Having submitted the second petition for a posthumous pardon for Raymond Bailey to the South Australian Attorney-General in February 2022 I succeeded in gaining massive publicity for the fight in the Weekend Australian of April 2 2022, thanks to journalist the and author Matt Condon.
The grandson of defence barrister Arthur Pickering QC contacted the newspaper to say he possessed Pickering's diaries. I wrote to the grandson asking if he would be prepared to send me the 1958 diary. Despite the risk to his grandfather's reputation he decided that trying to right an injustice was more important.
I read and analysed the voluminous and detailed diary. The contents were deeply disturbing and on May 20 2022 I published this damning summary.
New evidence of how a QC's incompetence led to Raymond John Bailey being hanged for a murder he could not have committed has emerged in the barrister's intimate personal diary.
Bailey went to the gallows in 1958 despite his alleged confession of murder being contradicted by the prosecution rather than by defence counsel Arthur Pickering QC.
The alleged confession had been concocted by rogue Queensland Detective Glen Hallahan but Pickering chose to believe it rather than his own client's protestations of innocence.
Pickering's fatal failure is already one of 20 reasons listed in a petition for a posthumous pardon for Bailey being considered by the South Australian Government.
But the diary reveals Pickering:
In diary entries for February 25 and 28 1958 dealing with Bailey's committal, Pickering, a tall, thin man with a small, bristly moustache and comb-over hair who had just turned 53, referred to "the confession" as a fact.
But it should have been obvious to him that the account of the killings in the alleged confession did not match the facts given in evidence by the prosecution.
In an entry on the first day of the actual trial Pickering shows his lack of faith in Bailey's innocence, writing: "... if Bailey gives evidence he will be sunk."
What he should have been doing was demolishing Hallahan's statement and the alleged confession one lie at a time.
Pickering accepted the brief to defend Bailey for £400 (equivalent to nearly six months' average income at the time) on February 12 1958.
The committal hearing took place that month and the trial was set for April but on March 18 Pickering wrote: "Arranging to postpone Bailey's case so as to take on T.V. application."
Rupert Murdoch, Frank Packer and an advertising conglomerate would be competing in a four-day government-instituted inquiry in Adelaide to determine which should be recommended to run the sole, massively-profitable commercial television station for the city.
The hearings from Tuesday May 6 to May 9 would leave Pickering only the weekend of May 10 and 11 to prepare for the opening of Bailey's trial on May 12 but with each of the licence applicants hiring QCs the fee and the prestige of the occasion trumped the £400 Bailey fee and the risk posed by the hangman.
But on Saturday May 10, after a full week concentrating on the inquiry, the QC played golf in the morning. "Pain in my left shoulder. Home reading the Sundown murder. Iris [his wife] put on a turn because I have not taken her out lately."
This was his first mention in the diary of the case since February 28. Was he able to concentrate?
On the Sunday before the television inquiry Pickering had spent seven hours of preparation, followed by the whole of the Monday afternoon.
However, on Sunday May 11, with Bailey due to step into the dock the next day, he played golf again, complaining about his left shoulder "which pained me all the round. Too much to drink before we started...Back to the library to work for an hour."
Next there were guests for a meal "then to bed to read the Sundown brief."
So, affected by "too much to drink" the man entrusted with trying to save Bailey from the hangman spent many hours less preparing for this life-and-death case than he had for the television inquiry.
In fact, Pickering sometimes relegated work on Bailey's case to brief periods after social occasions.
February 24: He attended a cathedral service to mark the opening of the legal year then had lunch, went to a judges' reception 4.15 to 5.15. "Then back to the office for a while. Home and dinner about 7 and to work on the Sundown murder case for tomorrow."
According to the diary he had not touched the brief on the weekend of February 22 and 23.
It was his first diary entry about the case since the 18th.
The brief studies of May 10 and 11 have already been highlighted.
May 18: "Did some work on Bailey's case until 12." Then golf.
Throughout this period Pickering mentioned his excessive drinking and the effect it had on him.
April 11: "I will have to put my foot down about our pre-lunch drink. It usually turns into 3 and no one can work properly in the p.m."
May 2: "Had a lot too much to drink."
May 3. Saturday "Woke with a hangover and was reluctant to get up. Got breakfast and then returned to bed until 10."
How much did he drink?
January 4: "Home about 1am after consuming a lot of Scotch."
March 29: "I brought John Dodds home and we consumed a bottle of Goddard's Rum. Then Iris and Judith came home and we had a few drinks with John."
And the effect?
March 9: A party till 1am. March 10: "Felt very jaded when I woke....Very tired all day. I must get some sleep. I have been sleeping badly and have got into the habit of waking about 3am and having to go to the toilet."
March 19: "I have been feeling tired and jaded lately...my sleep has been very broken for the last week."
March 20: "I attended the Barossa Valley Bacchus Club dinner...finished in the bar at 2am."
March 21: "Woke feeling somewhat lousy, a feeling which persists all day."
May 21: "So tired I could hardly work at all."
May 24: Woke "with a heck of a hangover."
June 13: "Woke with a heck of a hangover and was tired all day."
Pickering was a wealthy man, remarking on March 27 that it was "ludicrous" that he earned more than the chief justice - about £4,000, or 4.5 times the average male income in South Australia.
But he recorded on April 28: "I am not at all happy about having to work so hard for such a small net return."
And the next day: "Express Freight case all day. Am getting sick of it and don't know if I'm going to win...I shocked John Bray today by telling him I regarded the law lately as merely a rotten laborious way of earning a living."
Bailey's father, a carpenter, had managed to find the equivalent of about six months' income, to pay Pickering but the QC complained in his diary on June 2: "Back to the office to work at high pressure on Bailey's appeal for tomorrow. He certainly is getting good value for the £400 I received from his father."
Then he was off to lunch and other business.
The deteriorating state of Pickering's state of mind and health reached a new low on the most crucial day of Bailey's trial. The QC had staked everything on keeping Bailey out of the witness box.
So the entire defence case rested on Pickering making the speech of a lifetime to the jury.
Here's how he recorded it in his diary:
"Woke feeling like a heart attack. Heart appeared to be operating very irregularly. Never felt like it before Bailey case. I started my address about 10 to 12. Felt better once I was on my feet. Finished about 3.30 and judge summed up till 5.30. Jury retire and we went down to the Thistle for a drink in the new cocktail bar and then had dinner. Verdict Guilty at 7.10 and sentence of death." ..."Drove Arthur Mangan home and had a few drinks..."
On June 16 Pickering suffered a severe stroke "and I then spent the next six weeks in bed hovering between life and death..."
Once he had recovered, the QC, who had never mentioned any empathy towards Bailey's plight, made no mention that on June 24 Bailey had been hanged by the neck until he was dead.
The grandson of defence barrister Arthur Pickering QC contacted the newspaper to say he possessed Pickering's diaries. I wrote to the grandson asking if he would be prepared to send me the 1958 diary. Despite the risk to his grandfather's reputation he decided that trying to right an injustice was more important.
I read and analysed the voluminous and detailed diary. The contents were deeply disturbing and on May 20 2022 I published this damning summary.
New evidence of how a QC's incompetence led to Raymond John Bailey being hanged for a murder he could not have committed has emerged in the barrister's intimate personal diary.
Bailey went to the gallows in 1958 despite his alleged confession of murder being contradicted by the prosecution rather than by defence counsel Arthur Pickering QC.
The alleged confession had been concocted by rogue Queensland Detective Glen Hallahan but Pickering chose to believe it rather than his own client's protestations of innocence.
Pickering's fatal failure is already one of 20 reasons listed in a petition for a posthumous pardon for Bailey being considered by the South Australian Government.
But the diary reveals Pickering:
- Worried about his excessive drinking and hangovers which affected his work,
- Prioritised a commercial brief over the life-and-death Bailey case,
- Sometimes relegated work on Bailey's case to brief periods after social occasions
- Was disillusioned with the law and jaded,
- Had fallen out of touch with mainstream values, and
- Was heading for a severe stroke.
In diary entries for February 25 and 28 1958 dealing with Bailey's committal, Pickering, a tall, thin man with a small, bristly moustache and comb-over hair who had just turned 53, referred to "the confession" as a fact.
But it should have been obvious to him that the account of the killings in the alleged confession did not match the facts given in evidence by the prosecution.
In an entry on the first day of the actual trial Pickering shows his lack of faith in Bailey's innocence, writing: "... if Bailey gives evidence he will be sunk."
What he should have been doing was demolishing Hallahan's statement and the alleged confession one lie at a time.
Pickering accepted the brief to defend Bailey for £400 (equivalent to nearly six months' average income at the time) on February 12 1958.
The committal hearing took place that month and the trial was set for April but on March 18 Pickering wrote: "Arranging to postpone Bailey's case so as to take on T.V. application."
Rupert Murdoch, Frank Packer and an advertising conglomerate would be competing in a four-day government-instituted inquiry in Adelaide to determine which should be recommended to run the sole, massively-profitable commercial television station for the city.
The hearings from Tuesday May 6 to May 9 would leave Pickering only the weekend of May 10 and 11 to prepare for the opening of Bailey's trial on May 12 but with each of the licence applicants hiring QCs the fee and the prestige of the occasion trumped the £400 Bailey fee and the risk posed by the hangman.
But on Saturday May 10, after a full week concentrating on the inquiry, the QC played golf in the morning. "Pain in my left shoulder. Home reading the Sundown murder. Iris [his wife] put on a turn because I have not taken her out lately."
This was his first mention in the diary of the case since February 28. Was he able to concentrate?
On the Sunday before the television inquiry Pickering had spent seven hours of preparation, followed by the whole of the Monday afternoon.
However, on Sunday May 11, with Bailey due to step into the dock the next day, he played golf again, complaining about his left shoulder "which pained me all the round. Too much to drink before we started...Back to the library to work for an hour."
Next there were guests for a meal "then to bed to read the Sundown brief."
So, affected by "too much to drink" the man entrusted with trying to save Bailey from the hangman spent many hours less preparing for this life-and-death case than he had for the television inquiry.
In fact, Pickering sometimes relegated work on Bailey's case to brief periods after social occasions.
February 24: He attended a cathedral service to mark the opening of the legal year then had lunch, went to a judges' reception 4.15 to 5.15. "Then back to the office for a while. Home and dinner about 7 and to work on the Sundown murder case for tomorrow."
According to the diary he had not touched the brief on the weekend of February 22 and 23.
It was his first diary entry about the case since the 18th.
The brief studies of May 10 and 11 have already been highlighted.
May 18: "Did some work on Bailey's case until 12." Then golf.
Throughout this period Pickering mentioned his excessive drinking and the effect it had on him.
April 11: "I will have to put my foot down about our pre-lunch drink. It usually turns into 3 and no one can work properly in the p.m."
May 2: "Had a lot too much to drink."
May 3. Saturday "Woke with a hangover and was reluctant to get up. Got breakfast and then returned to bed until 10."
How much did he drink?
January 4: "Home about 1am after consuming a lot of Scotch."
March 29: "I brought John Dodds home and we consumed a bottle of Goddard's Rum. Then Iris and Judith came home and we had a few drinks with John."
And the effect?
March 9: A party till 1am. March 10: "Felt very jaded when I woke....Very tired all day. I must get some sleep. I have been sleeping badly and have got into the habit of waking about 3am and having to go to the toilet."
March 19: "I have been feeling tired and jaded lately...my sleep has been very broken for the last week."
March 20: "I attended the Barossa Valley Bacchus Club dinner...finished in the bar at 2am."
March 21: "Woke feeling somewhat lousy, a feeling which persists all day."
May 21: "So tired I could hardly work at all."
May 24: Woke "with a heck of a hangover."
June 13: "Woke with a heck of a hangover and was tired all day."
Pickering was a wealthy man, remarking on March 27 that it was "ludicrous" that he earned more than the chief justice - about £4,000, or 4.5 times the average male income in South Australia.
But he recorded on April 28: "I am not at all happy about having to work so hard for such a small net return."
And the next day: "Express Freight case all day. Am getting sick of it and don't know if I'm going to win...I shocked John Bray today by telling him I regarded the law lately as merely a rotten laborious way of earning a living."
Bailey's father, a carpenter, had managed to find the equivalent of about six months' income, to pay Pickering but the QC complained in his diary on June 2: "Back to the office to work at high pressure on Bailey's appeal for tomorrow. He certainly is getting good value for the £400 I received from his father."
Then he was off to lunch and other business.
The deteriorating state of Pickering's state of mind and health reached a new low on the most crucial day of Bailey's trial. The QC had staked everything on keeping Bailey out of the witness box.
So the entire defence case rested on Pickering making the speech of a lifetime to the jury.
Here's how he recorded it in his diary:
"Woke feeling like a heart attack. Heart appeared to be operating very irregularly. Never felt like it before Bailey case. I started my address about 10 to 12. Felt better once I was on my feet. Finished about 3.30 and judge summed up till 5.30. Jury retire and we went down to the Thistle for a drink in the new cocktail bar and then had dinner. Verdict Guilty at 7.10 and sentence of death." ..."Drove Arthur Mangan home and had a few drinks..."
On June 16 Pickering suffered a severe stroke "and I then spent the next six weeks in bed hovering between life and death..."
Once he had recovered, the QC, who had never mentioned any empathy towards Bailey's plight, made no mention that on June 24 Bailey had been hanged by the neck until he was dead.
