Jeff Sher interview 18 November 2009

I was a very young advocate when I was doing an attempted murder trial in which a brother had stabbed his brother. The Crown case was pretty weak, mainly because the victim was in no mood to put his brother in and so it was pretty obvious he was going to be not much use to the Crown. The prosecutor was a guy who will remain nameless but who was a very big intimidating, bullying type of barrister. When I made my final address to the jury, I got stuck into him personally, something I don't think I've ever done since. I called him a bully and said he'd tried to intimidate the accused when he cross-examined him and tried to bully him and tried to bully you the jury. I really gave him a serve. Well, I got towelled up comprehensively by the trial judge for doing that. I learnt my lesson very quickly and I might say the jury acquitted the guy in 10 minutes. So that was an experience that was good for me really; I learned not to be personal in my advocacy. In terms of successes, well, I can't recall how many murder trials I did, but the only one I ever lost was when I was being led by a silk who'd better remain nameless.

Did you feel you shouldn't have lost that case?

No, I thought the guy was pretty clearly guilty. In fact, he made the task of his counsel even harder by failing to turn up at the trial. He'd been given bail and when they called the accused on the day of the trial, he was nowhere to be seen. When they finally caught him and he was presented again, they gave notice of additional evidence, namely that he'd flown the coup for his trial and what have you. He was convicted and I think rightly so. But some of those murder trials were particularly fascinating.

Can you tell us a bit about John Joseph Power?

Well, John Joseph Power was a well known criminal. His trade was robbing banks, and he told me (and the jury obviously accepted this in the final analysis) that he wasn't a murderer. He was accused of murdering by mischance actually. The mother of a man that he, Power, suspected had interfered with his two daughters. So Power had gone around with a mate to fix this guy up and had fired (so the Crown case went) a shotgun through the window of the house where this guy lived. Unfortunately the guy wasn't behind the window - it was his mother, and he killed the mother. The Crown's case depended upon the evidence of the accomplice who was driving the car, who claimed that Power had shot the shotgun from the car as it drove past the house. Well, when I looked at the brief and the photographs, it occurred to me that the holes in the window were far too small to have been caused by a shotgun at the distance it was said to be. So I asked the prosecutor (whom I knew well and who was a very decent fellow) to get some ballistic tests done. They established the theory I had, which was that it couldn't possibly have been done in the way in which the Crown's key witness claimed. That was sufficient doubt, I think, to enable the jury to acquit him. But the interesting part of the story was yet to come, because the day after he was acquitted, there was a knock on the door in my chambers, and there was John Power with his two little daughters all dressed up in their Sunday best, and they came and stood in front of my desk and made a little speech which they'd clearly rehearsed, thanking me for saving their daddy and what have you. It was very touching actually. I thought that would be the last I'd see and hear of John Joseph Power, but it wasn't because about a month later, one of my friends said to me, "oh, you'd better buy the Sun Newspaper, Jeff, there's a photograph of your client on the front page". So I went out and bought the Sun, and there was John Joseph Power with a shotgun holding up a bank, taken by the security cameras - for which I think he got either 12 or 15 years.

So he was a bit of a recidivist then.

He went back to work.

Conducted for the Victorian Bar oral history project by Juliette Brodsky, and filmed by Stewart Carter on 18 November 2009