Chopper Unchopped (67 page)

I don’t know whether it is strange or not but I have always had comical dreams and a lot of my dreams relate to either being shot by a member of the clergy, having dinner with a big rabbit or my various courtroom adventures.

The dinner with the big rabbit dreams have plagued me since childhood. It relates to my mother giving my pet rabbit away to some Greek people and the buggers eating it. The courtroom dreams are quite insane. I keep seeing Sammy The Turk giving evidence against me in the Collins shooting trial and Boris Kayser rushes into the court yelling: ‘Your Honor, your Honor, this man is dead, will the Prosecution stop at nothing?’

I wonder if this dream means that Collins will join Sammy the Turk.

Gee, I hope so.

THE weather in the remand yard has turned vicious. The person who invented the expression, ‘I hope you fry in hell,’ has obviously never been to Her Majesty’s Prison, Risdon, for there is no doubt that hell is cold, and this is it.

I have some sort of fever and I am sure I have frost bite of both feet. My eyes ache and my head is humming away like a mad lady’s vibrator. I feel like shit and I am sure that death is on hand.

I feel like death, but the doctor tells me that despite my modest 40 cigarettes a day, my blood pressure of 105 over 67 is very good. It just goes to show what clean living can do.

I am sure my appeal is being delayed because Justices Zeeman, Wright and Crawford are unable to get to the Supreme Court because of the snow drifts. It is so cold that words cannot do it justice.

I was somewhat cheered up when the mail brought a letter and a lovely photo from my old mate Sherrie Sinatra, the bad girl of Australian wrestling. At 178 cm and 75 kilos, Sherrie is not the sort of girl that you would walk up to and pat on the bum.

You wouldn’t be worried about the sexual harassment case, only the broken arm you were likely to get if she did not appreciate the forward move you were making. It would be a case of make a pass, and ending up on your arse.

Perhaps I could get Sherrie to come down to Launceston, tie one arm behind her back and punch up Sid Collins. Perhaps it wouldn’t be fair, it might dirty Sid’s frock. Fair dinkum, mentally speaking, that bloke is a rent payer, and he is about six months behind and still fighting off eviction.

Peter Warmbrunn came to see me, resplendant in his ‘Glasser and Parker’ suit. He is a cheeky and cheerful young scallywag and I am glad to see he is putting my fees to good use. I think sometimes there is more a touch of lout than lawyer in him.

He reminds me of a lawyer I knew in Melbourne who would spit on the ground whenever he walked past a Crown prosecutor, not that Peter would ever do such a thing – or at least get caught doing it.

I have nicknamed him Painless Pete, because as a client, when he takes your money, you don’t feel a thing. Ha ha. He is a class act among the cavalcade of boring plonkers who call themselves lawyers and I predict big things for him.

I BELIEVE that the three Justices of the Tasmanian Supreme Court will return this month with the news I have been waiting for on my appeal. I will not predict which way it will go, although I am determined to take it to the High Court if we lose. I suspect that the Buggster and his team are as anxious as I am to get this settled.

There is a bit of nail biting going on in both legal camps at the moment. The truth is that neither side knows which way this will go.

For the past week I have been dreaming that I have been playing roulette and winning big. I can only hope that the dreams are good omens.

My dear old Dad is in poor health and wrote to tell me that he believes that the police have been spraying his bedroom window with nerve gas. Insanity may not run in my family, but it sure as hell has been walking around near us and having a good time for a long while now.

During this trying time, it is good to have friends who want to remain loyal. A mate wrote and said that if I didn’t win the appeal, I certainly wouldn’t need the White Dove hanging around and he offered me a greyhound in exchange for her.

So it has come to this. Did he offer to bake me a cake with a file in it to bust out? Did he say he would write to me once a week for the rest of his life? Did he say he would hunt down the dogs who put me here? No, just wanted the address of the pretty girl who tattooed my book cover on her shoulder.

Now Karen is not mine to sell. How could he treat another human being that way? Naturally, I was outraged he could talk of exchanging a person for a dog, and I only inquired about the dog’s breeding and form out of idle curiosity.

But even if I got the bloody dog, I would probably lose it to the newfangled Confiscation of Profits of Crime Legislation which is being passed in Tasmania.

Apparently the crusaders down here have been taking my name in vain and suggesting I would be first cab off the rank. I have heard reports they intend to take the money I made out of my books and declare that it was made from crime. Well, good luck to them. If they saw my legal bills over this latest fiasco they would realize that I would have to write the Encyclopedia Britannica to even break even.

As I’m tired of explaining to these pointyheads, if I hadn’t made some money out of the books then I would have got Legal Aid to pay for my two trials and the appeals and that money would have come from the public purse. At least this way, my legal battles are only a burden on me and not the public.

Furthermore, if the money I have made from writing books is considered ‘profits from crime’, then the writing of the books must be a crime. If that is the case, then I demand that I be charged with the heinous offence of book writing.

Just imagine it … ‘Mark Brandon Read, you are brought to this place to stand trial on the charge that on such and such a date, you did write a book that the membership of the Sandy Bay Yacht Club found distasteful. You are also charged with writing another book that the posh people didn’t like. You are also charged with grievous bodily harm to the English language and bad literary bad taste.’ Guilty, guilty, guilty.

Let’s get on with it. Lock me up and have a little book burning to follow.

You’d have to be Linda Lovelace to swallow all that.

I will keep scribbling as long as I have something to say. The fact that my humble efforts boil the blood of so many arseholes is payment enough. Some of these clowns should remember that Oscar Wilde was a convicted criminal.

I wonder if Oscar ever had to deal with anyone like Sid Collins?

A CAVALCADE of assorted brain dead plonkers and astronauts who call themselves lawyers in the fair city of Hobart are hanging out the windows of their various legal citadels, shaking their fists and calling for Anita Betts to be burnt at the stake.

Poor little Anita would be the most unpopular lawyer in town. When lawyers get sacked and have to cop that humiliation sweet, and then watch their former clients run off and hire Anita Betts, it creates a great deal of ill-will, mutterings and mumblings down at the Old Boys’ Club.

For far too long now the legal fraternity of Hobart has shuffled along doing as little as possible and getting paid far too much for doing it. They have their three-hour lunches, fill themselves with their whisky, lime and sodas, but they seem to have little concern for their poor old clients who are left in the dark about what the future holds.

I have heard lawyers down here tell prisoners that they couldn’t sack them, as you can’t sack a lawyer if you’re on legal aid. I have heard other lawyers scream that unless the poor bugger pleaded guilty, legal aid would not grant the funding for his case. Well, if you’re going to plead guilty, who needs it anyway?

The legal fraternity in Tassie is largely made up of overfed, overblown, pompous, limp-wristed, gutless, lazy, alcoholic, plead guilty, bottom-polishing arse-wipes. There are some good lawyers here, but they are in the minority. It is as if most of them don’t want to rock the boat. If you are a lawyer in Tassie who works hard, puts the interest of your clients first, jumps into legal battle feet first and fights tooth and nail on behalf of the client, you are considered some sort of oddity.

The pink gin old boy brigade looks down on the hardworking lawyer who runs straight at the ball. I would reckon there would be six to eight lawyers here who could pass muster. I think the rest should be taken out and shot. In fact, I believe that the over population of lawyers should be controlled by culling. Like kangaroos, if allowed to breed unchecked, they become a pest.

MONDAY night. Well, I’m off to court tomorrow. Anita and Narelle came to visit today. I thought Narelle was going to burst into tears and Anita looked nervous and anxious. Anita wanted to talk, yet she couldn’t think of anything to say. She knew that the wrong word could be a jinx. Before life and death moments, you tend to become a little superstitious, I know I certainly do.

Mary-Ann arranged a special contact visit with me on Sunday. Contact visits at Risdon are not the order of the day, so it was a nice surprise. Mary-Ann is a gorgeous looking chick up close.

It made me think, many years ago I used to go out with a girl from the Reserve Bank, then there was a computer programmer from the Motor Registration Branch, then a girl from the Defence Department and Margaret from Telecom. Now there is Mary-Ann from Tax. Maybe there is something in my personality which attracts me to public servants. Sometimes, late at night, I want to wear a cardigan and bad brown shoes. Is there flexi-time for crooks?

Frightening thought isn’t it?

IT IS Tuesday morning and all the waiting is over. The Tasmanian Supreme Court is ready and today I will be told my immediate fate. Despite my bravado I must confess that I have had an anxious night.

I wonder if it weighs heavily on the minds of judges when they know that their decisions will alter for all time the future of the people they see before them.

What I do know is that the words have already been written and their minds already made up, so there is nothing I can do about it now.

It is off to court we go to see whether the news is good or bad.

IT IS now over. Their Honors, Justice Zeeman, Wright and Crawford have hammered yet another nail into my legal coffin and have dismissed my appeal.

The conviction stands – for now.

I have instructed Anita to lodge another appeal against the conviction to the High Court of Australia. I remain confident that ultimately, I will walk free.

It must be remember amongst all the crazy legal expressions and fine Latin phrases that in the beginning I was prosecuted on the Collins matter and a jury could not make up its mind. On the second trial I was convicted on a majority verdict. The Crown could not find 12 people on a jury to agree on my guilt or innocence.

The High Court has an attitude that convictions based on majority verdicts are unsafe and unsatisfactory.

Funny thing that, so do I.

So I believe that all is not lost and this is merely a setback.

Damian Bugg, the Director of Public Prosecutions, looked as happy as a puppy with two tails when the Supreme Court came back with its decision. He was very chipper indeed.

Mary-Ann came to the jail in the afternoon because she was worried about my state of mind and heart.

My state of mind has always been questionable and my heart was broken long ago, so when you’re dead inside already, it’s pretty hard to inflict any further damage on yourself.

I’ve got a tattoo on my lower back that reads: ‘I don’t care if it rains or freezes, as long as I’ve got my plastic Jesus, sitting on the dashboard of my car’. It sums up my whole life.

When the appeal was thrown out, the members of the press present looked pleased. As I stood in the dock like a chocolate teapot as their Honors hit my appeal for six, the media representatives looked as if they were about to break out in song.

It is funny, but I learned long ago that the media love to hate me in public, yet they want to stick their tongues in my mouth in private.

It is all part of the tragic comedy which goes to make up my life.

Two of Dynamic Damian’s legal helpers, who I have named ‘Bill and Ben, the flowerpot men’, danced a jig of delight outside the court. From all reports, I hope they are better lawyers than dancers.

There was much back slapping and three cheers for the Buggster. Good luck to him, he won the day, but this is a 15 rounder and a glancing blow early in the fight will be of no consequence when the final bell sounds.

Anita marched down the court steps to tell the waiting media her client was innocent and an appeal would go to the High Court, bless her black stockings.

Everyone seems to be having a jolly good time at my expense, but you don’t toss the party until the body has been burned, and I ain’t dead yet.

One of the best legal brains about is a chap named David Porter, and he is the man we want to handle the next legal battle. I have had a sneaky eye on him for some time.

In the High Court you need brains, cool nerves, quick wits and a thought process like a legal library. Porter lectures in law. The High Court is no place for fan dancers and fire eaters.

Anyway, the opera ain’t over ‘till someone shoots the fat lady. Until then, Je Ne Regrette Rien.

I BELIEVE that Mr David Porter will handle my appeal. He is a top lawyer with a great legal mind and I have every faith that we will eventually dispense with this legal rubbish.

I am in legal custody as a result of an officially sanctioned rigged up jury system. The majority verdict rule was put into place by some of the state’s law makers. I imagine the thinking at the time was to stop the guilty from escaping justice. But I think the rule also means that the innocent don’t have much chance either.

I think you could call it a sort of courtroom gerrymander, stacking the deck, jury wise. It may be legal, but it is hardly fair play. I am no legal expert, at best I am a jail house lawyer, but even I am aware that the High Court of Australia is not keen on majority verdicts.