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Action Against Shredders Reconsidered Action Against Shredders Must Now Be Reconsidered By Luke Pentony A criminal law expert has said public officials involved in the shredding of the Heiner documents must still be considered for prosecution. Solicitor and barrister, former Senior Crown Prosecutor and academic, and co-author of the biggest selling case book on evidence in Australia, Peter Waight, was commenting on the recent case in Queensland in which a citizen charged with an offence was sent to trial despite no action being taken against senior public officials who had earlier committed a similar act. (For background see: Shredders Could Have Been Charged; and Public Officials Can Still Be Charged). Mr Waight said he disagreed with former Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Royce Miller's claim that for charges to be brought under section 129 of the Criminal Code [destruction of evidence] legal proceedings had to be "on foot". Mr Miller made the claim in 1995 when he revealed why charges were not laid against those involved in the destruction of the so-called Heiner documents. "My legal view is that [Mr Miller's interpretation of s.129] is not, in fact, correct …a number of judges including High Court judges have commented on that in fairly recent times, and even expressed their views very clearly," Mr Waight said. Mr Waight said charges laid in March this year against a man for destroying pages of a diary when no court proceedings relating to them had begun showed that the current DPP's interpretation of section 129 and that of Mr Miller's were "clearly in conflict". "The two [DPP interpretations of s.129] are totally inconsistent; they can't have it both ways," Mr Waight said. "Either they've got to drop the charges against [the citizen] on the basis that Miller's view is right and still adhered to, or if they say it's wrong, then they've got to re-examine whether the prosecutions arising out of the so-called "Heiner matter" should now be reconsidered," he said. Section 129 of the Criminal Code states that any person who knowingly destroys evidence that is, or may be, required for a judicial proceeding, commits an offence. Mr Waight said interpreting section 129 as requiring judicial proceedings to be "on foot" as suggested by Mr Millar, would cause problems. "It reduces everything down to chance …it seems totally absurd to me to say in one case there is an offence and in the other there can't be. I think the law would be open to serious reproach if that sort of distinction was brought on a charge," Mr Waight said. He also said no time limits existed in criminal law and the DPP could still bring charges against the public officials involved in the shredding of the Heiner documents in 1990. He said this would be consistent with the DPP's stance in the recent Queensland case in which a man acquitted of murder in 1973 was subsequently charged with perjury in connection that matter. "I don't think the DPP can say, 'Oh well, ten years, 13 years, has gone,' because why did they think it appropriate to bring a charge of a much greater time frame?" Mr Waight said. He said, however, that prosecuting a matter a long time after it had taken place could be viewed as an abuse of the process of the court. Mr Waight held the positions of Senior Crown Prosecutor in Papua New Guinea (which adopted the Criminal Code of Queensland) from 1969 to 1973 and Senior Lecturer in Law at the Australian National University between 1974 and 1996. The text on criminal law and evidence he co-authored with Monash University's Professor Bob Williams is now in is sixth edition. Top 1284 page visits Content Management Software 2008