APPLICANT SEEKS TO QUASH THE BOARD’S DECISION IN REFUSING HER PAROLE APPLICATION ON THE GROUND THAT IT’S DECISION MERELY RELIED ON POLICE REPORTS
PATRICIA BYERS v PAROLE BOARD OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA [2021] SASC 53 (13 May 2021)
The applicant seeks to quash the Board’s decision to refuse parole on the ground that The Board acted contrary to law to the extent that it merely substituted the views of SAPOL (South Australia police) as its own rather than forming its own independent view;
Facts:
The applicant is serving a life sentence for the offense of murder. She applied for parole which was refused by the Board.
The Commissioner for Police has provided a comprehensive report to the Parole Board relating to Ms Byers. The police assert that she has failed to cooperate during investigation. SAPOL reports that Ms Byers has continued to provide an account of her offending that is not truthful and lacks reliability.
S.67(6) of the Correctional Services Act 1982 (SA) provides: the Board must not order that a prisoner serving a sentence of life imprisonment for an offence of murder be released on parole unless the Board is satisfied that the prisoner has satisfactorily cooperated in the investigation of the offence (whether the cooperation occurred before or after the prisoner was sentenced to imprisonment).
The applicant’s primary contention was that in deciding whether she had satisfactorily cooperated in the investigation of Mr Gottgens’ murder the Board merely adopted the reports of the police and did not undertake its own evaluation of whether the account she had given to the Board since 2016 of the circumstances of Mr Gottgens’ murder is untruthful. She submitted the Board erred in failing to have regard to relevant material. The Board should have grappled with the evidence of how the prosecution conducted her trial.
Issue: Should the decision of the Board be quashed?
Analysis:
On its face, S.67(6) of the Act applied to the applicant. She is a prisoner serving a sentence of life imprisonment for the offence of murder. For the purposes of the satisfaction required by S.67(6), the Board is required by S.67(7) to take into account any report from the Commissioner of Police evaluating the prisoner’s cooperation in the investigation of the offence.
While the Board is not precluded from conducting its own investigation into the subject matter of such a report, it is not obliged to do so. The Board is entitled to accept, if it chooses, the terms of the report from the Commissioner of Police evaluating the prisoner’s cooperation in the investigation of the offence. Accordingly, the court does not consider that there would be any error if the Board did adopt the evaluation of the Commissioner of Police contained in that report.
Conclusion: The application is hereby dismissed.
