Falsely Convicted : True stories of injustice in Australia

Australia has a robust legal system. According to conventional wisdom, only the guilty end up behind bars. The reality is far more complex and, for First Nations Australians and other minorities in particular, the law can become a trap - one that has condemned completely innocent people to years, even decades, of wrongful imprisonment. Impeccably researched and compellingly told, Falsely Convicted exposes shocking injustices in all their devastating detail. These cases reveal how fragile truth can be, how easily lives can be destroyed, and how freedom - when it arrives - often comes only after everything else has been lost. There's teacher Josephine Greensill, whose life was upended by allegations from two former students from three decades before. Andrew Mallard, a psychologically unwell young man found guilty of murder due to false confessions and withheld evidence. And Gene Gibson, an 18-year-old Aboriginal man from one of Australia's most remote communities, convicted of a killing by being in the wrong place at the wrong time, hindered by language barriers and entrenched prejudice. In Falsely Convicted, Walkley Award-winning crime reporter and bestselling author Neil Mercer turns his investigative skills towards the most chilling crimes of all: the ones committed by the system itself. 'A meticulous unravelling of Australia's most horrendous judicial failures, Mercer's book reads like a thriller, but at its heart is the devastation wreaked on innocent victims of the legal system. Falsely Convicted will make your blood boil - a must-read.' Kate McClymont, Chief Investigative Reporter at the Sydney Morning Herald and author of Dead Man Walking 'Neil Mercer - one of Australia's finest investigative journalists - has in Falsely Convicted crafted a thrilling and unputdownable compendium of miscarriages of justice. There is genuine horror here too - knowing that beneath these tales of concocted confessions, false allegations, skewed forensic evidence and the misdirecte