Mentink v The Queen

[1998] HCATrans 108

IN THE HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA

Office of the Registry
  Brisbane  No B40 of 1997

B e t w e e n -

WILFRED JAN REINIER MENTINK

Applicant

and

THE QUEEN

Respondent

Application for special leave to appeal

BRENNAN CJ
HAYNE J

TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS

AT BRISBANE ON FRIDAY, 17 APRIL 1998, AT 10.29 AM

Copyright in the High Court of Australia

BRENNAN CJ:   You are Mr Mentink?

MR W.J.R. MENTINK:   Yes, your Honour.

MR D.L. MEREDITH:   Your Honour, I appear with MR T.A. FULLER.  (instructed by the Director of Public Prosecutions (Queensland))

BRENNAN CJ:   Yes, Mr Mentink, what do you wish to say in support of your application?

MR MENTINK:   Your Honours, I have no legal training.  There has been no one to whom I could turn for advice or information, in particular to assist me in preparing my argument or even this address.  My submissions to local lawyers, including the Legal Aid Office, were rejected on the grounds that the views of the court below represent and reflect the law of Queensland.  Your Honours, I have presented in my written submissions the outline of my argument on the appeal itself as far as the constraints of length allow.  I apologise for the length of those submissions but the case ,from my point of view, is a complex one and is still deserving of attention.

If the grounds of my appeal, your Honours, do not raise a substantial concern on points of law, then I have got no business being here.  I have had no way of assessing the strength of my appeal other than by considering the respondent’s written argument on the legal questions I have raised.  In my submission, the respondent simply had no argument on those legal questions and so I derived some confidence from that.  If my submissions ‑ ‑ ‑

BRENNAN CJ:   Mr Mentink, I should say to you first of all that unless there is some special reason for granting special leave to consider questions of the admissibility of evidence, this Court does not entertain appeals which relate simply to the sufficiency of the evidence which is tendered in proof of the crime, so that unless you have got some special reason for arguing the question of admissibility, that is not likely to result in the grant of special leave to you.

MR MENTINK:   Yes, your Honour.  I did intend to address the question of the plea, firstly, if I may do that.

BRENNAN CJ:   Yes, you may.  Your first question really is whether you should have an extension of time in which to make your application and why should you have an extension of time in which to make your application in the light of the fact that if the evidence is admissible, there was an admission of the offence charged?

MR MENTINK:   Your Honour, my submission is that the evidence ought not be admissible and the reasons for that are extremely strong.

BRENNAN CJ:   Well, perhaps not.  Well, let us assume that it is.

MR MENTINK:   Yes, your Honour.

BRENNAN CJ:   Why then should you have an extension of time when the offence of which you were convicted is an offence which was admitted by you?

MR MENTINK:   Your Honour, firstly, a recent indictment has been presented in which the same evidence came before the courts.  Now, that matter is still in process.

BRENNAN CJ:   That may be so, but that does not concern this case.

MR MENTINK:   Your Honour, if the book is tendered as evidence and I go to argue the admissibility question, then I face the views of the court below, which is simply that there is no question but that the evidence is admissible.  The questions raised in the admissibility of the evidence are such that they are of overwhelming importance in the administration of justice.

BRENNAN CJ:   To your future case.  Of importance to your future case.

MR MENTINK:   To this future case, indeed, your Honour, but they are also of importance to the administration of justice in this State.

BRENNAN CJ:   I am not sure that that is a sufficient ground by your assertion to justify a grant of special leave or even to grant an extension of time to you.  You see this is a case to which you have admitted the offence of which you were convicted.

MR MENTINK:   That is right, your Honour.

BRENNAN CJ:   In the light of that, there has to be extremely strong grounds for either extending time or granting special leave.

MR MENTINK:   Your Honour, everything hinges on an interview which took place in Cairns on 7 August 1992 and that interview, or the transcript of that interview, is the first document in the application book.  It is an interview which has never been seen or looked at in any detail by any court or even by any lawyer associated with this case.  The fact is that on that evening in question I took part in that interview for a particular reason and during that interview I made a full confession, a confession of a nature which is probably unprecedented in the history of law.

I confessed to the truth of 250 pages of a document of a most incriminating kind.  I confessed that that document was true.  Your Honour, I did so for only one reason and that was because I foresaw that the police would approach the young person with whom I was involved and to which that document related.  I foresaw that that person would be traumatised by the police approach.  There was even a possibility of suicide and so, therefore, I decided to make my confession.  On the night of 7 August 1992 I was completely honest, completely and utterly honest and frank.

Your Honour, the matters that I raised in terms of the admissibility of this book concern the conduct of the police in relation to assurances that the police made about how they were going to treat and approach the victim or the complainant in that case.  Those promises, those assurances were completely breached.  It was just, your Honour, the most evil form of trickery perpetrated upon me just in order to facilitate the confession and in order to obtain the identity of the complainant.  All of the assurances to which I refer in the written argument were breached.  There was no counselling, no support for the complainant.  I asked the police ‑ ‑ ‑

BRENNAN CJ:   Mr Mentink, this is a court of law.  It is the ultimate Court of Appeal for Australia.  It is a very busy Court.  Its function is to determine the law so far as it can do so in relation to all aspects of the administration of justice in this country.  It simply does not entertain appeals in relation to factual matters.  That is not its function and so whatever difficulties you may have had in relation to the conduct of the police or the admissibility of the evidence as the result of that is something which, I am afraid, will fall on deaf ears in this Court.

MR MENTINK:   Your Honour, if I could just conclude on that point.

BRENNAN CJ:   Yes, very well.

MR MENTINK:   Simply that I was honest on that occasion and since then I have been dealt with by nothing but lies and misstatements of fact ever since then and it continues to be the case.  Your Honour, at my trial the plea proceeded on the basis I would plead guilty to the single charge of maintaining a relationship on the basis that the book was true, the document was true, that all the facts in there were true, and in the recent matter which came up I raised an issue estoppel.  I said that on that earlier occasion the Crown agreed that the facts of the book were true, that I was dealt with on that basis and that is the way the matter proceeded.

I was informed two weeks ago at a hearing, your Honour, in relation to that matter that that was only simply a matter for the sentence at that time and so that in itself, simply the fact that I was not being dealt with on the truth of my confession, is to me the ultimate fraud in terms of the way that my conviction was obtained in 1993.  Your Honour, the key thing to my point is the matter concerning the plea.  If the argument concerning the plea is a valid one, then I submit that this Court ought to consider the application. 

I go so far, your Honour, as to ask for this Court to examine last year’s amendment to section 631A which dealt with pleas of guilty at trial, an amendment which deleted the requirement that the jury be present during such a plea and I am asking the Court to examine that legislation and possibly reject it and that probably is the principal matter of public importance that I am raising in this appeal.  Thank you, your Honour.

BRENNAN CJ:   Thank you, Mr Mentink.  We need not trouble you, Mr Meredith.

This is an application for an extension of time for the making of an application for special leave to appeal against a judgment of the Court of Criminal Appeal dismissing an appeal against conviction.  Nothing that has been advanced by Mr Mentink, although he has carefully put together his argument, justifies the granting of an extension of time in the circumstances where the offence of which he was convicted was an offence to which he had judicially confessed.  In those circumstances, special leave will be refused.

AT 10.39 AM THE MATTER WAS CONCLUDED