gibson but this was ignored. We know his police interview tapes were not admissible. Although the police had these two statements, the prosecutors downgraded the murder statement to manslaughter. This evidence wasn’t strong enough to prosecute him for murder of Josh Warneke. We can speculate that the witnesses were coerced into giving their statements. Soon after, these two statements were then withdrawn by the witnesses proving that the evidence the police used for this case was not of high quality and shouldn’t have been used the deciding factor of this case. In an email from the leading police officer on the case, Mr Gibson was specified to be questioned as a witness. There was not sufficient suspicion to indicated that Mr Gibson was a suspect. The supreme court quoted “that police had breached Gibson’s basic rights by unlawfully detaining him, failing to record the interview, failing to use an interpreter and failing to respect his right to speak with a lawyer.” The evidence they intended to provide to the court was not of high-quality evidence and not enough to prosecute him for the murder of Mr Warneke.
In the trial for Mr Gibson, his jury consisted of mostly Caucasian people with no variety between them. This compromises one of our key principals to have an independent and unbiased jury in court. Mr Gibson’s whole jury being of Caucasian people means they would all share similar beliefs and thoughts which in turn would not be beneficial for a fair jury. He should have been given the right of a jury with no particular race or gender. This makes it more fair in the decision the jury would have come to, whether or not Mr Gibson was guilty of the murder of Mr Warneke.
The right to appeal is another principal of justice the Australian legal system provides us. This allows people who don’t feel the decision made for their case was right. They are allowed to appeal their case provided there are reasonable grounds for the appeal. If the trial can be proved that it was unfair, or there are reasonable grounds the person is not guilty, the case will be brought to a higher court for the appeal. In the case of Gene Gibson this principle was upheld. On November 8th, 2016, Mr Gibson submitted an appeal for his guilty plea on the basis he didn’t understand what was happening. He sought the appeal to withdraw his guilty plea based off not understanding what legal proceedings were happening at the time. This appeal was supported by expert opinions and the court, with evidence proving that Mr Gibson was unable to understand the consequences of pleading guilty to his sentence due to his cognitive impairment, suspected Foetal alcohol spectrum disorder and language barrier. Tests were run to identify Mr Gibson’s cognitive functioning and it was found that Mr Gibson was unlikely to predict situations or outcomes, vulnerable in new situations and he is most likely to become overwhelmed by complex information in unfamiliar situations. We can see from this proposed information from expert opinions and psychologists, Mr Gibson was extremely unsure of what processes were happening around him and what the consequences of his words could have caused him. Mr Gibson’s appeal was granted and a hearing from April 3rd to 6th in 2017 led the WA court of appeals to hold a hearing regarding Mr Gibson’s appeal. It was a unanimous decision to allow Gibson’s appeal to cancel out his conviction and guilty plea. It was a great day of justice when Mr Gibson was released from jail after 4 years and 8 months. He suffered a great miscarriage of justice and the three judges unanimously voted this. It was soon reported Mr Gibson was seeking ex gratia compensation for his time in prison and his wrongful conviction. After his conviction was overturned, Gene was rewarded compensation of AUD $1.3 million and $200,000 to be set aside for legal advice.
The Gibson case has been added to a long list of miscarriages of justice happening. This case highlights the failures that the Australian legal system has done to many people from different backgrounds. The principles of Justice were mostly not upheld through clear evidence in this report, police investigations, and witness statements. Many principles of justice were ignored and there were countless occurrences where equality before the law was violated. Only one instance was justice supported for Mr Gibson and that was his right to appeal his case. If Mr Gibson’s rights were supported from the beginning of this investigation from the police, an innocent man would not have been sentenced to jail for the wrong crime. The W.A police force should have upheld justice much stronger to help Mr Gibson seeing as he had cognitive impairment. He was taken advantage of during this case and became extremely vulnerable to suggestion. It was a botched investigation from the beginning to the end and even Mr Warneke’s mother could see Mr Gibson had done no harm. He was failed to be provided an interpreter during his investigation, his civil rights, and his rights to a lawyer. It has been proven that the investigation was tampered with, and we can see Mr Gibson suffered a miscarriage of justice which he did not deserve. Justice was not upheld and cost him many years of his life. Mr Gibson’s wrongful imprisonment is not something any person should deserve, and it has proved to us the Australian justice system can sometimes fail innocent and underserving people in Australia.