But Pell’s guilt or innocence on the charges against him has never changed and never will. He did not become less guilty last Tuesday. Nor did he become less innocent on that other Tuesday in 2018. He has been either guilty or innocent of the rape of two children for the past twenty-three years and will remain so forever. No court ruling — or punditry or politics — can alter what actually happened in St Patrick’s Cathedral during six short — or agonisingly long — minutes after a Sunday mass in mid December 1996.
Instead, the proceedings against Pell have always been about how the courts — and the rest of us — will respond to the claim made against him. For the courts, the sole issue is whether Pell’s prosecutors were able to prove beyond reasonable doubt what happened in 1996. In 2018, the jury unanimously decided that the prosecution had proved what happened, which is why Pell spent most of 2019 in Barwon Prison. Last Tuesday, the High Court unanimously decided that it hadn’t, which is why Pell will spend most of 2020 in Sydney.
The High Court’s key ruling — that there is a “significant possibility” that Pell is innocent of the charges against him — isn’t a conclusion that he is innocent; it is a conclusion that the prosecution failed to prove that he isn’t. That finding, when made by a jury or a final court of appeal, ends the prosecution and restores the presumption of innocence to him in future court cases about those allegations, such as civil proceedings or — importantly for commentators — defamation actions. But that’s all that it does.
Outside the courts, the High Court’s ruling is only important to the question of Pell’s true guilt or innocence to the extent that it persuades people one way or the other.People aren’t bound by the presumption of innocence, or the rules of evidence, or respect for the courts, or even by fairness, unless they want to be. Those who are so inclined can believe that the jury’s take on proof reflected the truth, or that the High Court’s did, or they can believe all complaints of sexual abuse, or all ones about Pell, or none of them. Or they can look at the evidence for themselves and reason about it however they want. At least they could, if most of it was publicly available.
