Rivkin's Fate Is Evidence Of The Law's Failure
Sydney Morning Herald
Monday May 15, 2006
Our courts are confronted constantly with people suffering mental illness and our legal system has attempted to develop special rules to deal with them. Rene Rivkin was one of them. The system failed.
There is a real chance Rivkin was convicted not because of what he did but because of what he appeared to be - a flamboyant, arrogant, Prozac-driven and successful stockbroker. His trial and subsequent conviction, his treatment during weekend detention and his subsequent suicide raises serious issues about how the law, the media and society treat the mentally ill.In April 2003, as he faced the charge of insider trading, Rivkin was not only suffering from bipolar disorder, but unknown to anybody, he also had a brain tumour. This was almost certainly present in April 2001, when he committed the offence. Rivkin was mentally ill, clearly not fit to handle a complex trial. According to his neurosurgeon, who removed the tumour, such tumours affect thought processes, and the symptoms of this are poor judgement, irrationality, disinhibition and memory disturbance. Had this neurosurgeon been consulted before the trial, he would have said emphatically that Rivkin was not medically fit to handle a trial situation.About two months after the tumour was removed and he was no longer on Prozac, Rivkin expressed to me his despair that society had turned on him. The flamboyance and arrogance had gone. At the conclusion of the hearing of his appeal, when the Court of Appeal refused to entertain an application for bail, he collapsed.What happened thereafter is well documented. Depression and thoughts of suicide dominated his life. His appeal was rejected. He served his sentence of weekend detentions in the Long Bay Prison hospital.Before the Court of Appeal I argued that the punishment was out of all proportion to the offence. The court disagreed.Had it been known before the trial that Rivkin was suffering a brain tumour, his counsel and solicitors would have sought an adjournment. This point did not impress the Court of Appeal.As his counsel, I believed his trial should have been aborted and his conviction overturned because it was a denial of natural justice for him to go to trial at that time.If Rivkin's conviction, sentencing and imprisonment are an example of how a mentally ill person is treated by the law, the law needs drastic revision.Bob Ellicott Sydney
© 2006 Sydney Morning Herald