Marcus Einfeld, Judge & founding president of Human Rights Commission, jailed for Perjury
Michael Pelly
The Australian
Fri, 20 Mar 2009
How did he do it?
The Einfeld Follies: a study in ego
The posturings of a senior legal figure have finally been exposed, writes Paul Sheehan.
Michael Pelly
The Australian
Fri, 20 Mar 2009
The jailing of Marcus Einfeld over a $77 speeding fine completes a spectacular fall from grace for the man once hailed a national "living treasure".
Einfeld was sentenced to at least two years' prison today for perjury and perverting the course of justice.
He has been a leading human rights lawyer for more than 30 years, a long-serving judge of the Federal Court and prominent member of the Jewish community.
The son of NSW Labor minister Syd Einfeld, he attended Sydney Boys High School and completed a law degree at Sydney University. There he socialised with future prime minister John Howard, with whom he shared a passion for cricket.
Einfeld became a barrister in 1962 and practised in England and Australia for more than 20 years. He was appointed a Queens Counsel in 1977. He was appointed to the Federal Court in 1986 and that year he also became the founding president of the Human Rights Commission.
When the federal government - and particularly Philip Ruddock - attacked the "activist" judiciary, it was often because of Einfeld's rulings in immigration cases. When judge Ruth McColl of the NSW Supreme Court was president of the NSW Bar Association, she said Einfeld's judicial method was "results-oriented" and that he was never in "the judicial mainstream".
"You had little interest in technicalities and indeed, advocates had to work hard, or charm you, if they wanted to argue finer points."
In 1997, he was named a national living treasure by the National Trust of Australia. A year later he was made an Officer of the Order of Australia for services to international affairs in 1998. In 2002, he was named the UN peace laureate.
He retired after 15 years as a Federal Court judge in 2001 and took on selected cases such as the wrongful detention of Vivian Alvarez Solon and Cornelia Rau. (He would declare he was acting pro bono but later charged the federal government $72,783.33 for his work on the Solon case.)
Einfeld has also been a director of 13 companies and trusts, a patron of many organisations, including the Australian Association of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Descendants. He claimed to have worked on establishing a legal system for Palestine and was photographed walking arm-in-arm with Yasser Arafat in 1997.
Twice married with four children, he is also said to be an accomplished pianist who enjoys theatre and the arts.
The path to Einfeld's personal destruction began on January 8, 2006, when his car was captured by a speed camera doing 60km/h in a 50km/h zone along Macpherson Street in Sydney's Mosman. It was minor traffic offence that attracted a $77 fine and three demerit points.
He would sign a statutory declaration saying he had lent his car to an old friend, Teresa Brennan - a professor from Florida who had died after returning to the US. When he gave evidence to that effect at the Downing Centre Local Court in August, the offence was found to be "not proved" and was dismissed by the magistrate.
He was then confronted by a Daily Telegraph reporter with the fact that Brennan had been dead for three years. Einfeld offered that another academic, also named Therese or Terese Brennan, had borrowed his car on the day of the offence. He said she too had died after returning to the US.
Prosecutors were soon asked to prepare a brief "confirming the evidence given before the court"'. Einfeld would hire a public relations firm and call a press conference to insist the "living" Professor Brennan would provide a statement that would clear him.
"I was not driving my car which was photographed by a speed camera on the day in question. I stand by that," he said.
But mobile phone records showed he was in the area at the time and was driving a companion, former SBS journalist Vivian Schenker, home from lunch at Pilu, a upmarket restaurant at Freshwater.
He again changed his story and claimed he was driving his mother's Corolla on January 8. However, security footage taken at Mr Einfeld's mother's apartment block in Bondi Junction allegedly showed her vehicle did not leave the car park at any time on that day.
As his story unravelled so did his CV. He had unwittingly invited scrutiny and the media took up the challenge. It emerged that he had bought degrees from American "universities", had not been a director of Marks and Spencer and that his judgements adopted others' work without attribution.
The public was reminded that his presidency of the Human Rights Commission came to an end soon after he was challenged for allegedly twice claiming compensation for the same property - an overcoat - lost on an overseas trip.
He had also falsely used the "I wasn't driving excuse" on three previous occasions, blaming friends who were visiting from overseas. It would become known as the Einfeld defence and promoted a change in the law when it was discovered that hundreds of drivers had used it avoid traffic and parking fines.
Einfeld still had had no shortage of people willing to come to his defence. They included Angela Liati, a 55-year-old-woman who wanted to meet Einfeld. She claimed she was in the car with Professor Brennan on the day in question. She would later be convicted of perjury.
Another figure to emerge in what rapidly became a legal circus was prostitute Marie Christos.
One of her clients was Einfeld's first solicitor, Michael Ryan. While rifling through his rubbish bin for proof he was lying about having an affair with another woman, Ms Christos found documents relating to the Einfeld case. She then took them to police - and the media.
Ms Christos announced she would wear a new dress for every day Einfeld was in court and once confronted him with TV cameras rolling and announced: "Hello Marcus, I'm Marie Christos, Michael Ryan's prostitute."
Mr Ryan would resign from the case, quit as a partner at McClellands Lawyers and leave the law altogether.
Today, there was one more name added to the list of casualties. That of Marcus Einfeld himself.
How did he do it?
The Einfeld Follies: a study in ego
The posturings of a senior legal figure have finally been exposed, writes Paul Sheehan.
The more you examine the career of the Honourable Marcus Einfeld, QC, the less you find. The great mystery is why it has taken so long for the media to take an axe to this rooster.
Last week, as Einfeld's saga of absurd denials and evasions became ever more threadbare and pathetic, I Googled "Marcus Einfeld" and the very first item that appeared, his CV, was a cause for concern. It listed him as having a BA, LLB (Sydney University), and PhD and LLD (USA). The "USA" raised an alarm. A check of his entry in Who's Who confirmed why. The BA had disappeared, while the PhD was from Pacific Western University and the doctorate in law from Century University. I'd never heard of either of them.
It did not take long to confirm that Pacific Western and Century are both what is known as unaccredited colleges, or "diploma mills". On its website, Pacific Western University describes itself as "a distance learning university located in San Diego". Its goal is to is provide "a self-paced, year-round, off-campus experience to all of our students". Century University is much the same. A doctoral program and doctorate from Century costs $US5199 ($6850). A masters from Pacific Western costs $6240.
No one could present such qualifications with any seriousness as a marker of credibility or rigour. I was amazed this had never been picked up before. As so often happens in the media, the same wheels were turning elsewhere. On Saturday the legal affairs writer for The Australian, Chris Merritt, wrote about these same utterly dubious qualifications.
Einfeld's entry in Who's Who, self-compiled, is a metaphor for his career. It begins with a parody of academic rigour and continues with an egregious amount of padding, groaning into one of the longest entries in Who's Who, as if his mere membership of Amnesty International etc, etc, etc, needed to be recorded. The entry begins as it ends, with a self-inflating distortion, giving his address as "Judges' Chambers, Federal Court of Australia", an address five years out of date. Using the title of judge is something he has done often since he ceased being one.
The brazen padding goes some way to explaining his behaviour since August 7, when he appeared at the Downing Centre Local Court to contest a $77 speeding fine generated by a speed camera in Mosman on January 8. He contested the fine on the grounds that he wasn't driving the car at the time. So many falsities, half-truths and evasions have been uttered since then that I've numbered them to keep track.
1. Einfeld says he sent a statutory declaration to the court stating that his car was being driven at the time by a Professor Teresa Brennan, who had since died in a motor vehicle accident.
2. In court, he was asked: "What did you do with your vehicle?" and replied: "I lent it to an old friend of mine who was visiting from Florida."
Barrister, helpfully: "I think that was Professor Teresa Brennan?"
Einfeld: "Yes it was."
3. Einfeld was contacted later that day by Viva Goldner of The Daily Telegraph, who presented him with the fact that his alibi had been dead for three years. He responded: "This was not the same person. This was a totally different person … another Professor Brennan." Asked to provide details to verify this, he replied: "I'm afraid not. I know she lived in one of the states of America. She moved."
4. The second Therese Brennan soon since disappeared from the line of argument and was replaced, on August 9, with this prepared statement: "As I said in court, I am uncertain as to who was driving the car …" His statement to the court was quite clear: "an old friend", Professor Teresa Brennan, was driving.
5. On August 9 Einfeld said he would never perjure himself, especially over such a trivial matter, and his licence had not been at risk.
Einfeld has a history of speeding offences, and had reached eight demerit points for offences on December 9, 2005, January 11, 2004, and June 22, 2003. The Daily Telegraph discovered that in May the Roads and Traffic Authority sent him a letter warning that his licence would be suspended if he reached 12 demerit points. Had he not contested the $77 fine, he would have been just one demerit from having his licence suspended. His licence might not have been literally at risk from this fine, but it would have been hanging precariously by one point.
6. On August 10, Einfeld began responding to the media via a barrister, Winston Terracini, SC, and a solicitor, Michael Ryan, who issued a written statement saying that contact had been made with a person in the US and it was hoped that it would be possible "in the next few days to reveal who was the driver". That was 11 days ago. The mystery endures.
Enough. Marcus Einfeld has made a career out of portentous moralising. The man now enmeshed by small falsities and large vanities is the same man who has resorted to the big deceits to gain moral advantage - the claim of genocide and the comparisons with Nazis.
This son of a Labor politician, and Labor judicial appointee, has played the political game with ferocity. He has invoked the Nazi era ("The thuggery of the guards at Woomera … not much different to that shown by the SS guards in the name of the Third Reich …").
Inevitably, he cried "genocide" after the Bringing Them Home report on the removal of Aboriginal children was published, a report whose claim of genocide, when subjected to the forensic scrutiny of the courts in Cubillo v Commonwealth (2000), disintegrated.
He was subject to a formal complaint of plagiarism in 2003 by Professor John Carter of Sydney University after Einfeld reproduced Carter's work in Halsbury's Laws of Australia in a judgement without attribution. "We fail our students and discipline them if they do this," Professor Carter told The Australian Financial Review. Einfeld said the footnotes had been left out in the printing process.
Now he has become Marcus Minefield, or Justice Seinfeld, and it no longer matters who was driving his Lexus in Mosman on January 8. He had seven months to get it right, kept blustering to reporters, and the axe has come down.
All that's left is blood and feathers.
A classic description of the non-criminal (or only mildly criminal) psychopath.