On Friday (18/1/19) I filed a Special Leave to Appeal application with the High Court of Australia which re-agitates unchallenged allegations of paedophile and bribe taking judges in NSW. They are allegations that numerous judges of the NSW Supreme Court worked to have suppressed for over 18 months and even while I was in jail for being convicted of making part of the allegations in court. The suppression orders are now lifted as they did nothing more than scandalise the court by making it look corrupt for having the suppression orders in the first place.
They have failed in the cover-up attempt and now the allegations will be ventilated in the High Court of Australia at least to some degree and if it goes to a hearing with the full bench then there is a strong possibility that some of the states will intervene and put the spotlight on the issue even more.
It is not a case of if I was stitched up but to what degree. I was originally given a sentence of 18 months with a non-parole period of 13 months but on appeal it was reduced to a fixed term of 4 months. So even the judges in the court of Appeal agreed, even though they didn’t expressly say so, that I was stitched up excessively as far as the sentence was concerned because they gave me an 80% reduction.
I was found guilty of contempt of court for calling registrar Christopher Bradford a suspected paedophile and known bribe taker and Justice Clifton Hoeben a paedophile on the 3rd of February 2017. I refute the allegations as what I said was taken out of context and the transcript was edited. Although I admit making the allegations on my website. But even so, it was political communication and I shouldn’t have been charged with contempt.
I also mentioned Chief Justice Tom Bathurst’s name but did not accuse him of anything. You can watch the video of what happened in court by clicking here. I was also found guilty of a further two contempts for breaching suppression orders for writing an article telling people what happened. Suppression orders that should never have been issued in the first place and that are now lifted.
Two media websites wrote articles about my jailing. Crikey wrote an article (Click here to read) and True Crimes News Weekly also wrote an article (Click here to read).
Background
The background to the matter can be found in my orignal post on I wrote in February 2017 titled “Chief Justice Bathurst has journalist charged with contempt for accusing him of corruption“ (Click here to read) and a previous article after I was jailed which says:
Australian journalist Shane Dowling has been jailed for publishing articles exposing paedophile judges and judges taking bribes. The exact charge against Mr Dowling is contempt of court because he repeated in court on the 3rd of February 2017 part of an article he had published and also for publishing an article about the contempt proceedings in breach of suppression orders.
Chief Justice Tom Bathurst has been trying to jail Shane Dowling since he sent an email to all the judges of the Supreme Court of NSW and wrote an article in September 2016 titled “Paedophile priest gets 3 months jail for raping 3 boys by NSW Supreme Court’s Justice Hoeben”. (Click here to read) In the email, which was also published in the article, Chief Justice Tom Bathurst was named as a known paedophile and 17 other judicial officers were named as known paedophiles or suspected paedophiles and allegations of judicial bribery were also raised.
Chief Justice Tom Bathurst had the NSW Police raid Mr Dowling’s unit in June 2017 and charge him for sending the email. The charge was withdrawn by the Commonwealth Director of Prosecutions on the 28th March 2018 as it was a blatantly malicious charge.
Mr Dowling raised a number of precedents in his last article which support why he shouldn’t have been found guilty as he was only exercising his right to free speech and political communication. Click here to read the last article: Journalist Shane Dowling to be sentenced to possible jail for criticizing a judge and Registrar Christopher Bradford.
The conviction and sentencing judgements are now published but they were suppressed until the 12th of November 2018 which was 3 days before my appeal. That in itself says how dodgy my conviction was and another reason why the High Court should hear my appeal and have a very close look at what really happened.
Conviction judgment – Prothonotary of the Supreme Court of New South Wales v Shane Dowling [2017] NSWSC 664 (3 August 2017) (Click here to read)
Sentencing judgment – Prothonotary of the Supreme Court of New South Wales v Shane Francis Dowling [2018] NSWSC 1301 (22 August 2018) (Click here to read)
Bail hearing – Dowling v Prothonotary of the Supreme Court of New South Wales [2018] NSWCA 233 (17 October 2018) (Click here to read)
Bail was refused but Justice Leeming made the obvious observation on how scandalous the suppression orders where were he says at paragraphs 5 and 6.
- Secondly, neither of the judgments recording Mr Dowling’s conviction and sentencing is presently published on Caselaw. I was told that there are pending proceedings in the Common Law Division to permit what the Crown Advocate described as only slightly redacted versions of those judgments being made available, which were to be heard on 8 November.
- I shall return to this below, but, as I indicated in terms during the hearing, I regard it as a very serious thing for the Prothonotary, an officer of this Court, to prosecute Mr Dowling for criminal contempt, and for this Court to find him guilty and sentence him for a term of imprisonment for 18 months, other than in a way which is completely transparent.
In other words Justice Leeming said there was no justification for the suppression orders and it was very disconcerting they were ever ordered in the first place.
Justice Wilson’s judgment lifting the suppression orders after 18 months – Prothonotary of the Supreme Court of New South Wales v Dowling (No 6) [2018] NSWSC 1715 (12 November 2018) (Click here to read)
Appeal judgment – Dowling v Prothonotary of the Supreme Court of New South Wales [2018] NSWCA 340 (21 December 2018) (Click here to read)
My appeal was heard on the 16th of November and that day they gave orders for my release on the 21st of December but did not publish their reasons until the 21 December 2018.
Interestingly the main reason the suppression orders were put on what I said in court was to protect Chief Justice Tom Bathurst, Justice Clifton Hoeben and Registrar Christopher Bradford. Even though the suppression orders have been lifted none of the judgments name them so they have suppressed their names anyhow.
Special Leave to Appeal High Court of Australia application – I filed my application with the High Court’s Sydney registry on Friday the 18th of January 2019 as the first page below shows. (Click here to see the full application)
Process for Special Leave to Appeal
From my reading of the process generally 2 judges, sometimes more, will hear the argument of why the matter should be granted Special Leave to Appeal. If successful then the full 7 judges of the High Court will hear the appeal. The process could take a while but they have expedited issues in the past so it is impossible to guess what the time frame will be for any decisions. If my matter is refused Special Leave to Appeal I would find it very disturbing given the unchallenged allegations, real and perceived bias, abuse of process and the ignoring of previous High Court of Australia precedents.
Time in jail at St Heliers Correctional Centre – Muswellbrook
I went to jail on the 22 August 2018 and went through the normal process of being bounced around a few jails for a few weeks until I was classified and given a jail to do my sentence at. I was given a C2 classification which is minimum security and sent to St Heliers Correctional Centre (as per the below picture) which is just outside the town of Muswellbrook about 4 hours from Sydney and about 2 hours north-west Newcastle.
St Heliers Correctional Centre – Muswellbrook
I think doing jail for what you say is scandalous and we are about to see what the High Court has to say about it
Some issues for the High Court of Australia
At the sentencing hearing in August 2018 Justice Helen Wilson said it was “not what I said” but “where and how I said it” that resulted in me being charged with contempt. She said for example she did not careless if I called her a bribe taker outside of court. If it is legal to accuse judges outside of court of committing crimes then it is also legal to say the same thing in court as it does not make any difference. I’m sure the High Court will agree.
The huge reduction in sentence shows I was stitched up at the original hearing by Justice Helen Wilson. Why? She was obviously acting on the instructions of Chief Justice Tom Bathurst who instructed senior court staff to have me jailed in September 2016 as the witness statement of NSW Supreme Court CEO and Principle Registrar Chris D’Aeth shows. (Click here to read more)
Public support
There is no doubt in my mind that the support of the followers of this website, Facebook page and Twitter account helped in having my sentence significantly reduced. I know many people pushed hard about the injustice of my jailing on social media, wrote to the federal and state Attorney-Generals as well as other politicians. And for that I am very grateful and thank you to those who supported.
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