Keystone cops in Australia too

POLICE who arrested a man over a brawl at his daughter's wedding have been blasted by a magistrate, who described his prosecution as resembling a "Kath & Kim episode". Magistrate Roseanne McInnes has dismissed assault charges laid against Shane Miller, 48, following a fight between wedding guests and bouncers at the Semaphore Palais on February 11 last year. In a scathing judgment against SA Police, Ms McInnes awarded costs of $20,600 to Mr Miller.

The outcome was welcomed by Mr Miller's daughter, Amanda Crawford, who said her wedding memories had been ruined by the melee and subsequent criminal prosecution of her father. Ms Crawford, 24, of Paralowie, said she wanted police to return her blood-stained wedding dress, which was seized by detectives while she was on honeymoon but never forensically tested. "I just want them to give me my dress back so I can get it cleaned," she said. "Everything else about our wedding day has been ruined. It's not like we can look back on it like everybody else can and have good memories. "We didn't make it to our hotel that night, our wedding cake was given to people in the pokie room because it already had been cut up and our honeymoon in Sydney was wrecked because Brett (her husband) had a sprained foot."

In her judgment, Ms McInnes said police failed to properly investigate the brawl before six detectives arrested Mr Miller at his Salisbury North home seven days later. She said a police prosecutor consequently received a brief from police which was "manifestly inadequate". "The cumulative effect trivialised events with tragic consequences for a great many people," she said. "An uninterested observer reading the resulting transcript might well wonder whether he was reading evidence given at a criminal trial or a script written by a bloodthirsty Elizabethan playwright trying to adapt Dimboola (well-known Australian play about a country wedding) for televising as a Kath & Kim episode. "The reality is that people who did nothing to deserve pain or suffering have no choice but to live with both as a result of what occurred."

Ms McInnes said a considerable amount of the material provided by police "was of little assistance in proving the case or in determining the facts". "The evidence was not sifted before the defendant was arrested, before the charge was laid or before a brief was provided to prosecutors," she said. Ms McInnes said problems with Mr Miller's prosecution continued into his trial, with witness statements still being produced four months after its first hearings. "The court was told the prosecution would call eight witnesses and tender the statements of three police officers," she said. "By the end of the prosecution case four months later, the prosecutor had called 20 witnesses in addition to tendering statements made by more witnesses." New exhibits also continued to be introduced by police after the trial began, including a statement by a police officer signed the morning of a hearing. Ms McInnes said it seemed "some or all of the investigating officers had little or no understanding of the prosecutor's role and function".

Mr Miller declined to comment. His solicitor, Tim Dibden, said the outcome was a "victory for common sense".

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