Marcus Richard Einfeld (born 22 September 1938) is an Australian former judge of the Federal Court of Australia and was the inaugural president of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission.
Journalists subsequently discovered that he had made a number of false statements under oath; the woman he had said was driving had in fact died several years earlier.
Those qualifications were referred to by Attorney-General Lionel Bowen when Einfeld was added to the Federal Court in 1987, and were listed in his Who's Who in Australia entry until 2007.
His updated Who's Who entry, which was published after he had been arrested and charged with perjury, also corrected his year of birth (previously listed as 1939) and removed a claim that he had once been a director of the multinational firm Marks & Spencer in the 1970s.
He was appointed to a seven-year term in December 1986,[17] but resigned after three years citing an inability to combine the role with his judicial duties.
[18] In 1987 he led the commission's enquiry into the living conditions of Aboriginal people in the border area of New South Wales and Queensland.
[19] He served as Chairman of Legal Resources International Inc., a non-government organisation funded by lawyers and the World Bank and Commonwealth Secretariat, dedicated to advising developing countries on establishing proper systems for democracy and justice.
[19] Einfeld has been a spokesperson for Israeli and Jewish causes, and has contributed to public debate on Palestine, the media, the United Nations, universities, and other institutions.
[26] Einfeld was the President of Australian Legal Resources International, a non-profit independent group of lawyers that supported democracy, human rights, and the rule of law in developing countries.
In August 2006, this organisation collapsed, leaving creditors, including AusAID, the Australian Taxation Office, and St.George Bank "thousands of dollars out of pocket.
"[14] He contested the ticket in Downing Centre Local Court by claiming he had on that day lent his car to an old friend, Professor Teresa Brennan, who was visiting from the United States.
[36][34] [20][28] He gave evidence under oath in the Local Court, and signed a statutory declaration to that effect, and the magistrate dismissed the charge as "not proved.
"[12] However, a junior reporter for the Sydney daily tabloid The Daily Telegraph filed a brief story which caught the attention of assistant editor Michael Beach, who discovered that Brennan had died in the United States three years before Einfeld claimed she had been driving his car, and on Beach's instruction the reporter called Einfeld to obtain his reaction.
[40] Liati represented herself during an eight-day District Court jury trial and claimed that she was only endeavouring to make contact with Einfeld through her admission.
[39] However, she was found guilty on 12 February 2009 of perverting the course of justice and was subsequently sentenced to 200 hours' community service;[16][41] later changed to a 12-month good behaviour bond.
He was initially charged by the Director of Public Prosecutions (New South Wales) with 13 offences, including perjury, perverting the course of justice, and making and using false statutory declarations.
The prosecution suggested the reason he lied under oath was that, had he gained the demerit points for the speeding offence, he would have been close to losing his licence.
[35] The head of the NSW Fraud Squad and commander of the Strike Force said its two-and-a-half-year investigation of the matter was "very lengthy, very protracted, very intricate".
[35] Supreme Court Justice Bruce James found Einfeld had committed "deliberate, premeditated perjury" that was "part of planned criminal activity".
[29] NSW Law Society president Joe Catanzariti said that the three-year sentence for the former judge demonstrated that "the legal profession did not protect its own", but that it was tragic to see Einfeld's reputation ruined because "the sad thing in all of this is you do have a great man who has done great works, and ... the substantive thing that started it is so trivial.
"[53] Reacting to a call to strip Einfeld of his pension, Chief Justice of New South Wales Jim Spigelman wrote in an April 2009 letter to NSW Attorney General John Hatzistergos that pensions should be safe when judges were already retired, they were a deferred part of their salary, criminal law was sufficient punishment, and that it would be even more unusual if the offence "bears no relationship" to the judge's former duties.
[40] Spigelman continued that then-federal Attorney General Robert McClelland and state attorneys-general should "impose a cooling off period on themselves" for reacting to vehement short-term ad hoc media campaigns.
"[54] Former Australian Minister for Home Affairs, the Environment, and Arts Barry Cohen noted that: "many journalists ... feel it is beholden upon them to mention that a person is Jewish, particularly if they have been naughty...
It involves not a passing mistake, not an unfortunate and apparently uncharacteristic lapse but a studied and deliberate attempt to avoid the consequences of his actions and to deflect and pervert the course of justice.