Ned Kelly Gets Off The Rope
Tony Stephens
21 November 1991
source smh.com.au/articles/2002/06/20/1023864476130.html

Ned Kelly was found not guilty last night. Belatedly, posthumously and again. This time the verdict was handed down by Mr Christopher Murphy, the Sydney lawyer. To be more precise, Mr Murphy told how he would have defended Mr Kelly so as to secure an acquittal. Mr Murphy was speaking before the launching of Robert Drewe's new novel, Our Sunshine. The novel is based on the last hours of Kelly and his gang and Mr Murphy offered a legal opinion as part of the launch.

“Justice and the desire for it are somewhat mythical in Australia,” said Mr Murphy. Mr Kelly's first problem was that no one wanted to take his case so he ended up with the least experienced barrister at the Melbourne bar. Mr Murphy would do better than that. The lawyer said the first move he would have made on Mr Kelly's behalf would be to try to secure a sympathetic jury. What passed for opinion polls of the day showed that three out of four males in the country where Ned roamed were sympathetic to his cause. He was therefore a marketable accused. “He would have been entitled to a jury of his own folk just as Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen was,” said Mr Murphy.

Although provocation was not legally a defence, juries sometimes took it into account, he said. He would raise the matter of provocation because the police had made it clear they were out “to get” his hypothetical client. Mr Murphy would also raise self-defence. The NSW Court of Appeal recently accepted a woman's plea of self-defence in a shooting case on the grounds that a man walking towards her at night swinging his arms was seen by her as an aggressor.

Broadly, Mr Murphy would question whether his client was getting a fair trial. The lawyer was confident Mr Kelly would have been acquitted or, at worst, found guilty of a lesser charge. Our Sunshsine keeps the Kelly industry active. More than 100 books have now been published, six musicals, five films, one opera, one ballet and one French strip cartoon.