Chamberlain v The Queen [1983] HCA 13

High Court of Australia Brennan J. Chamberlain v The Queen [1983] HCA 13

ORDER Application dismissed. May 2 Brennan J.

This is an application for bail pending the determination of an application for special leave to appeal. On 29 October 1982, Mrs. Alice Lynne Chamberlain was convicted of the murder of her infant daughter Azaria Chantel Chamberlain upon the verdict of a jury in the Supreme Court of the Northern Territory. She was sentenced to life imprisonment as the law of the Territory requires. She appealed against conviction to the Federal Court of Australia, and that appeal was dismissed by the unanimous judgment of the Full Court of the Federal Court on Friday last (Bowen C.J., Forster and Jenkinson JJ.). A notice of application for special leave to appeal to this Court was filed immediately on behalf of Mrs. Chamberlain. In due course that application will be heard. In the meantime she applies to be released on bail.

On 17 November 1982, shortly after Mrs. Chamberlain had begun to serve her sentence in the Darwin Prison, she gave birth to a second daughter, Kahlia. She had been taken to the Darwin hospital for the birth of the baby. On 19 November 1982, by order of a Full Court of the Federal Court (Fox and Northrop JJ., Lockhart J. dissenting) she was admitted to bail pending the disposition of her appeal. Mrs. Chamberlain, her husband, two sons and the baby have been living together at Avondale College at Cooranbong in New South Wales. She has been breastfeeding the baby. When her appeal was dismissed, the Federal Court ordered the Sheriff of that Court to take her into his custody and to deliver her to the Officer in Charge of the Darwin Prison at Berrimah in the Northern Territory, where she is to continue to serve her sentence. She was taken into custody accordingly. The present application is to release Mrs. Chamberlain on bail in order that she may resume family life and continue to breastfeed Kahlia pending the disposition of her application for special leave to appeal. I may say at once that I do not think that there is any likelihood of her failing to answer to her bail if bail were granted. The poignancy of her return to custody and the traumatic disruption of family life that that involves needs no elaboration. It needs no psychiatric evidence to establish the tragic nature of those events. The circumstances give force to the observation of Edmund Davies L.J. (as he then was) in the case of Gruffydd [10] :