Ballarat Courier staff

5-6-2019

The Court of appeals has now adjourned until 9.30am on Thursday.

George Pell's bid for freedom is in the hands of three of Victoria's most senior judges, who have been asked to find it was "impossible" for him to have sexually abused two boys in Melbourne more than two decades ago.

A jury convicted the 77-year-old cardinal in December, accepting he sexually abused the 13-year-old choirboys at St Patrick's Cathedral in 1996.

Specialist appeals barrister Bret Walker SC has argued for Pell's acquittal, saying the verdicts were "unsafe and unsatisfactory".

Pell is serving a minimum three year and eight months in prison after being found guilty of one charge of sexual penetration of a child and four of committing an indecent act with a child.

He was newly appointed Archbishop of Melbourne at the time and would have to have been alone in the sacristy for five or six minutes with the boys after a busy Sunday Mass for the incidents to have occurred as described, Mr Walker said.

But it was was common practice for Pell to greet parishioners outside the cathedral after mass.

"If he was at the western door, then the law of physics tells us this is literally, logically impossible for the offending to have occurred according to the complainant's account, and there is no other account," Mr Walker said.

Supreme Court Chief Justice Anne Ferguson, Court of Appeal President Chris Maxwell and Justice Mark Weinberg are hearing the case.

Pell appeared in court in all black and once again wore the clerical collar he removed for sentencing.

In written submissions the defence had argued the verdicts couldn't be supported on the word of a single complainant in the face of "exculpatory evidence" from 20 prosecution witnesses.

"This evidence constituted a catalogue of at least 13 solid obstacles in the path of a conviction," the submissions said.

Mr Walker said in court that those prosecution witnesses gave "strong, credible and undispelled" alibi evidence in Pell's favour.

The jury should also have considered in Pell's favour the "forensic disadvantage" presented by the significant passage of time between 1996, the complainant's police report in 2014 and the 2018 trial.

Justices Maxwell and Weinberg appeared unpersuaded by junior defence barrister Ruth Shann's argument for the second ground of appeal, that County Court Judge Peter Kidd was wrong to exclude a video from the defence closing statements at trial.

She said the clip, showing various individuals moving around the cathedral after mass, was designed to help a 21st century "technology obsessed" jury who were "12 people from ordinary lives who spend all day, ever day in their tables, on their phones".

Justice Weinberg bluntly told her "I just don't see the point of it", while Justice Maxwell didn't see that having heard a thorough final address from trial barrister Robert Richter QC that they were "short-changed in any relevant sense".

Mr Walker earlier described that appeal ground and a third about an inconsistency Pell was arraigned as "fallback" options should the main first ground fail.

Prosecutors will get to put forward their arguments on Thursday, but said in written submissions the jury was "entitled to accept the complainant as a reliable and credible witness".

"The events described by various witnesses ... established that there was more than ample opportunity and circumstances for the offending, described by the complainant, to have occurred," the submissions say.

Pell was jailed for a maximum of six years.