Jon White, newly appointed ACT Supreme Court Judge and former ACT DPP.

The Prosecution and What Drove It

The Forgery at the Heart of the Case

The Withheld Evidence and What It Would Have Proven

The Human Cost

Accountability and Its Absence

Institution and Individual: A Necessary Distinction

The Legal Threshold and Why It Matters

Jon White’s Record As Director: An Acknowledgement

Why This Platform Exists

Conclusion: The Unanswered Questions

BLAK AND BLACK  |  MEDIA AND ADVOCACY  |  EST. 2010

This Post Has 30 Comments

  1. Bill Wheatley

    The prosecution of Bakchos by the ACTDPP can only be described as an assault on Australia’s rule of law, it was a prosecution that brought Australia’s justice system into disrepute. The document in question was given to the AFP by Peter Garrisson the ACT Solicitor General who so far has avoided accountability for his actions.

    1. Kelly Conrad

      The fact that no one in the ACT Solicitor General’s Office, the Australian Federal Police or the ACTDPP have been held legally accountable for what was done to Bakchos should send shivers down the spine of every Australian.

  2. Kelly Conrad

    The prosecution of Bakchos was racism on steroids.

  3. Jen

    The ACT Attorney-General who made the recommendation for Jon White’s appointment is part of the same ACT Labor government whose political interests were served by my prosecution. The circularity of that arrangement is not subtle. The people who presided over a politically motivated prosecution of an Aboriginal man are now in a position to elevate the Director of the DPP who ran it to the highest court in the Territory. And they have done so without any prior reckoning with what occurred.

  4. The Faceless Freedom Fighter

    Jon White has just been appointed a judge of the ACT Supreme Court. Jon White was the Director of Public Prosecutions when Bakchos was prosecuted on sixteen charges — charges built on what his legal team assessed as a forged document, charges the AFP and DPP were warned about before the trial started, charges that collapsed completely. Sixteen charges. Sixteen acquittals.

    1. Watershedd

      The most troubling thing about the prosecution of Bakchos is not the fit-up, although that is entirely disturbing. It is not that it was facilitated by a complicit ACT Government, tribunal, police and DPP. It is that no one, not a soul, has been held accountable. The perceived lack of review, combined with the career progression of senior & key individuals leaves one to consider that the ACT has no genuine interest in upholding the rule of law. Those functionaries of whom The Faceless Freedom Fighter speaks were not solely low level public servants – they were and are executives vested with responsibility. With responsibility should come accountability. So whilst they may follow processes, the buck as they say, needs to stop somewhere.

      1. Bakchos

        Thank you for this — you have put your finger on precisely the point that matters most. The prosecution itself, as distressing as it was, ultimately ended in a 16-0 acquittal. The law, at that moment, worked. What has not worked — what has never worked — is the reckoning that should have followed.

        You are right that these were not low-level functionaries acting alone. They were executives. People with authority, institutional standing, and the public trust that comes with both. The absence of accountability is not an oversight or a bureaucratic lag. It is a choice — one made repeatedly, at multiple levels, by people who understood exactly what they were doing.
        The rule of law is not merely procedural. It does not consist in following processes while insulating those who abuse them from consequence. As the Hebrew prophetic tradition understood long before Montesquieu — and as Marcus Aurelius grasped from the other side of power — justice without accountability is theatre. It pacifies without correcting. It performs legitimacy while entrenching impunity.

        The ACT Government has had ample opportunity to demonstrate that it takes institutional integrity seriously. Its silence on accountability speaks more plainly than any official statement could.

  5. Lady Margaret

    Mark is a good friend, I know him well, what Jon White and his team at the ACTDPP did to my friend Mark to shield a white supremacist from accountability, and to protect some corrupt Labor Party politicians leaves me totally cold.

    1. Bakchos

      You’re 100% correct. Margaret all of this has its genesis in the outrageously racist letter Angel Marina wrote to Howard Ronaldson on 9 May 2002 that letter could only have been written by somebody who holds white supremacy views, and the fact that the ACT government the AFP and the ACTDPP have gone to such lengths to protect him from accountability suggest that they too hold similar white supremacy views.

    2. Paulo

      You are absolutely correct Lady Margaret, everything that the Australian Federal Police and the ACTDPP was to shield a white supremacist (Angel Marina) from legal accountability for his alleged crimes.

  6. Mirko

    People please remember, if they can do this to one person, they can do it to anyone.

    1. Bakchos

      Yes Mirko that’s the point that is missed by most people – if they can do it to me – they can do it to you!

  7. Reg

    White is a racist white cunt.

  8. Paulo

    I’m a psychologist. I’ve been involved with Blak and Black since its inception. I’ve known Bakchos since we were both 18.. I’m personally shocked and disgusted that the prosecution of Bakchos was allowed to progress despite everybody knowing that the document that it was predicated on was a forgery, and that forgery was handed to the AFP by none other than the ACT Solicitor General Peter Garrisson. Why hasn’t Garrisson been held to account for damage his manipulation of the legal system caused?

  9. Melissa

    Jon White’s DPP treated Bakchos like he was subhuman. Absolutely disgusting.

  10. Marc

    The way the ACT DPP progressed the prosecution of Bakchos showed clear signs of racial bias. There is clear signs of interference by the ACT Solicitor General who had a long and provable history of animus against Bakchos and other Indigenous residents of the ACT.

    1. Bakchos

      The 16 charges were the Solicitor General’s idea, I believe. Peter Garrisson the Solicitor General pushed for the prosecution. I also believe that there was possible collusion between Garrisson, Pham and Marina on issues like the audit and the complaints of racism. Garrisson should have been charged when the prosecution failed!

  11. Fr Alfonso SJ

    The more I read about the way the ACTDPP treated Bakchos, the more uneasy I became about structural racism in the DPP. The responsibility for the racism, even if he’s not racist himself, sits with John White, as the actual director of the department of public prosecutions..

  12. Gertie

    Mark is a good friend, he showed unbelievable kindness to my disabled son, a kindness he was under no obligation whatsoever to give. I’m disgusted with the racism he has been subjected to. The ACTDPP and the Australian Federal Police have obvious and severe structural racism problems which need to be dealt with. Under no circumstances should Mark have been treated the way he has been treated by racist and corrupt Australian institutions. I have spoken with Mark at length about the ACT Solicitor General Mr Peter Garrisson. Mark believes that Mr Garrisson manipulated the legal process in the ACT to pursue a racist vendetta against him. This is something that needs serious investigation, given the role Mr Garrison holds.

  13. Bakchos

    Thank you for your support, Gertie. The ACT legal system is totally broken. It’s been corrupted by a quarter century of unbroken ALP government. In my view, the ALP have stacked the judiciary and senior appointments within the bureaucracy, with ALP cronies. There is no justice to be had in the ACT if the institution you’re seeking justice from is the ALP itself. Multiple people have given statements that they heard Mr Angel Marina brag that he was supported by Ted Quinlan, who was then the ACT Treasurer and Minister for Police. The AFP refused to investigate Mr Marina‘s assault and comments. If they had investigated them at the time, there would’ve been CCTV footage showing what Mr Marina did and said.

    1. The Faceless Freedom Fighter

      The ACT legal system has been corrupted by the ALP to the extent that it no longer operates as an independent legal system committed to upholding the rule of law.

  14. David

    Racism drove the prosecution of Bakchos. White supremacists having the back of other white supremacists is why Angel Marina has avoided accountability for his actions.

  15. Andy

    I’m sick of these racist white cunts putting the boot into blackfullas whenever they get the chance. Racism is the root cause of these issues, racism put Bakchos on trial. That fat cunt who calls himself the Solicitor General is the one who should be in prison.

  16. Bob Coe

    Jon White should be disgusted with himself, the office he headed prosecuted an innocent Aboriginal man to satisfy a white supremacist. Talk about unAustralian. That is the most unAustralian thing I’ve ever seen.

  17. Mick Donaldson

    Tell me Jon White how do you justify the attacks on Bakchos by your office, while Angel Marina’s racism and corruption goes unpunished? Now let’s talk about the ACT Solicitor General using a false document to have your office prosecute Bakchos, no accountability for that short, fat, racist fuck.

  18. Buck

    Yet despite all this the ACT government still made Jon White a judge. This surely explains the high indigenous incarceration rates in the ACT..

    1. Melissa

      The ACT is a hardcore racist jurisdiction. Jon White is both a product of that jurisdiction, and now a Supreme Court judge in that jurisdiction.

  19. Sharon

    Under absolutely no circumstances should someone implicated in, or even remotely associated with racism be elevated to the bench. This includes Jon White.

    1. Bill Wheatley

      There is no room for even a wiff of racism on the bench.

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