The state of Queensland has still not apologised to Terry Irving – more than 30 years after he was maliciously prosecuted by police and wrongfully jailed for a bank robbery he did not commit.
Irving, an Aboriginal man from north Queensland, spent 1,671 days in prison from 1993 until his conviction was overturned by the high court in 1997.
On Thursday, the Queensland supreme court heard submissions to determine how much compensation Irving is owed. His barrister, Gerard Mullins KC, said the damages should be “significant” after a decades-long fight for vindication and a “complete lack of remorse” from the state.
“There is no other [comparative] case … where the complainant has fought so long to obtain vindication,” Mullins told the court.
“What we see is a complete lack of remorse and apology from either the [prosecuting detective] or the [state] for anything that occurred to him.
“An apology at this point in time, may after so much time has passed, seem hollow in the circumstances.”
‘I’ve been violated’
Outside court on Thursday, Irving said “no amount of money” could make up for an ordeal that had placed him in a small cell at the Stuart prison, and had brought him now to the doorstep of Brisbane’s supreme court building.
“It’s been 31 years since I was wrongfully arrested for an improper purpose,” Irving said.
“I’ve been exonerated, I’ve been vindicated and I’ve been violated. But the state of Queensland refuses to acknowledge their role in this and give me an apology.”
Most Australian jurisdictions, including Queensland, offer no statutory legal remedy for people wrongfully convicted and imprisoned, even if they have been clearly mistreated. They are only entitled to compensation if they can prove their prosecution was malicious.
Irving was initially charged as an accessory to the 1993 armed robbery of $6,000 from the ANZ bank branch in Cairns. While he was held on remand for the accessory charge, police investigated him for the armed robbery. Seven days later he was charged with robbery, and later convicted.
Irving was released from prison by the high court in late 1997, after the state of Queensland conceded he had not received a fair trial. The chief justice, Sir Gerard Brennan, said he had “the gravest misgivings about the circumstances of this case” and that it was “a very disturbing situation”.
In 2021, the state’s court of appeal found he had been maliciously prosecuted by Queensland police in relation to the accessory charge.
The state argued in court on Thursday that Irving should be compensated for the seven-day period he spent on remand on the accessory charge, but not for the period after he was charged with the robbery offence.
Mullins argued that Irving’s ordeal – almost five years in prison and a long-running compensation battle, where the state has shown “no interest in resolving this case” – should factor into the award of compensation.
“Mr Irving has fought for almost 30 years to have vindication for his allegations that he should not have been charged with the accessory charge,” Mullins said.
“He has fought through several jurisdictions and courts in order to get that vindication. He has pursued his case through the UN, through submissions and negotiations with attorneys general and premiers.
“These events … have had a catastrophic impact on his life. Over that time Mr Irving has sought vindication, compensation and an apology.”
Irving told Guardian Australia in 2021 about the impact of his wrongful imprisonment.
“It’s affected me in more ways that I can probably describe,” he said. “There’s a gap of five years in my life, five years in everyone’s lives that I’m connected to, because of what happened.
“Now there’s times when I’m sitting on my own and I reflect upon the enormity of the grief that I feel but that I don’t show. I wish I never had that baggage. But it does exist.”
The hearing continues.
