Source : Perth Now news
Celebrity agent Ralph Carr’s convictions for raping a woman are an “obvious” miscarriage of justice, his lawyer has told a court.
The 66-year-old, full name Ralph Carnovale-Carr, was found guilty of sexually assaulting and twice raping a woman in her 20s following a jury trial last month in the County Court of Victoria.
During the trial, jurors heard Carr met the woman, who he’d known previously, in early 2023 to discuss work opportunities at his company Ralph Carr Management and sexually assaulted her in his home after a night spent drinking and using cocaine.
The high-profile sports and entertainment manager returned to court this week as his legal team argued his sentence should be stayed, or put on hold, pending an appeal against the verdict.
Defence barrister Dermot Dann KC argued anyone who heard the victim’s evidence “should be very concerned, very, very uncomfortable about the guilty verdicts”.
He told the court in 35 years as a trial barrister this was the first time he’d applied for a stay of sentence for the charge.
“This is the most obvious miscarriage of justice I’ve ever seen in all that time,” he said.
“We make no apologies for bringing the application, we make no apologies for appealing the verdicts.
“We have a man who maintains his innocence… a man who is going through hell in prison.”
In response, Judge Frank Gucciardo said he was not sure it was appropriate for Mr Dann to express the personal opinion and may be “overstating your position”.
Prosecutor Matthew Fisher, for the Crown, later addressed Mr Dann’s submission, saying: “we are very concerned on this side of the bar table”.
“We hope he hasn’t made those statements to Your Honour to garner or attract some sort of media attention,” he said.
Addressing the stay application, Mr Dann took the court to a series of features throughout the trial he argued could lead the Court of Appeal to consider the verdicts “unsafe or unsatisfactory”.
These includes differences in the woman’s varying accounts of what happened, unchallenged differences in her evidence to other witnesses and other objective evidence he said the prosecution had failed to address.
Mr Dann said “inconsistencies’ in the woman’s evidence included differences in body positions when the rape occured, duration of the rapes and “recent inventions” including allegations Carr mastubated in front of her and apologised.
The barrister also pointed to a text message from Carr to the victim the day after the rape where Carr asked “what happened” and mentioned that police had told him they were responding to a disturbance at his West Melbourne home.
Mr Dann argued the text could only be seen as exculpatory because police had not argued it was incriminating conduct.
The barrister also pointed to evidence from Carr’s psychiatrist Jacqueline Rakov that Carr’s mental health in prison is so bad he “describes himself as living in hell”.
“There are cases where the Court of Appeal comes to the view that jury verdicts cannot stand,” he said.
“There is a reasonable prospect this is one of those cases.
“We do say this is a case, where if ever the power (to stay sentencing) is to be exercised, it is this case.”
The hearing continues.
