by Mark O'Flynn
Was it possible to distinguish between the type of injury that might be sustained by a knife, such as the type of knife found in the accused’s knapsack, and injuries that may or may not have been the result of a vicious and frenzied attack, injuries caused perhaps by canine incisors?
Yes, it was.
The severity of the wound to the right side of the victim’s neck had transected the right common carotid artery, the right vertebral artery and the right jugular vein. Also the oesophagus, trachea, and cut the cervical spinal cord. A dog’s tooth could not do that.
Could a hatchet?
No, not a hatchet. Other injuries, made by the hatchet, were glancing blows caused after death.
An accident perhaps?
From the photos, horrific as they were, how was it possible to deduce this?
It was possible. The wound was deeper than a bite.
It was not possible, however, to determine whether there were any additional puncture wounds to the abdomen, other than those caused by the dogs. Stabs, or thrusts, for instance, rather than cuts?
No.
Could such injuries as described in the coroner’s report have been caused by the type of knife found in the accused’s possession?
It’s possible.
Possible?
Possible.
An effort had been made to clean the knife.
That’s right, although the blood remaining on it was not that of the victim.
Ms Henry, the defence counsel, put it to the jury that the accused, who it must be remembered was still innocent until proven otherwise, had merely stumbled upon the body of Dennis Meacham, who had been murdered by person or persons unknown. For reasons known only to himself the accused had decided to relocate the body to its site of discovery, which would explain the presence of Meacham’s blood on his person.
It was the prosecutor’s turn to scoff. Edgar didn’t like the look of him. What about the watch? he reminded the jury, or the hat, which had been identified by Aileen Meacham. The watch had a distinctive engraving on the back.
Yes, she could recall what it said. She’d thought he’d lost it gambling.
No attempt was made to suggest that Edgar take the stand to answer these and other questions, including his whereabouts at the time of the crime. Edgar was picking his nose. Ms Henry brought to the jury’s attention the fact that an accused person’s refusal to testify in no way implies an admission of any sort—there is no obligation. Judge Crowther endorsed this point.
Several motorists then took the oath and swore how they had seen the accused with all his savage dogs, dressed as a cowboy, frightening sheep in a paddock, on or about the day the murder took place.
Next, a photographer from the Daily Advertiser testified how one of these savage dogs tried to take a chunk out of him down by the river as he was attempting to get out of his vehicle whilst on assignment to cover a story for his editor. No, the pictures weren’t very clear. Sorry.
Mr Leonard Ashcroft of Coles supermarket took the stand and told how Edgar had menaced him out of a very considerable sums’ worth of canned groceries, particularly pet food, (itemised exhibit submitted). This, in his opinion, was tantamount to extortion.
Then Doug Medson, a local businessman, swore how, at school, the accused had slashed the back of his knee with a razor blade. This had been found to be the documented cause for his expulsion.
A forensic pathologist established beyond doubt that Mr Meacham’s blood type, O positive, and the stains found on Edgar’s trousers, specifically the knees, were not only compatible, but genetically identical. A murmur rippled across the gallery. Edgar jumped up, forced to hunch over by the shackles, and shouted out:
‘Yez all fuckin’ dorgs. I’ll tell yez nothin’,’ and barked, before he was roughly flung back in his pillory.
There was an adjournment for lunch.
Down in the cells Edgar sacked the solicitor who had been appointed for him. He appeared to view the whole situation in a most humorous light. He hung laughing from the bars of his cell like a monkey. It was only with reluctance that he was persuaded to reinstate her.
I spoke with Maureen Henry some years later when she was senior partner with O’Donahue, Bayeh, Gold and Henry. She remembered Edgar clearly. I did not tell her then that he was my uncle. I was merely a young go-getter in a suit interested in jurisprudential history. I had a note from Pennington. She told me how she had borrowed a stool and sat down outside the bars. They wouldn’t let her sit inside the cell.
Listen, she’d put it to him, perhaps Meacham had been killed accidentally, would he agree that perhaps that was what happened?
Edgar would not agree.
‘An’ what do they mean I din’t know him?’
Perched on her stool, out in the corridor, Maureen Henry paused. Officers of the court walked past.
She continued: perhaps there had been some provocation on the deceased’s part, an unreciprocated advance—an assault—Meacham did have a criminal record after all…extenuating circumstances?
‘No,’ said Edgar, ‘nothin’ like that.’
‘Then why, for God’s sake, did you touch the body? I don’t want to put words in your mouth but, Mr Hamilton, how can I help you? What do you want me to do? Did he attack you?’
‘I din’t touch the body,’ said Edgar. ‘Why would I do that?’
‘So you did see the body?’
‘When I beat the dorgs orf.’
‘Did you touch it?’
‘Nuh. I din’t. I din’t want to.’
‘There’s blood on your pants.’
‘The body touched me.’
‘He was alive?’
‘I dunno the name of it.’
‘Did he say anything?’
Edgar laughed.
‘What did you do then?’
‘I runned orf.’
‘Where to?’
‘Through the grass.’
‘What about the hat?’
‘I needed a hat.’
‘The watch?’
‘It’s a good watch. It were all that were left lyin’ there.’
‘Did you know him?’
‘In the shed. Somethin’ about the stars. The tripod liked him. Mum’s the word.’
All of this was off the record.
For all that, it was the most cogent she had found him. The fact that the two may have known each other, she felt, would have played straight into the prosecution’s hands, providing opportunity to establish motive. So she decided for better or worse to keep that information to herself. After lunch it was hypothesised that Meacham may have been killed in the shearing shed where Edgar had been arrested. It resembled an ossuary, or an abattoir, with carcasses, bones of heifers, sheep, wallabies, pigs, in the shade beneath the shed. Bloody fleeces strewn on the floor. Also hundreds of empty, rusting dog food tins in a small pyramid. Plus Meacham’s hat. Small bloodstains found there also proved to be a positive match with the victim’s genetic profile.
Then what?
So then he had carried the body to his car and driven it to a desolate spot along the riverbank.
But Edgar was a derelict, argued Ms Henry. He had no vehicle, nor a licence to drive any vehicle.
Ah, but that had not stopped him driving an unregistered vehicle through the emergency doors of the Base Hospital in August of 1986.
But had that not been an emergency, at least in the accused’s state of mind, which is precisely the point at issue, the accused’s state of mind, and his fitness to plead?
Objection.
Sustained. Accused’s state of mind is not at issue here.
None of this was looking good for Edgar.
The defence counsel paused a moment to examine the moist, snorting cavern that was the mouth of the accused, the tongue resting in the vacancy where the teeth should have been. Another adjournment was requested to clarify a few points of law. The jury was sent from the room. Edgar was lifted rudely under the arms (‘Wha? Wha?’) before being
shunted down to the holding cells. Counsel approached the bench. Ms Henry intimated: please take a look at him, your Honour, he clearly doesn’t know what’s going on. He should be regarded as a forensic patient.
Rubbish, all that was being requested, it seemed to his Honour, was to reventilate an issue which had previously been determined. Judge Crowther reminded counsel of R v Chad, which was particularly pertinent, and of the early verdict of R v Dyson where the defendant, a deaf mute you might recall, was indicted in 1831 for infanticide. After learning that the woman had always been deaf and dumb, the jury adjudged her to be mute by the visitation of God. However, by making signs to a friend, she was able to deny the accusations. The friend had instructed her in the dumb alphabet, but she was not accomplished enough to form words, let alone coherent sentences. It was impossible for her to comprehend the more complex aspects of jurisprudence. Yet, like Ms Henry’s client, she had not been regarded as insane, and was therefore, at the end of the day, fit to stand trial, and was punished accordingly. Food for thought, Ms Henry. Food for cogitation.
Indeed, your Honour.
The McNaughton Rules for criminal insanity did not apply. R v Chad was a different kettle of fish altogether.
On the street outside the courtroom, before the cameras, Aileen Meacham told how her husband, himself a troubled man, had also been a gentle man, a nice man, a decent father, ‘even if he did rip me off blind’. Her eyes were red and puffy. He did not deserve to wind up…She only hoped that the full weight of the law saw fit to administer the same justice and mercy that Hamilton had shown her husband…She was led away by women’s magazine reporters.
Victim statements were submitted to the court. Strong words.
In his summing up the next morning Judge Crowther said that the incontrovertible facts were well supported by a wealth of circumstantial evidence, not least of which was an obvious lack of contrition on the part of the accused. He would therefore be directing the jury toward the only logical conclusion permitted by the laws of evidence.
Down in the holding cell there were four walls. There was also a bunk; a bucket to relieve himself in; a bright fluorescent tube blazing in the ceiling; no windows. Edgar stared at the walls. He stared at the words gouged on them that he could not decipher.
Night senior reported that he was whimpering like a pup.
Next morning, as soon as the door was opened, Edgar sprang out and attacked the warder with his shoe. He knocked the man off his feet and bit his arm. It was a struggle to get him back in the cell, but eventually they did, before dousing their scratches with bleach. So Edgar was not present for the allocutus—not that it would have mattered, by all accounts—when Judge Crowther returned from his chambers and the clerk rose to announce:
‘All stand.’
Nor was he present when the jury was asked: ‘In respect of count one, how say you?’
Nor when juror number one handed the note to the clerk who read the verdict and the word ‘Guilty’ was heard in that room.
After the outbursts had died down, the judge ordered the prisoner to be brought forth to hear the verdict and receive sentence. Officers were dispatched. Did counsel for the defence have any pre-sentencing submissions that might constitute grounds for an adjournment?
Plenty, your Honour, objected Ms Henry.
One by one, these were duly noted and rejected, noted and rejected.
Your client, Ms Henry, could not be said to have helped his own cause, he was in this instance his own worst enemy. Where is your client, by the way?
Much time had passed. The prisoner did not appear. Instead, one of the grim-looking bailiffs with a Band-Aid across his nose handed a note to the clerk, who read it, turning, affronted almost, first to Ms Henry, then to the judge, and whispered across the bench.
The judge turned his hoary ear. ‘I beg your pardon. What do you mean, he cannot be manhandled? I want him out here. This is not a bus stop. Manhandle away.’
Further whispering.
‘Going what?’
And: ‘What did you say?’
At that moment, with great dramatic effect, the door to the holding cells in the basement banged open. The officers all stepped back. The prisoner, shackles still on his feet (he’d slept in them), but with arms free, rattled slowly up the steps to the dock and stood looking out at the court.
‘I’ve sacked the bitch,’ he said. ‘I’m gunna repersent meself.’
With that Edgar saluted theatrically. He sat at his own command. No one touched him. The judge pursed his lips. While the members of the public in the gallery did not immediately understand, a collective sense of comprehension gradually spread throughout the courtroom, that Edgar was sitting there smeared in his own excrement. No one would beat or manhandle him now. No one dared lay a finger on him. He sat there rather proudly. There was stunned silence for several moments. Ms Henry remembers shaking her head.
The verdict was repeated, which had much less impact in the room than had been anticipated. The judge adjusted his wig. There seemed to be no point in delaying proceedings. Everyone had busy schedules. No point coming back here tomorrow. A tragic set of circumstances. A sentence was announced—in the context of quoting Regina v Chad, noting few educational prospects, poor prospect for rehabilitation—constructed in the following way: twenty-six years penal servitude in a maximum security facility with a minimum fixed term of nineteen years. Full stop.
FOUR
After he was hosed down in the yards, by all accounts the custodial officers in their starched powder blue bundled him, handcuffed, into the back of the transit truck. They did this with practised, stony indifference. The interior was small and cramped, segmented into tinier compartments. It smelled of urine. Edgar was paired with a man who would not speak. He looked sideways at the hook of the man’s nose, trying (why not?) to elicit a response, but the man would not acknowledge anything. For the most part he kept his eyes closed. The windows were blacked out. Thin slits of light cut across the top of the glass so that he had to stand if he wanted to look out. At what? Buildings and traffic. He’d never seen buildings so tall as the Sydney skyscrapers before. A few press photographers had taken snaps of him as he stepped into the truck. The hook-nosed man had looked at him then. Although it was a hot day the heaters had been switched on, warm air blasting down on him as at the entrance to supermarkets.
He was shaken to the bones by the time the truck arrived at the prison several hours later. Although Edgar had little notion of time—it felt as though the whole day had been spent juddering and jarring along the road—it was preferable to the unbearable tedium of the courtroom and the trial. He had almost gone mad with boredom, but he never told the bastards anything. That was the way. He was glad he would not have to go back there again.
Standing to gaze out the window slit, Edgar saw the great mandible of the gate fold and rise up. The truck limped over the last speed hump and rolled into the echoing cavern of the gatehouse, darkening as the gate unfolded behind them, sound of the engine growing louder all around. Inside the second gate, between two towering walls, Edgar could see through the wire mesh into the prison proper. He caught a fleeting glimpse of people playing tennis.
In the reception yard the motor cut out and Edgar listened to the metallic ticking of the engine as the truck settled. The door was opened. Edgar and hook-nose, along with four others from the other compartments, were hustled into a large holding cell. It was bigger than the cells at the courthouse. There was a stainless steel toilet without a seat. Nothing else.
Edgar was perfunctorily strip-searched. How he may have felt about this was of no interest to anyone else present. He simply had to obey. He was told to dress in the standard green prison garb and was given a bundle of spare clothes. Also sheets, pillowslips, a pair of running shoes plus laces, a plastic cup, a plastic plate, a plastic knife and fork, a toothbrush, a green jacket which he wouldn’t need until winter, though he was told to look after it as he wouldn’t get another unless he paid for i
t himself. The officers behind the counter grinned. They gave him two plastic tubs. From now on, everything he owned must fit within these tubs. Edgar looked at their blank emptiness. They were bigger than his knapsack. All that room. All those possibilities. How would he ever fill them?
His photograph was taken. He was given a MIN number; assigned a unit and a cell. Two rovers were summoned by radio to escort him. Up the corridor from reception they passed an open door. It led into a small chapel with two rows of polished wooden pews. Edgar thought of the gleaming woodwork of the courthouse and hurried past. He followed the warders. There were several steel doors and heavy gates to unlock. They had great dangling bunches of keys at their belts to choose from, locking them again as they passed through. In the compound several inmates watched Edgar walk past in his new running shoes, with his tubs. Yes, there were tennis courts. People playing tennis. Others sat around on concrete benches. Using them to exercise. Step-ups, or elaborate push-ups. Still others were jogging around the perimeter fencing of the tennis courts; around the circumference of the inner walls; around other smaller portions of the compound on selected pathways of their own devising. Endless exercise. To Edgar they appeared to be making do.
There was a circle of lawn with a garden bed in the middle of the bottom compound. A man with a hoe was scarifying weeds. Inside the unit Edgar was shown, rather than introduced to, the wing officer in charge. He was Mister O’Neil and was to be addressed at all times as Mister O’Neil. Mister O’Neil took Edgar’s ID card, wrote down a few particulars. He placed it in a rack displaying all the other residents of the wing—all the smiling, scowling, indolent, butchered faces. Edgar followed another officer, who unlocked a cell door for him.
‘Home.’
Edgar entered and the door was slammed behind him with an iron echo and a great resounding click.
Like the cellar of the courthouse Edgar’s cell had four walls. They had been scrubbed once, long ago, but here and there the ghosts of old graffiti showed through. The contents of Edgar’s two tubs did not go a long way to adding the homey touches he had noticed through the open doors of neighbouring cells. There was a narrow bunk taking up a third of the floor space. A toilet, lidless. A shower. He tried the taps. They worked. Hot water, no, warm. A hand basin. A plate of stainless steel had been riveted to the wall and buffed until it assumed the purpose of a mirror, with random distortions where previous residents had thumped the metal and dented it. He examined his own blurred reflection:
