The inquiry will look into suspected gay-bashing deaths over the past four decades.Credit:Stock
Under the Special Commissions of Inquiry Act,the commissioner is required to disregard evidence that would be unlikely to be admissible in a court,whether in civil or criminal proceedings.
A royal commissioner,on the other hand,could go fishing and consider the likes of tip-offs and hearsay to see whether this might lead to something more concrete – evidence which,with further exploration,might one day become admissible.
Many will take heart from Justice John Sackar’s appointment,though his task is colossal. He will consider the manner and cause of death in suspected gay-hate crimes,including those that remain unsolved among 88 deaths already reviewed by the NSW Police Force’s Operation Parrabell. He has until June 2023 – just over a year – to report.
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Premier Dominic Perrottet rightly says these “unsolved deaths have left loving families without answers for too long”. Can the Sackar inquiry reasonably be expected to provide concrete answers – such as evidence that might lead to prosecutions – in this time frame?
How much of that time might be devoted to cases that are most likely to yield results? Might there be special attention,for instance,regarding the death of William Rooney,which was written off as a drunken fall in a Wollongong lane in 1986,although some local detectives believed his killer was a man convicted of sadistic attacks on 12 other men?
One of those 12 told police that his assailant had said:“I’ll kill you like I did the other poofter in the laneway.”