Presumption of innocence the first casualty in Pullman Five’s trial by media

A distinguishing feature of Australia’s justice system is that every person is presumed innocent unless and until the contrary is proved before an impartial court.

That allocation of the burden of proof has long been referred to as the “golden thread” running throughout the web of the criminal law. In Australia, the presumption of innocence is inseparable from the criminal standard of proof; that guilt must be proven beyond reasonable doubt. That’s no simple task; nor should it be.

It necessarily follows that it must matter that each of the five Sydney Swans players stood down from active service is presumed innocent of all criminal wrongdoing unless the contrary is one day proved.

So far, that presumption has been honoured almost nowhere outside the courtroom. And there have been no court proceedings because there are no charges and no completed investigation.

Yet it is already the case that the public discourse around the whole mess has assassinated the reputations of people, months and years before any criminal trial might take place.

The facts able to be stated responsibly are few. In the early hours of August 17, following Sydney’s victory over Essendon, a woman reported an alleged sexual assault said to have occurred in a player’s room at the team’s East Melbourne hotel.

Victoria Police’s Sexual Crime Squad commenced an investigation. Two days later, the club stood down five players for breaches of internal behavioural standards concerning late drinking and guests at the team hotel – each player by then identified, photographed and broadcast worldwide.

That’s the entirety of the established record. Everything else is conjecture.

Contrast that, though, with what the past fortnight’s coverage has actually comprised: claims from unnamed and unauthorised sources, which are untested but nonetheless repeated ad nauseam.

A lawyer’s assertion that more men were present in the room was reported at face value. Another lawyer said that his instructions reflected a scenario that appalled him more than anything else he’d seen in 28 years of professional practice.

Speculation has become so unmoored that Swans head coach Dean Cox was compelled to deny, publicly, that he had been in the room at all.

Opinion writers proceeded directly from allegation to condemnation, and from condemnation to cultural indictment and the idea the Swans had sold their followers a huge lie. Sponsors issued statements of concern; supporters organised symbolic walkouts; the league excluded the five from All Australian selection while describing the exclusion, without even a hint of irony, as independent of the police investigation.

Frankly, these five Swans players have been hung out to dry. They’ve been afforded scant, if any, presumption of innocence in a trial by media, with social media lynch mobs at their absolute worst. And that is me being measured.

What’s occurred doesn’t constitute fair reporting in the circumstances of an ongoing police investigation.