The Queensland Court of Appeal has overturned the conviction of Olympic medallist Nathan Baggaley. In 2021 Nathan was convicted after a trial for the attempted importation of cocaine and he was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
In 2018 Dru Baggaley, Nathan’s brother, and Anthony Draper were arrested out at sea in a boat where the AFP alleged the pair had met up with another ship and received a large load of cocaine. Months later the AFP arrested Nathan Baggaley in relation to his alleged connection to the attempted importation.
The case against Nathan is completely circumstantial. After the arrest of Anthony Draper and Dru Baggaley a phone was found on their boat and a message had been sent to that phone from a person presumably on land saying that the person was on “standby ready”. At trial the prosecution told the jury that “Nathan Baggaley sent that message from his phone and therefore you can go on to find that this meant Nathan was back on land waiting for the boat to return with the drugs and that this established he must have been involved in the plan and he is guilty”.
After trial the prosecutor said that the only way Nathan could have been convicted is if the jury found that Nathan had sent that message to the phone found on the boat. The judge accepted this reasoning and sentenced Nathan to 25 years in jail.
However upon appeal it was revealed that prior to trial Nathan’s phone had been forensically examined by police phone experts and it was revealed that his phone did not and could not have sent the message to the phone found on the boat. The Queensland Court of Appeal questioned the basis for Nathan’s conviction and it is thought that the court was considering acquitting Nathan of the charge. Instead the court reserved its discretion and quashed the conviction and ordered a retrial. Nathan’s 25 year sentence was thrown out and he will now face a retrial in October this year alongside his brother Dru who also had his conviction overturned.
Nathan’s appeal also raised the ground that his legal team were incompetent and failed to follow his instructions at trial. It is believed that Nathan now has new legal representatives for his retrial.
A conviction for the prosecution seems very hard as it appears the prosecution misunderstood their own evidence at the first trial as they mistakenly believed that Nathan’s phone had sent the message to the phone in the boat. The circumstantial case against Nathan is weak or non-existent if the prosecution cannot prove Nathan sent the message to the phone in the boat.
The case against Dru Baggaley hangs on the evidence of his co-accused Anthony Draper. Mr. Draper became a Crown witness and agreed to testify against Dru Baggaley at his trial in return for a reduced charge and significantly reduced sentence. However it would appear the prosecution has significant problems with Mr. Draper and his evidence as the first trial judge stated that, “Mr. Draper is a completely unreliable witness and I cannot accept anything he says”. In order to convict Dru the jury will have to accept Mr. Draper’s evidence as truthful.
Nathan has been in jail on remand awaiting trial since 2018. Both Nathan and Dru Baggaley maintain their innocence.