Australian woman gets $1.6m for being wrongly jailed for 10 years

A woman, who was found by a court to have been wrongly jailed for 10 years for attempting to kill her husband, was awarded 1.6 million dollars compensation.

A media report on Monday in Sydney said that Roseanne Beckett was jailed in 1991 for allegedly trying to solicit others to kill her husband Barry Catt as well as trying to poison him.

The report noted that Beckett became the state’s longest-serving female inmate, before she was released in 2001, and her case became a cause célèbre for advocates who saw a miscarriage of justice.

It said in 2005, the charges were quashed after new evidence emerged that she had been framed.

It said in her attempt to sue the government’s public prosecutor for malicious prosecution, she was asked to prove her innocence.

“A 10-year court battle ended on Monday, 26 years to the days since she was arrested.

Meanwhile, Ian Harrison, Supreme Court Justice overturned a 91-year-old legal precedent requiring her to prove her innocence.

The judge ordered the public prosecutor’s office to pay her compensation for malicious prosecution, plus her legal costs which she said run into the millions.

Beckett said outside the court that the public prosecutor spent millions of dollars trying to prevent her from suing.

She said “Victory at long last, with tears streaming down her face as she was cheered by supporters.