freedom 30 sailboatdata

FREEDOM 30 Detailed Review

If you are a boat enthusiast looking to get more information on specs, built, make, etc. of different boats, then here is a complete review of FREEDOM 30. Built by Freedom Yachts and designed by Gary Mull, the boat was first built in 1986. It has a hull type of Fin w/spade rudder and LOA is 9.13. Its sail area/displacement ratio 16.73. Its auxiliary power tank, manufactured by Yanmar, runs on Diesel.

FREEDOM 30 has retained its value as a result of superior building, a solid reputation, and a devoted owner base. Read on to find out more about FREEDOM 30 and decide if it is a fit for your boating needs.

Boat Information

Boat specifications, sail boat calculation, rig and sail specs, auxillary power tank, accomodations, contributions, who designed the freedom 30.

FREEDOM 30 was designed by Gary Mull.

Who builds FREEDOM 30?

FREEDOM 30 is built by Freedom Yachts.

When was FREEDOM 30 first built?

FREEDOM 30 was first built in 1986.

How long is FREEDOM 30?

FREEDOM 30 is 7.75 m in length.

What is mast height on FREEDOM 30?

FREEDOM 30 has a mast height of 11.63 m.

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Review of Freedom 30

Basic specs..

The Freedom 30 has been built with more than one type of keel. One option is a finn keel. A boat with a fin keel is more manoeuvrable but has less directional stability than a similar boat with a long keel.

The boat can enter even shallow marinas as the draft is just about 1.37 - 1.47 meter (4.49 - 4.79 ft) dependent on the load. See immersion rate below.

The boat is typically equipped with an inboard Yanmar 2GM20F diesel engine.

Sailing characteristics

This section covers widely used rules of thumb to describe the sailing characteristics. Please note that even though the calculations are correct, the interpretation of the results might not be valid for extreme boats.

What is Theoretical Maximum Hull Speed?

The theoretical maximal speed of a displacement boat of this length is 6.8 knots. The term "Theoretical Maximum Hull Speed" is widely used even though a boat can sail faster. The term shall be interpreted as above the theoretical speed a great additional power is necessary for a small gain in speed.

The immersion rate is defined as the weight required to sink the boat a certain level. The immersion rate for Freedom 30 is about 169 kg/cm, alternatively 950 lbs/inch. Meaning: if you load 169 kg cargo on the boat then it will sink 1 cm. Alternatively, if you load 950 lbs cargo on the boat it will sink 1 inch.

Sailing statistics

This section is statistical comparison with similar boats of the same category. The basis of the following statistical computations is our unique database with more than 26,000 different boat types and 350,000 data points.

What is L/B (Length Beam Ratio)?

Maintenance

When buying anti-fouling bottom paint, it's nice to know how much to buy. The surface of the wet bottom is about 27m 2 (290 ft 2 ). Based on this, your favourite maritime shop can tell you the quantity you need.

Are your sails worn out? You might find your next sail here: Sails for Sale

If you need to renew parts of your running rig and is not quite sure of the dimensions, you may find the estimates computed below useful.

This section shown boat owner's changes, improvements, etc. Here you might find inspiration for your boat.

Do you have changes/improvements you would like to share? Upload a photo and describe what to look for.

We are always looking for new photos. If you can contribute with photos for Freedom 30 it would be a great help.

If you have any comments to the review, improvement suggestions, or the like, feel free to contact us . Criticism helps us to improve.

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Fredom Yachts Freedom 30

General Data

Shipbuilder:, see also: boats for sale.

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Waterline length:, maximum beam:, straightening:, sail details mq.

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• Sailboat Guide
• Freedom Yachts

Founded by Gary Hoyt. Most feature unstayed cat, or cat ketch rigs. The boats were built by Tillotson Pearson Inc.

• David Pedrick
• Halsey Herreshoff
• James Williams
• Mark Leonard
• Ron Holland
• William H. Tripp, III

29 sailboats built by Freedom Yachts

Freedom 40 AC

Freedom 45 AC

Freedom 40/40

Freedom 21 Slp

Freedom 28 (Mull)

Freedom 39 Pilot House

Freedom 40 CC

Freedom 32-2.

Freedom 28 Cat Ketch

Pierce arrow 31.

Freedom 24 (Tripp)

Freedom 44 (Cat Ketch)

Freedom 35 Cat Ketch

Freedom 36 Cat Ketch

Freedom 45 CC

Freedom 35 (Pedrick)

Independence 20

Pierce Arrow 18

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Production of this Dave Pedrick design started in 1993 and continues today. An optional package for traditional headsails is a departure from Freedom’s self-tending legacy.

With 85 hulls built to date, Freedom Yachts of Middletown, Rhode Island counts the Dave Pedrick-designed 35-footer as a solid success story. Freedom currently builds sailboats in three sizes, at 35, 40, and 45 feet, as well as the Legacy line of powerboats. The sailboat line stakes its identity on three points: sound naval architecture, high-quality construction, and sailing simplicity based on the freestanding rig and self-tacking jib. The line blossomed after the emergence of the sprightly and bulletproof Freedom 30 designed by Gary Mull in 1986. That boat, known to many readers, can serve as a useful benchmark in a discussion of the Freedom 35.

Design Pedrick’s designer’s comments speak of his intention to make the Freedom 35 a fast, easy-to-handle boat with ample cruising accommodations in the cockpit and belowdecks, as well as the ability to perform well at the club-racing level. To those ends he drafted a hull form that’s graceful and powerful, with a slightly aggressive look — a subtle sheer rising to a shallowly raked stem and a reverse-transom, with moderate overhangs at both ends and the beam carried well aft. The underwater hull is modestly round and full at the turn of the bilge and flattens as it runs aft — flat enough to allow the boat to surf in the right conditions. The transom carries a swim-platform scoop that blends well with the hull lines. A swim ladder is attached and can be lowered from the scoop. The helmsman’s seat can be removed to provide flow-through between swim platform and cockpit.

The cockpit itself is a bit small for a 35-footer — 7′ 3″ long by 5′ 9″ wide, with a T-shaped footwell aft to make space for the Edson wheel.There’s a large cockpit locker to starboard and twin lazarettes either side of the helmsman’s seat. The size of the cockpit makes it easier for a shorthanded crew to reach the sail controls, and the sides and coamings provide good support and security; stretching out under the stars, however, probably wouldn’t be worth attempting.

Like other Freedoms, the 35 carries a tall, unstayed carbon fiber mast with a big full-roach main and small standard jib, although the foretriangle on the 35 is relatively larger than that on the 30. The jib is fitted with a CamberSpar, a sort of internal wishbone that stretches the sail from the clew to a point on the lower luff. It articulates from tack to tack, more or less forcefully according to wind strength, thus helping shape the lower part of the jib upwind while allowing it to be winged out effectively downwind.

Unlike the Freedom 30, which was not rigged to carry more than its two basic sails, the Freedom 35 is offered with an optional overlapping headsail package, consisting mainly of a set of running backstays to oppose the headstay on the 3/4 fractional rig, and a set of primary winches in the cockpit for trimming. This set-up allows genoas and spinnakers to be hoisted to the hounds; the tip of the mast remains unsupported. In standard jib mode the runners aren’t needed — in fact, in the stock Freedom sailplan the jib exists more to create a slot upwind than to provide substantial horsepower itself; the headstay remains almost slack, tensioned only by the push of the CamberSpar, and luff tension is maintained by the jib halyard, as on a sailing dinghy.

Aside from initial cost, which is roughly $10,000 more than an equivalent aluminum spar and standing rigging would be on this 35-footer, the unstayed carbon rig has few apparent drawbacks — in fact, some of the cost of the carbon spar is recouped by the fact that the hull requires no chainplates, tierods or related supporting structures. It’s simpler and requires less maintenance than stayed aluminum rigs, and without the downward pull of the stays and shrouds, compression at the mast step is reduced.

Freestanding carbon spars are big and round at the partners and taper as they rise. They do obstruct airflow to the sail, especially down low, but as for windage it may be that without stays, shrouds, and spreaders they play about even with their aluminum counterparts.

In one of the few substantive changes to the F-35 since the introduction of the boat, Freedom a few years ago shifted the sparbuilding contract to Goetz Marine Technologies, known for its expertise in carbon fiber work. GMT produces a “lighter, stiffer” spar, according to Freedom spokeswoman Roe O’Brien, who also says that there have been no reported rig failures on the 35, before or after the change. The spar comes with a transferable 10-year warranty, or a lifetime warranty to the original owner.

It may be that the only shortcoming of the carbon spar these days is psychological: The scarcity of wires can be disconcerting. We all tend to grasp at the shrouds when we’re working at the mast or coming aboard amidships, and when they’re not there, something seems askew with the world.

The boat is offered with two keel options, a deep fin with a Pedrick-designed “whale tail” profile, or a shallower (not to say shoal-draft) wing keel. The whale-tail rudder is a big, high-aspect foil on a carbon fiber stock. Owners report that Freedom’s and Pedrick’s extra efforts in designing responsive steering have paid off: The boat turns quickly and accurately, and provides good feel through the Edson system.

There’s little question that the deep keel provides better lift than the winged version. This translates into acceleration in a puff, less heeling and slippage as boatspeed increases, and often less leeway once the boat is up to speed.

For some owners, the Freedom 35’s draft may be the hardest nut to crack. The deep keel is quite deep at 6′ 6″, and the wing keel, at 4′ 6″, isn’t all that shallow.

Construction Hull construction standards are at the top end of the production scale — skins of biaxial and unidirectional E-glass with vinylester resin, sandwiching an end-grain balsa core. The hull/deck joint is bonded with 3M-5200 and through-bolted on 6″ centers. There’s a transferable 10-year warranty against hull blistering.

Down below, furniture is fastened to the bulkheads, and the bulkheads are glassed directly to the hull. There are solid fiberglass transverse supports under the floorboards. There are five Lewmar hatches on deck, 19-3/4″ square in the forward and main cabins and 10″ square over the head, galley and aft cabin. All ports are 316-grade stainless steel — another indication that these boats are stretching outside the standard production mentality. Stainless ports add significantly to the builder’s initial cost, and certainly bump up a new boat’s price, but without question they save the owners problems and headaches, and of course this ends up saving Freedom time and frustration.

The Yanmar 3GM auxiliary lives under the L-section of the port settee. The shaft exits the transmission and emerges underwater about a foot to port of the keel and at a 5° angle to the centerline.

This engine and shaft placement serves several purposes: First, it creates more room throughout the area of the aft cabin, companionway, and head. Second, it puts the engine’s weight in a better fore-and-aft position without sacrificing much balance athwartships. Third, it makes for very good engine access everywhere but on the engine’s port side, and even that’s not bad. Fourth, it helps concentrate plumbing through-hulls in one zone, under the galley sink. Fifth (and this is the feature touted by Freedom) it’s a built-in correction for “prop walk” when the engine is in reverse — the slight angle of the shaft off centerline helps neutralize the tendency of the left-rotating prop to drag the stern to port.

On deck, sailhandling hardware includes two Harken two-speed winches at the aft end of the cabin trunk, and a Harken traveler. Halyards, reefing lines, main and jib sheets, and traveler controls are led through Lewmar stoppers.

Accommodations Belowdecks the Freedom 35 is laid out to provide good comfort and privacy for two couples, with full cabins fore and aft. Each has standing headroom (6′ 1″) behind closed doors, each is ventilated by two opening ports and a hatch, and all bunks are 6′ 7″ long. There’s room for two more people on the settees in the saloon, and an equipment option that allows the port settee to be converted to a double berth. Underway in standard layout the leeward settee is comfortable, but for sleeping at anchor it makes sense to remove the side cushions for more elbow room.

The saloon has a warm, traditional feel, with varnished cherry cabinets, hull ceilings, and handrails. The cabin sole is teak and holly, while the overhead is covered with a removable vinyl headliner. Headroom throughout the saloon is 6′ 2″.

The cabin table folds up and stows against the bulkhead to port. This opens up lots of valuable space for people to wrestle with bathing suits, foul-weather gear, sleeping bags, duffle bags, grocery bags, and the various other bags that make their way aboard. Stowage for personal gear is good in the fore and aft cabins and adequate in the saloon, where the absence of chainplates or tie-rodes is a help.

The head compartment is to starboard of the companionway steps. This is always a smart arrangement on a single-head boat: It keeps saloon traffic to a minimum and makes use of a wide part of the hull for more space; in this case the compartment includes a separate shower stall with teak grate and a proper wet locker. Stowage for toiletries in the head is adequate; more importantly, with the shower stall isolated there’s less chance for everyone’s stuff to get soaked when someone takes a sloppy shower.

The L-shaped galley, according to Freedom Yachts, incorporates many features suggested by Freedom owners. There are two deep stainless steel sinks on the counter section athwartships, and a gimballed Force 10 stove/oven to port. The ice chest incorporates a nice touch — a separate section and door for drinks and quick snacks, which allows the main part of the chest (8.5 cubic feet) to stay closed most of the time.

Two PS survey respondents bemoaned the lack of counter space in the galley. This space was surely sacrificed to the enclosed standing room and hanging locker in the aft cabin. On a boat this size, some things have to give, and in this case the working areas below — galley and nav station — gave it up to the head and the private cabins.

There are no standard foot pumps for fresh or salt water in either the galley or the head. With today’s reliance on pressure water systems this omission is commonplace among boatbuilders. Admittedly, it adds expense and labor on the builder’s side, and there may not even be that much demand from buyers — but it’s poor practice, in our view, especially noticeable when batteries or water supplies are low.

Performance Soon after it was introduced we were able to sail the company boat, Hull # 1, in conditions that ranged from about 18 knots to nothing. That boat, rigged with a 120% Mylar genoa, was clearly a fast and nimble performer, particularly in light air and downwind. It’s chief failings were the lack of a dedicated mainsheet winch, and a traveler system that was too small for the loads imposed by the big sail in heavy air. Both of those problems were addressed early in the production run of the boat.

Part of the Freedom 35’s agility comes from the big, light whale-tail rudder; other contributing factors are the balance of the sailplan, the self-tacking jib, and the extra roach on the mainsail, which acts as an airbrake in jibes. With this combination the boat can be spun around upwind or down in a small radius with sails trimmed and locked. It may not be pretty, but it can be done.

As the wind increases, the unsupported tip of the carbon fiber spar will tend to sag to leeward, automatically depowering the sail, but also creating more and more weather helm. The F-35 mainsail needs to be reefed sooner than later — there’s plenty of power left in the roachy main, the boat stands up straighter, the rudder is relieved, and everything speeds up. The boat is “simple to reef with minimal or zero loss of speed,” says one owner. “Very little weather helm in gale warning winds.”

The sail area/displacement ratio of 19.8 on the standard rig is respectable, but there’s an inevitable lack of headsail power upwind in many conditions, no matter how big the main and how closely sheeted the jib. No doubt this is one reason Pedrick increased the size of the foretriangle — not only to increase racing options, but to make life happier for cruising sailors willing to do some cranking in order to punch their way upwind. (Of course, at that point the Freedom’s sailplan loses a substantial measure of its freedom.)

Most F-35s today are sold with the overlapping jib package, says Freedom’s Roe O’Brien, but few are raced actively. (The standard boat carries an average PHRF rating of 114.)

Conclusions Whether or not people race these boats, Dave Pedrick and Freedom certainly have succeeded in their design aims: The Freedom 35 is a comfortable performance cruiser, well built, easily handled, seaworthy, and attractive looking.

With a real voice in design issues from the outset, and the ability to work with the company on semi-customization of new boats, veteran owners are a loyal bunch. “In general, people who buy Freedoms become big devotees,” says O’Brien.

While a new Freedom 35 costs $188,200, second-hand boats cannot be had for a song. The BUC Used Boat Price Guide lists the high and low of the average price for a 1993 model Freedom 35 as $107,000 to $118,000. For a used 1999 model there’s quite a jump: $183,000 to $201,000. These figures reflect actual sale prices of boats, reported by brokers back to the BUC network. A look around for current asking prices showed exactly one boat available, in Stamford, Connecticut, for $149,000. (Not for long, we think.)

Contact- Freedom Yachts, Inc., 305 Oliphant Lane, Middletown, RI 02842 800-999-2909.

Also With This Article Click here to view Owner Comments .

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Trump Campaign Gets Record-Setting $62 Million Shot in the Arm from Evangelical Group

One of America’s leading evangelical groups will be putting $62 million of effort behind electing former President Donald Trump.

Faith & Freedom will use the money for voter registration and turnout, voter support, and knocking on doors, according to Politico .

While spending $10 million more than it did in 2020, the group plans to hand out 30 million pieces of literature in 125,000 churches, with a focus on battleground states.

“In terms of home visits and voters reached at the door, to my knowledge, it’s the largest effort on the right outside of the Republican National Committee ever,” said Ralph Reed, who oversees the organization.

Reed said when Republicans are outspent, it hurts their chances.

“In this business you’re paid to worry, and we certainly have seen in recent cycles -- particularly in the statewide races and especially the Senate races -- we’ve seen the spending gap become overwhelming, serious and debilitating,” Reed said.

About 10,000 people will be deployed with a focus on getting 1 million newly-registered evangelical voters to the polls and turning out another 7.8 million evangelicals identified as low-propensity voters.

Reed said that during Trump’s time in office Trump “was so pro-life that it was astonishing. And as a result of that, he’s going to get more running room from the pro-life grassroots than a typical candidate might get or that he would have gotten in ’16. In ’16 I think there was a lack of trust, and now there is total trust,” according to Politico.

Trump’s recent speech to the National Religious Broadcasters Convention warned of a “radical left, corrupt political class” opposed to Christianity, according to The New York Times .

“Christians, they can’t afford to sit on the sidelines in this fight,” Trump said, adding that the liberals oppose Christianity because “they know that our allegiance is not to them. Our allegiance is to our country, and our allegiance is to our Creator.”

"No one will be touching the cross of Christ under the Trump administration. I swear to you," he also said then, according to Scripps News Service .

⚡️Donald Trump :

There's no better president for #Israel than me

Evangelical Christians love Israel pic.twitter.com/7ffmxcXXEU

— Middle East Observer (@ME_Observer_) March 6, 2024

Trump supporters believe Trump can transform the nation, Scripps reported.

"We're 100 percent behind Donald Trump and want to see America great again," Vicky Fukes of Delaware said at the 2024 Conservative Political Action Conference. "One nation under God. That's the way it's got to remain.”

Christian Baldwin of Maryland said the issue transcends partisan warfare.

"It's not just political. It's a spiritual sickness that's really taken root in this country," he said, suggesting President Joe Biden's election in 2020 was a warning.

"Perhaps, what we're experiencing is just a way for God to remind us what our true purpose is," he said.

Terry Irving was jailed for a crime he didn't commit. After 30 years, he'll learn the price of freedom

Terry Irving was imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit. Now the justice system will be asked to answer the ultimate question: What's the cost of loss of liberty?

Cuffed hands pulled behind his back, Terry Irving locks eyes with the dozen strangers who will ultimately decide his fate.

Ordinarily, prisoners would be shuffled through a private back door into the Cairns District Court, but on this summer day in 1993, the 37-year-old is pushed and paraded past the gawking crowd in the foyer — the soon-to-be empanelled jury members in his trial.  

Only moments earlier, Terry had been filled with "dumb" hope that justice would be served and the truth would be realised — that he couldn't have committed the armed robbery he was being asked to answer for.

But as the stares followed him into the courtroom, a crushing realisation consumed him: he would not be walking back out that front entrance a free man.

"I'm sorry," says Terry, now 68, pausing as he recalls that day.

"It's like I’ve just stuck my head back into the bucket of pain that I've been enduring for over 31 years."

One hour is all it took for the jury to return the guilty verdict that would irrevocably change the course of Terry's life.

Sentenced to prison for a crime he did not commit, he spent years languishing behind bars as the world moved on without him.

But unbeknownst to him   back then, his case — and the very tenet of liberty — would form the basis of a fundamental question the justice system will now be asked to answer.

Can you put a price tag on freedom? 

The man with the ponytail

It was March 19, 1993 — an otherwise normal Friday afternoon in Cairns — when a man walked through the doors of the Hartley Street ANZ branch carrying a yellow bag.

The three tellers inside the bank had only hours left of their shift   when the curious figure — variously described as wearing a beret, dark glasses and a scarf — approached the front counter.

Within moments, he pulled out a sawn-off shotgun and demanded money, fleeing down the street with more than $6,000 in tow.

Local shopkeepers, who had been alerted to the commotion, managed to tail him and sneak a glimpse of his face.

When the police arrived, they described the man as six feet tall and in his early 20s, with dark skin and long hair pulled into a ponytail.

He'd entered a nearby unit block, they said, and shortly after, a grey Toyota rolled out of the driveway and disappeared into the afternoon.

That same day, Terry Irving — an Indigenous man sporting his signature untamed long, brown hair pulled back into a ponytail — was settling into the weekend at the Oceanic Hotel, just a few kilometres away.

The avid pool player had been chatting with other pubgoers when a man he'd seen around every now and then approached him and struck up a conversation.

He wanted to "go and see his missus", Terry recalls, but he was quick to lament that he didn't have a car.

Kind-hearted to a fault, Terry agreed to lend him his silver Isuzu Bellett.

"My car was just over a thousand dollars [in value], so I wasn't that worried about it," Terry says.

"People were always borrowing cars, so it wasn't a big deal — it was a different time back then."

His car was returned a few hours later, and the pair made plans to meet up again later that night.

But as the evening wore on, the man never showed — and Terry never saw him again.

The 'fishing expedition'

On the drive home from the pub, a local news alert came across the radio: there'd been an armed robbery and the assailant — described as a man in his 20s, around six foot and of Filipino appearance — was at large.

Another urgent broadcast followed soon after — this time with the make and model of the car believed to be involved.

The registration matched Terry's, but the description didn’t fit, so he "didn't think much of it".

"I don’t know [why]," he now reflects.

"I thought the description of the person they’d broadcast didn't match me or the person I'd loaned my car to."

Though peculiar, the events of that fateful Friday afternoon eventually faded into the doldrums of day-to-day life, and Terry had all but forgotten about the broadcast when nearly two months later, he was approached by two detectives from Cairns.

They had made the hour-long drive to Atherton, where Terry was working, with questions about the robbery.

After a brief interview, police took Terry into custody, later typing up a recount of their conversation with him about the events of March 19.

The detectives maintain there was never a recording of this meeting, but Terry’s lawyers believe there was — and that it was hidden by police to cover up the truth about what was said.

On May 17, 1993, Terry was arrested and charged with being an   accessory to armed robbery for lending his car to someone to commit an offence.

Police opposed bail, claiming that he had six "fail to appear" offences on his record — something that would later be proven untrue. 

While in custody, Terry was investigated and charged as the bank robber. His lawyers maintain that during this time police had begun a "fishing expedition" to find evidence that would frame him as the prime suspect.

The hold-up he was accused of committing occurred during a spate of similar robberies across the Far North Queensland region.

Authorities were under pressure to make an arrest — and Terry believes detectives decided he was their fall man.

The six-hour trial

Terry's arrest had come in the wake of the Fitzgerald inquiry into police corruption — a watershed moment that exposed the link between Queensland's criminal underbelly and police.

The inquiry, initially expected to last about six weeks, would ultimately spend almost two years investigating long-term systemic political corruption and abuse of power in Queensland.

At the time, Terry admits, he was "dumb enough to believe that the system would be fair", and that he would have his day in court.

"I had some belief that they'd figure it out that it had nothing to do with me," he says.

"There would be fingerprints, there would be photos from the bank, the fact I'd never owned a gun."

But when his case went to trial some seven months later, it became clear that the odds were stacked against him.

His lawyer had pulled out that morning due to a scheduling conflict, and evidence that was "supposed to have been disclosed" to Terry and his new defence council before the trial "was handed across the bar table" after proceedings had begun, he says.

In submissions that were never shown to the court during his trial, witnesses to the robbery — who had been asked to identify Terry from a photo line-up — wavered on whether he was even the man they had seen.

One noted that his skin colour looked similar but that he couldn't be entirely sure, while another remarked: "I wouldn’t say 'yes, that was him', not at all".

Terry’s lawyers allege these statements were changed or shortened before the trial to make it appear as though witnesses had clearly identified him as the robber. 

"They weren't picking me because they thought I was the person who robbed the bank," Terry says.

"They were going mainly towards the colour of my skin."

What was supposed to be a three-day trial wrapped up in just six hours. On December 8, 1993, Terry was found guilty of armed robbery and sentenced to eight years in prison.

In sentencing, the judge remarked the trial had proceeded far quicker than anyone anticipated because of the defence lawyer's "efficient" cross-examination of the witnesses.

When Terry first starts relaying the events of 1993, he seems detached; as though the memories are etched in black and white.

But when he begins to speak of his time in prison, the pain comes flooding back in vivid colour.

"My freedom had been taken from me — I was locked up in an overcrowded watchhouse," Terry says, his voice breaking.

"There were 70 men in a watchhouse, we were all doubled up, tripled up, sleeping on floors. You were denied phone calls, you were denied access to support. 

"We were getting sandwiches from the Salvation Army – devon and tomato sauce sandwiches – and people were fighting over them. It was horrific."

The advocate

Meanwhile, on the other side of the prison gates, Michael O’Keeffe was fed up with life in the fast lane. 

After decades spent working overseas and establishing his legal practice in Canberra, he uprooted his life in the early 1990s to move to north Queensland, where he began a job with legal aid in Townsville.

One of his first jobs was to drive to Stewart's Creek Gaol to discuss legal matters with prisoners.

In Michael's line of work "you tend to develop an in-built bullshit detector", he muses.

When he met Terry Irving for the first time, he knew straight away that "this guy was telling me the truth".

"He told me he'd been railroaded and wrongly convicted, and he'd been refused legal aid," Michael recalls.

"I asked him to write out a summary of what had happened to him over the last couple of years before he met me, and he wrote me a 13-page document, which was his first proof of evidence."

As Michael reviewed Terry's case, it soon became clear that his intuition was correct.

The case was marred by sloppy police work and littered with inconsistencies, and Terry's previous requests for legal aid to appeal the verdict had been denied by the highest levels of bureaucracy. 

After their first meeting in October 1994, Michael agreed to take on his case pro bono.

Thirty years later, the now-retired solicitor is still fighting for justice.

"That particular statement that he wrote for me, we have used in all of the legal proceedings in the last 30 years, and we haven't had to change one item," Michael says.

"That proof is the same as it was 30 years ago."

The conviction on 'unsafe evidence'

Without funding from legal aid, Michael worked the case by night and visited Terry in prison on the weekends. 

Over 18 months, the seasoned lawyer compiled hundreds of pages of documents to take the case to Australia’s highest court, eventually securing the money needed for legal representation.

In 1997, four years to the day after the jury delivered a guilty verdict, the High Court of Australia quashed Terry's criminal conviction and ordered a new trial.  

One of the presiding High Court justices stated they had the "gravest misgiving about the circumstances of [the] case", and that the way the trial had been handled was "disturbing".

The following year, the Queensland Director of Public Prosecutions dropped the charges entirely, stating the evidence against him had "no merit".

Terry's name had been cleared but, as he was about to discover, the battle for vindication had only just begun.

More than three decades later, he is yet to see a dollar in compensation for what he suffered. Worse still, he's yet to receive an apology.

Since 1997, Terry and Michael have had small wins in a David and Goliath battle against the Queensland government — the only institution with the power to change that.

In 2002, the duo took the case to the United Nations, which ruled that Terry had suffered "manifest injustice" by being denied legal assistance.

It would take another two decades for the Queensland Court of Appeal to determine that Terry had been the victim of a "malicious prosecution".

"In Terry's case, it was a specific finding by the court that a detective investigating that matter had acted with malice — she'd intentionally done the wrong thing," says Melissa Meyers, the principal lawyer from Maurice Blackburn for Terry’s case.

"This isn't the wrong bloke put away. This is a conviction on unsafe evidence."

There was never hard evidence that Terry was the armed robber, but "the detective thought he was and she formed the view very early on that she would convict him of that crime", Melissa adds.

The case had been "tainted from the very beginning".

"And it's really concerning that it was an Aboriginal man in the regions," Melissa says.

"If this was a white man on the north shore of Sydney, this wouldn't have happened. That's my true belief.”

The 'reluctance' of the system

Australia is one of the only Western developed democracies that has failed to honour the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights by legislating compensation for wrongful convictions.

Outside the Australian Capital Territory, those who have been jailed for crimes they didn't commit aren't entitled to any financial recourse.

As it stands, there have only been 28 cases nationwide where compensation has been awarded, either via an ex gratia or " act of grace"  payment, or by civil lawsuit.

"There is a reluctance for the system to admit any error or wrongdoing," says Caitlin Nash, a research fellow at Griffith University.

"We don’t have any independent bodies who investigate claims of wrongful conviction. 

"It relies on these individual sacrifices — it relies on lawyers doing pro bono for years and years, it relies on media and investigative journalists, or friends and family being advocates."

Whether an ex gratia payment is awarded is at the discretion of the government, and in the rare cases where it is, there is no standard calculation for loss of liberty.

A person wrongfully imprisoned for 10 years, for example, may receive less than someone who was imprisoned for five.

For Terry, whose trauma extends far beyond his time behind bars, the price of freedom is a question he's spent decades pondering.

For years, he struggled to find work, and to this day, he finds it hard to bridge the gap with his children.

He lost years of his life, but he also lost "years in theirs" – something he "can't get back".

"This [ordeal] has been like a big splash in the pool of my life, and I still feel the ripples after all this time," he says tearfully.

"Both of my parents went to their graves never knowing I was vindicated. It cuts me to the bone and [the court battles] have been like a continuous punishment."

The crossroads

In October 2023, Terry and Michael met with Queensland's Attorney-General Yvette D'Ath to discuss an ex gratia payment.

Months later, there is still no resolution. In a statement, a spokesperson for the attorney-general's office said "it would be inappropriate to comment at this stage" as the matter is still before the courts.

"This is the sixth attorney-general who has been approached in Terry's case to try and bring a resolution to get compensation and get an apology for what he's been put through," Melissa says.

And so, Terry's 31-year battle brings us to a crossroads.

In May, he will attend a hearing in the Queensland Supreme Court to decide what damages he will receive for his malicious prosecution.

For Terry's defence team, the "big concern" is the possibility that the government will appeal the decision, dragging his battle for recourse out even further.

If the state chooses not to fight the ruling, it will be the first time Terry receives any amount of money for what he has suffered over the past three decades.

But it's likely the amount won't be as much as he would receive if he was granted an ex gratia payment — and a win in the civil court doesn't come with an apology.  

"This is 31 years of this man fighting for justice. It's not good enough," Melissa says.

"I don't think you can put a price on the loss of your freedom for four years. I don't think you can put a price on how that impacts your life, for the remainder of your life."

After multiple scathing reports, appeals and years of being ignored, Terry just wants to have his voice heard; to be validated and recognised.

But above all, he wants to ensure what happened to him doesn't happen again.

"We have a saying, Terry and I, that you can hit your head against a brick wall as many times as you like, and eventually the brick wall will fall over," Michael says.

After 30 years of head knocks and headaches, the wall is wearing thin, but the spirits of Terry and his supporters are yet to waver.

"I've had so many people say to me over the years, '[After] 31 years, why don't you just get on with your life? Let these things go'," Terry says.

"I could get on with my life doing lots of things, but I would never be happy knowing I didn't do everything I could to make sure this doesn't happen to anyone else."

Reporter: Laura Lavelle

Editor and digital production: Bridget Judd

Photography and video: Baz Ruddick

*Additional photos and video supplied by BGJ Productions and ABC archives.

Graphics: Lewi Hirvela

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Opinion The Checkup With Dr. Wen: Why containing measles can’t be about individual choice

You’re reading The Checkup With Dr. Wen, a newsletter on how to navigate covid-19 and other public health challenges. Click here to get the full newsletter in your inbox , including answers to reader questions and a summary of new scientific research.

Last week’s column on the Florida surgeon general’s cavalier approach to controlling his state’s burgeoning measles outbreak prompted many readers to express a concern that I share: anti-vaccine sentiment is growing and threatens decades of public health progress.

Joseph from Oregon has a different view. “You’ve been writing that people should gauge individual risk when it comes to covid,” he wrote. “Why isn’t it the same with measles? Your article says that the vaccine is 97 percent protective. Vaccinated kids don’t need to worry, so why isn’t it up to parents to decide whether to give their kids the shot?”

Joseph raises an interesting point that goes to the fundamental tension in public health of weighing individual freedom vs. what’s best for society. Individual freedom should generally take precedence, but there are some circumstances where policymakers have to decide in favor of protecting the public.

I was thinking about this question when I took my kids to an indoor play gym over the weekend. For those unfamiliar with the concept, think of a regular jungle gym but bigger and all indoors, with slides, ball pits, trampolines and multilevel climbing structures. The ones in my area become very crowded, with hundreds of kids and parents packed into relatively small spaces.

As soon as I signed my 6-year-old son in, he ran off with some friends and disappeared in the throng of excited kids. I wasn’t so worried about keeping an eye on him, but I did worry about my 3-year-old daughter. I knew that if I let her out of my sight, it could take a while to find her.

My husband told me not to worry; in his view, this kind of play is exactly what these indoor gyms are designed for. Another mom who overheard our conversation agreed with him; her young child was playing wherever she wanted, without her mom hovering over her as I was doing with my daughter. On the other end of the spectrum are parents who wouldn’t even think to come to these indoor gyms for safety reasons.

All of these are reasonable individual decisions. The fact that they should be made by parents about their own kids is something few would take issue with.

Now let’s take a totally different scenario. Let’s say that there were a couple of kids who were hitting other kids and pushing toddlers off climbing structures. Even if their parents had no issues with this behavior, they pose a threat to others, and few would argue against intervention.

The question of where measles and covid-19 lie on this continuum of individual choice comes down to three factors: how dangerous is the disease, what is the risk posed to others and how effective are the mitigation measures.

While Joseph is right that the measles vaccine is highly protective, it is not 100 percent effective, which means that some vaccinated individuals might still get infected. Also, there are babies and young children who are too young to be vaccinated. The unvaccinated, if exposed to measles, have a nearly 90 percent chance of becoming infected, and infection poses many harmful consequences including a 1 in 5 chance of hospitalization , permanent neurological defects and death.

Crucially, targeted mitigation measures of boosting vaccinations and quarantining exposed people work to contain measles, as they have in recent outbreaks in New York , Ohio and Pennsylvania . In addition, it’s possible to stop measles from propagating by achieving herd immunity, which is what the United States has been successful in doing.

This is not the case with covid. The nature of the coronavirus is such that no level of population immunity will stop the disease from circulating. In addition, the coronavirus vaccines, while protective against severe disease, have limited effect on reducing infection . Large-scale population measures such as required masking, vaccines and isolation periods have not contained the virus, and indeed have spawned such substantial backlash that other public health interventions — including the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccination — are now harder to implement.

To go back to the indoor play gym analogy, the interventions required to stop measles in Florida are akin to stopping a couple of kids from playing until they are no longer harming others. Yes, it restricts their freedom, but it’s a temporary measure imposed on a small number of people because the risk to others outweighs the individuals’ right to self-determination.

On the other hand, using societal interventions to try to control covid at this point would be more analogous to shutting down all playgrounds in perpetuity, knowing that the aggressive behavior would continue outside their premises. The interventions are wrong not only because most would perceive them as government overreach, but because they simply won’t work.

This is why it makes sense to me to view risks around covid as individual decisions, and why the risk-benefit calculation is different for preventing the resurgence of previously eliminated deadly diseases such as measles and polio .

As Rose from Minnesota reminds us, “I remember all too well the days when every child got measles and chicken pox and our parents kept us out of public pools because they feared we would be next to be paralyzed from polio. We all lined up and got our shots because our parents saw what these diseases can do. We simply cannot afford to go back in time.” I couldn’t agree more.

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A mass shooting prompted a California mayor to take action. He couldn’t stop another one

Two years ago legislation was introduced to require gun insurance. It’s facing a legal minefield

On 28 July 2019, a gunman opened fire on a crowd at the Gilroy garlic festival, killing six-year-old Stephen Romero, 13-year-old Keyla Salazar and 25-year-old Trevor Irby, and injuring 17 others.

The mass shooting sent shock waves through the community, located 30 miles south of San Jose in California’s Bay Area, as it elicited all-too-familiar calls from elected officials that “ thoughts and prayers ” were no longer a sufficient response.

Among them was San Jose’s mayor Sam Liccardo, who two weeks later unveiled a first-of-its-kind proposal that would require gun owners in the US’ 10th largest city to buy liability insurance for their weapons. Those that didn’t buy the insurance would be required to pay a fee to cover the cost of gun violence in the city. But in the 22 months following the announcement, the initiative failed to make it in front of the San Jose city council.

Then, another mass shooting rattled San Jose.

On the morning of 26 May, a 57-year-old Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority maintenance worker shot and killed nine of his co-workers at the transit agency’s rail yard in San Jose before killing himself.

In the weeks following, Liccardo lurched back into action, reannouncing his gun insurance proposal with the addition that paying a fee would be required by all gun owners – regardless of whether or not they purchased insurance. The city council passed a law first proposed by the mayor in February 2019 that mandates gun stores to record the sale of weapons and ammunition.

The road to passing meaningful gun legislation in San Jose has been a long one. Liccardo, for his part, blames the delays on the pandemic as the health experts who were supposed to study the costs of gun violence became overwhelmed as the coronavirus spread through the Bay Area. And he pointed at the legal minefield the city’s team of attorneys has had to navigate as they determined how to enact a gun insurance mandate no city in the country had tried before.

But the drawn-out process in San Jose points to a broader trend – the extreme difficulty in enacting comprehensive gun legislation in the United States – even after mass shootings.

“When episodes of mass shootings happened in New Zealand or Australia or the UK, those governments took the responsibility to say, ‘We’re going to take measures that will reduce gun violence significantly in our community.’” Liccardo said. “The result was a dramatic reduction in gun harm. It should not surprise anyone that in a country where we seemingly lack the will to do much of anything substantial to really reduce gun violence in our country, that it takes a horrible tragedy.”

Faced with Republican opposition, gun control legislation has historically failed in the US Congress, even following mass shootings, said Christopher Poliquin, an assistant professor of strategy at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management. Instead, most gun policy – whether that be the loosening or tightening of restrictions – has been enacted by state legislatures.

Most initiatives on gun restrictions follow mass shootings, Poliquin added, despite the prevalence of everyday community gun violence in the country. Overall, mass shootings made up just 0.2% of all gun deaths in the US in 2019, yet high-profile attacks tend to have the most impact on policymakers, Poliquin said.

Liccardo likens his gun insurance mandate to other “harm reduction strategies” that have helped decrease smoking and injuries and deaths from car collisions. The insurance would cover accidental discharges and intentional acts by someone who borrowed, stole or otherwise acquired a gun. It would not, however, cover costs associated with “intentional acts” of gun violence by the gun owner.

City officials have yet to determine how much the fee to help cover the cost of gun violence in San Jose will be, but the money will pay for police and other emergency services strained by gun-related injuries and deaths. In California, gun violence costs the state approximately $22.6bn each year, with $1.2bn falling on the shoulders of taxpayers.

If San Jose passes Liccardo’s gun insurance proposal, the policy could have ripple effects on other cities across California, as other mayors have already expressed interest in enacting similar legislation.

But first, it’ll have to withstand legal scrutiny as second amendment groups prepare to sue San Jose.

Sam Paredes, the executive director of Gun Owners of California, expects “the mayor will have his rear end handed to him in a basket by the courts”.

“They’re allowed to exercise an enumerated right in the constitution,” Paredes said of gun owners. “You can’t force an insurance policy against an enumerated right.”

The threat of legal action is a part of the terrain of gun control in the US, and in most states, local lawmaker’s hands are tied on the issue due to preemption laws. These laws prevent local governments from regulating guns in certain areas, such as licensing or permitting. California is just one of two states with limited firearm preemption laws , and five states have no preemption law at all.

“The gun lobby has spent decades working to make it so that local jurisdictions don’t have the freedom to govern on this issue, and take the steps they feel are necessary to protect their communities,” said Allison Anderman, senior counsel at the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. “This is obviously so that newer cities or more liberal cities in more conservative states aren’t going to do what the state legislature won’t do and limit gun access, because that’s not good for gun industry profits.”

Even if the gun insurance proposal overcomes the legal test, Liccardo himself recognizes that it is unlikely to stop a mass shooting from happening again in San Jose. Instead, he says it will enable the city to identify “high-risk” gun owners.

If any officer responding to a domestic violence call in the home finds that there is a gun without insurance, “it provides an opportunity for the officer to seize the gun on site”, Liccardo says.

“That’s actually really important because that’s a particular context where we know gun possession is highly correlated to gun violence,” he added.

Anderman, who has been working with Liccardo’s office on the gun insurance policy, agrees that “the scope of harm that it could ameliorate is fairly narrow”. However, it will provide victims of gun violence with the monetary compensation they may not otherwise receive.

Next month marks the two-year anniversary of the Gilroy garlic festival shooting, and the families of those killed are still grappling with the trauma of that day.

Katiuska Pimentel Vargas remembers her niece, Keyla, as resilient, sweet and generous. Before the gunman cut her life short, the 13-year-old saved up her birthday money to buy her friends ice-cream from the paleteros when their parents were short on cash.

She loved art and animals, including her beloved guinea pig, Albert.

It was “disappointing” to see San Jose wait this long to take action, Vargas said.

Still, she wants others to know that there are people behind the numbers, that Keyla isn’t just a number, but one of more than 14,000 who died from gun violence in 2019.

“We just want people to remember what happened so we don’t forget the pain that families continue to go through,” Vargas said. “I don’t want another family to live through what we have been through.”

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