What I remember most must be the introduction of a typed Record of Interview.  Until 1962 a witness was not permitted to refer to notes except in a very brief way and certainly they could not read from notes. During this time I had a case with a Victorian Detective Eddie SNELL and we interviewed a fellow who was wanted for fraud in Victoria and Eddie interviewed him and had me type out the Record of Interview.  I thought that wasvery good idea. It took a lot of pressure off you as a witness, not having to memorise  things.

At that stage you had to memorise your evidence and if you were not word perfect then the defence would suggest that it was false. If you were perfect they would suggest it was unnatural and must be  perjury. You were in a no win situation.

So, when I was in the Valley CI Branch I had a case of fellows who’d raped or attempted to rape a sixteen year old girl.  We rounded up five men early in the piece.  I just knew that memorising five lots of evidence of interview and evidence of confrontation of the victim would be a most difficult task so I was determined to do it by way of type-written records of interview.  And we did that.  Some records were signed; some were not signed.  We got them through the committal proceedings OK.  I was able to read the records before Mr McKenna, the Stipendiary Magistrate. I got away with it there because they didn’t have any defence lawyers with them. 

Then it came to trial. As was the custom you had to confer with  Mr Lloyd MARTIN, the Chief Crown Prosecutor, before the trial. I went over to him and discussed it and he directed that I had to give the evidence in the usual way.  That is from memory.  I protested that in the circumstances I should be allowed to refer to or even read the records of interview.  And he said “Well that’s not for you to decide, it’s for the judge and I suggest you memorise it”.  But I was quite determined to go ahead and read the Records of Interview but I was worried, I must confess.

I rang the union and told them what I intended to do and asked if they would support me if I went through with it.  And they said yes they would.  The first case of rape was a single trial for a fellow named CLARKE and I remember it well because the Police got to know what I was going to do and the gallery was full of Detectives wondering how I was going to turn out.  And so I got in the box and Lloyd MARTIN took me through the preamble and told me to go ahead and I gave a couple of paragraphs from memory and then outlined the method by which I obtained the written Records of Interview and I asked the judge if I could read from those Records of Interview.

Immediately Mr Eddie Broad, Barrister for the defence, got to his feet and protested in the loudest tone that this was not the way of doing things and by this time Mr MARTIN supported me and made submissions that I should be able to.  So this great argument went on for about a quarter of an hour and I’m in the box and I can recall I was so tensed up I could feel the perspiration running down my spine as I wondered what would happen.  It wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility the judge might cite me for contempt and I could end up in a cell with the prisoner.

After argument Mr Justice STANLEY, who had one eye (he could see more out of one eye than most people could see out of two – a great old Judge), didn’t rule.  He just said “Carry on, witness”.  And, so I carried on. I had another paragraph up my sleeve so I gave it and stopped.  Judge Stanley looked at me sternly and said ‘Surely the witness has independent recollection of further conversation with the accused’ and I said “I’m sorry your Honour, I cannot vouch for the accuracy  of my evidence without reading from the record”.  This was crunch time.  It was really crunch time.  There was a long pregnant pause and Judge STANLEY said “Then the witness will have to read from the record, won’t he?” And so I was able to read from the record and that was the start.

This system was quickly adopted throughout the State.  In fact the five men were convicted in separate trials because of the Records of Interview and that was quickly taken up as the way to record interviews.  This took a lot of strain off Police Officers in the manner in which they had to give their evidence.

EARLY:                         Must have been an enormous gain for you, but also for the working Police Officer?

BRAITHWAITE:           It was but today that system has been replaced by the  development of technology, the recorded interviews and television cameras and all that sort of thing. It mightn’t seem like much now to look back that somebody started the contemporaneously typed Record of Interview but at that time it was very, very important in the investigation of criminal cases.

EARLY:                         What year was that roughly, Don?

BRAITHWAITE:           That was 1963, ’63-’64.

EARLY:                         Yes, because as you say before that Detectives used to have to learn the evidence.

BRAITHWAITE:           Memorise it.

EARLY:                         Memorise it.

BRAITHWAITE:           I recall once this fellow set fire to a hotel and burnt to death two people and Buck BUCHANAN, who was the leading investigator of the day, had to recall ninety-four pages of evidence.  He was a fantastic officer but he took a week to memorise those ninety-four pages.

EARLY:                         And the term, contemporaneously made notes, that still applies today in any organisation but you can’t beat notes made at the time or very soon afterwards and this developed from the signed Record of Interview.  You indicated that some of these were signed and some unsigned but there’s been lots of argument over the years about the veracity of particularly unsigned Records of Interview, but I think that every working Detective from 1964 onwards really should have tipped their hat to you because it was certainly a gain for Detectives and working Police.