A Queensland man who was sentenced to life in prison in 2020 for raping and torturing a woman over the course of 23 days alleges he was not given all the information before entering a guilty plea.
On Thursday, Nicholas John Crilley appeared via videolink in Brisbane Court of Appeal for a hearing regarding his request to overturn his conviction, which resulted in a sentence of seven concurrent life terms.
Crilley previously entered guilty pleas to 62 offenses, including 18 charges of rape, torture, and serious bodily damage.
The victim, who was 22 years old at the time, was severely damaged by Crilley’s “callous and cruel” treatment of her in Brisbane in June 2017.
Appeal Court Crilley was informed by President Debra Mullins on Thursday that he would have to apply to withdraw his guilty pleas and offer justification for the court to permit so.
Crilley, who is handling his own appeal, said that he twice tried to stop his sentence from being carried out after realizing he was pleading guilty to offenses he hadn’t planned to.
I was sentenced through videolink, so I didn’t realize important changes to the statement of facts and the charge list until about a third of the way through the sentencing, according Judge Crilley.
Crilley was informed by Justice Mullins that he would have to waive his legal professional privilege with the lawyer and barrister who represented him at the sentencing if he wanted to utilize those grounds to withdraw his plea.
“Do you understand that if you are going to claim that you were misled, you have to permit those lawyers to put in an affidavit saying what happened from their point of view?” Asking Crilley was Justice Mullins.
“I believe so,” Crilley said.
Justice Mullins stated that she preferred to bring the case back to the original sentencing judge, and that Crilley would have the opportunity to file an appeal if they refused to permit him to withdraw his guilty pleas.
Crilley declared that he supported such choice since it would allow him two opportunities to make his argument.
Justice Mullins put the matter on pause so that Legal Aid may conduct a review of its earlier denial of funding to attorneys to work on Crilley’s appeal on August 23.
