Tracey Wigginton was 24 when a man she did not know died at West End, on the south bank of the Brisbane River, in October 1989. Three other women were charged with her. Of the four, she alone admitted the crime. In January 1991 she stood in the Supreme Court of Queensland and pleaded guilty to murder, and the court passed the only sentence the law allowed: life imprisonment.
The plea spared her a trial, but it did not end the case. A jury later heard the evidence against her co-accused and returned three different verdicts for three women who had shared the same night. Wigginton herself spent more than twenty years in custody, nearly a decade of it past her first parole date. Her refused application in 2009 produced a judgment of the Supreme Court of Queensland on how the state's parole board weighs a life prisoner's case. She was granted parole at the end of 2011 and walked out of custody in January 2012.
The man who died was Edward Baldock, of Brisbane. He traveled with the four women from Kangaroo Point, the inner-city district on the river's eastern bank, to West End, and he died there that night, in October 1989. Two of the women were with him when he died; the other two remained in the car.
Wigginton was the woman who killed him. The first of her co-accused was with her when he died. Of the two women who remained in the car, one was later held to share criminal responsibility for his death and the other was not.
All four were charged with his murder.
Murder in Queensland carried a mandatory life sentence, and for that reason a plea of guilty to it was unusual. Wigginton made one. In January 1991 she pleaded guilty in the Supreme Court of Queensland to the murder, and she was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Because she pleaded, the evidence against her was never tested before a jury. Nearly two decades later the parole board considering her release noted that it had no sentencing remarks before it at all; the Supreme Court, reviewing that decision, held that other material in the board's file described the offense adequately and that the absence of the remarks was no bar to a lawful decision.
The three other women went to trial in the Supreme Court in Brisbane. The first co-accused, who had been with Wigginton when the victim died, pleaded not guilty to murder. The jury found her guilty, and she too received the mandatory sentence of life imprisonment.
The second co-accused, one of the two women who had stayed in the car, was convicted of manslaughter. She was sentenced to 18 years in custody, a term reduced to 12 years on appeal.
The third co-accused, the other woman in the car, was acquitted. Her defense was that she had sat in the car and played no active part in what happened, and the jury accepted it.
The trial put Wigginton's own conduct before the jury even though she was not on trial. The first co-accused gave evidence about her, and testified that Wigginton claimed to live on animal blood bought from butchers. That evidence was given in a trial of other women; Wigginton, having pleaded, never answered it in court.
The sentence Wigginton received in 1991 was the mandatory one. In 1990, the year before her plea, Queensland had introduced a minimum non-parole period of thirteen years for murder, and that rule governed her case: from 2002 she was eligible to seek release. Eligibility gave her no right to it. The parole board held a broad discretion over every application, and a life prisoner granted parole remains on parole for life.
Wigginton began her sentence in a secure women's facility in Brisbane. In 2003 she was moved to a low-security prison farm in southeast Queensland. She stayed there until 2006, when she was sent back to the secure facility after an incident. The details of that incident were disputed and were never examined by a court.
She was classified as a low-security prisoner from June 25, 2006, but she remained in the secure facility. While there she suffered a serious knee injury that limited her mobility. She later told the parole board that the injury had held back her progress to a low-security facility, and the board in turn treated that progress as essential to any release.
Her record over those years was mixed. When the parole board later set out the factors that weighed against her, it listed conduct in custody that "had fluctuated". The same board also recorded her good conduct in the more recent years, her work and her education while in custody.
Wigginton first applied for parole on December 10, 2008, six years after her eligibility date. In February 2009 she asked to be transferred back to the prison farm. The team that managed her sentence endorsed the request, and so did the general manager of the facility where she was held.
On April 8, 2009, as the time allowed for deciding her first application was about to run out, she lodged a fresh one. On April 24 the board told her it was considering a refusal. Five days later, on April 29, 2009, the first co-accused, who had been convicted after trial, was released on parole.
On May 12, 2009, the board wrote to Wigginton with five factors which, it said, could make her an unacceptable risk to the community. The first was that she was serving life imprisonment for murder. The second was the circumstances of the offense, which the board called "very serious and violent". The third was a psychological report and a structured risk assessment that placed her at "medium to moderate risk for further violent offences". The fourth was her fluctuating conduct in custody. The fifth was the general manager's recommendation that she "progress to a low custody centre" so that the effects of long institutionalization could be addressed before any release.
She answered in written submissions at the end of June. In July 2009 the board refused parole. Its reasons weighed the gravity of the offense against her recent good conduct, her work and education and the psychological reports, and it concluded that her move to low-security custody, once she was medically fit for it, was "an essential element in her successful reintegration". Having taken account of "all of the relevant factors of your case, both positive and negative," the board found that she posed "an unacceptable risk to the community at that time".
Within days the second door closed as well. On July 21, 2009, the senior corrective services official holding the delegated power refused her transfer to the prison farm. His reasons were the possible destabilizing effect on her of the failed parole bid and of her co-accused's release, her health, and practical difficulties.
Represented by a prisoners' legal service, Wigginton applied to the Supreme Court of Queensland for judicial review of both decisions. She asked the court to declare the parole refusal and the transfer refusal void, and she named the board and the official as respondents. The application was heard in Brisbane on December 11, 2009, and the judge reserved his decision.
Her case against the parole refusal had three limbs. The first was that the board had applied a ministerial guideline, requiring six months in a low-security setting before release, mechanically and without weighing the merits of her case. The second was that the board had relied on matters she had not been given a chance to answer: the reasons she had been sent back to the secure facility, and the unsuitability of the address she had proposed for her release. The third was that the guidelines required the board to consider the sentencing remarks, which it had never seen.
Her case against the transfer refusal was that the official had departed from the general manager's recommendation without warning her or giving reasons; that there was no evidence her behavior would deteriorate after the parole refusal or her co-accused's release; and that his delegation had lapsed when his title changed.
The court rejected every ground. On March 5, 2010, it dismissed the application.
On the guideline, the court held that the board's discretion under section 193 of the Corrective Services Act 2006 was wide, that ministerial guidelines could guide but not bind it, and that the board's reasons showed it had considered a broad range of matters, including her injury and her inability to move to low-security custody at once. Reasons, the court said, "are not to be construed minutely and with an eye keenly attuned to the perception of error." On fairness, it found that she had already answered the question of her return to the secure facility in her June submissions, and that she had known of the problem with her proposed address from the board's assessment report and had chosen not to put forward another. On the sentencing remarks, it held that the guideline said only that the board "should" consider such matters, and that "the Minister cannot through guidelines impose upon the Board a fetter."
On the transfer, the court accepted that the decision was bound up with her parole and was not a pure question of prison management, but it found that the general manager's recommendation had created no legitimate expectation and that there had been no breach of natural justice. The inference that her behavior might deteriorate was reasonably open on facts no one disputed. The delegation had attached to the office and survived the change of title. With no breach found, the court declined to make any declaration.
By the time the court ruled, a new application was already open to her; she had been free to lodge one since January 17, 2010. She applied again in April 2010. The board deferred that application eight times.
On December 21, 2011, the Queensland minister for corrective services announced that the independent parole board had reconsidered her latest application and granted it, and that she would be released within weeks. She was 46. Every earlier application since her eligibility date in 2002 had been refused.
She left the low-security prison farm early on a morning in January 2012, more than twenty-two years after the killing. The terms of her parole barred her from contacting her co-offenders or the victim's family and prohibited her from selling her story to the media or profiting from her crime in any way. Under Queensland law, a life prisoner released on parole stays on parole for life.
The plea left the details of the night untested in any trial of Wigginton herself. Her conduct was described in evidence at the trial of her co-accused, chiefly by the first co-accused, who was herself convicted of the same murder, and that testimony was never challenged on Wigginton's behalf.
The incident that sent her back to the secure facility in 2006 remains disputed. The Supreme Court expressly declined to consider its details.
October 1989: The victim dies at West End, Brisbane; four women are charged with his murder.
January 1991: Wigginton pleads guilty to murder in the Supreme Court of Queensland and is sentenced to life imprisonment.
After her plea: at trial, the first co-accused is found guilty of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment; the second is convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 18 years, reduced to 12 on appeal; the third is acquitted.
2002: Wigginton becomes eligible to apply for parole.
2003: She is moved to a low-security prison farm.
2006: She is returned to a secure facility after a disputed incident; from June 25, 2006, she is classified as low security.
December 10, 2008: She lodges her first parole application.
February 13, 2009: She asks to be transferred back to the prison farm.
April 8, 2009: She lodges a fresh parole application.
April 29, 2009: The first co-accused is released on parole.
May 12, 2009: The parole board sets out five factors weighing against her.
July 2009: The board refuses parole; on July 21 her transfer is refused.
December 11, 2009: The Supreme Court of Queensland hears her application for judicial review.
March 5, 2010: The court dismisses the application.
April 2010: She lodges a new parole application, later deferred eight times.
December 21, 2011: The state announces that the parole board has granted her parole.
January 2012: She is released on parole.