Exposed: The Case of Keli Lane

The judgment of the appeals court was to reject the appeal on the grounds (among others) that the “evidence, in our view, convincingly excluded any reasonable possibility of the second alternative”. In other words, despite there being no body, no weapon and so on, making the trial an unusual one, the fact that the other proposed explanation of the facts had been convincingly excluded meant that the appellate court was “satisfied that the verdict of guilty was amply open to the jury, and we are satisfied that the evidence established beyond reasonable doubt the appellant’s guilt of the offence”. That it is possible for someone to argue that guilt of murder had in this case not been established beyond reasonable doubt is incontestable and wholly ethical. But the intent of the program goes demonstrably beyond the question of whether room exists for someone to hold a contrary view about whether reasonable doubt remains. The question is: given the appellate court judgment, on what grounds is Meldrum-Hanna arguing that there may have been, not just reasonable doubt, but a miscarriage of justice? For this, she is obliged to say that there is some alternative explanation of the facts that can no longer be excluded and according to which Lane would not be responsible for Tegan’s fate. No such alternative explanation was put forward by the program that would account for the uncontested facts of the case (most important among which are those concerning the behaviour of the accused before and after being suspected). In the absence of such an alternative explanation being offered by the program, nothing was left but to concoct some revelation that would succeed in muddying the question. Hence the necessity of the final phone call, in which Meldrum-Hanna demonstrably instructed Lane what to say, and, after three attempts, finally succeeded in getting her to comply, that is, to state that she (Keli Lane) could not be certain that the surname of the person to whom she had claimed to have given Tegan was correct. But the only way in which this “revelation” could matter is if, on its basis, an alternative explanation of the facts in which Lane is not responsible for the death of Tegan could be plausibly put forward. Again, no such explanation was put forward, and hence to end the program in this way, and then to conclude by calling upon “Australia” to “help find” “Andrew X”, when no reason for doubting the judgment of the court has been put forward, is a gross manipulation of Keli Lane, of the circumstances of Tegan’s fate, and of the audience. As such, it fails the ethical and professional standards of reporting.