This weekend saw the death of Kenneth Perry, thirty-two years after the High Court quashed his wife’s conviction for attempting to murder him. Perry died as he had lived for decades, staunchly maintaining that his wife played no role in several bouts of arsenic poisoning he suffered in the late 1970s. Emily Perry was never retried by South Australian prosecutors, while a further charge for the murder of her first husband laid by Victorian prosecutors was dropped in 1986.

The High Court’s judgment in Perry v R is famous for its bold stand against convictions based on so-called ‘similar fact’ evidence. Continue reading →