Henry Keogh

Henry Keogh
Criminal penalty	26 years imprisonment
Criminal status	Conviction quashed 19-Dec-2014
Conviction(s)	Murder

Henry Vincent Keogh (born 1954) is an Australian wrongly convicted of murder. He grew up in Adelaide, South Australia and was educated at Saint Ignatius College and briefly at the School of Dentistry at The University of Adelaide.

In 1995, he was sentenced to 26 years in prison for the 1994 murder of his 29-year-old fiancée, Anna-Jane Cheney, then head of Professional Conduct at the Law Society of South Australia: it was alleged that Keogh had planned the murder for over two years.

Mr Keogh and his family have always claimed his innocence, and raised their doubts regarding some of the evidence upon which the conviction was based.

Keogh admitted to signing five life insurance policies on behalf of Cheney. Whereas the prosecution alleged the combined value of $1.15 million AUD was motive for the murder, Keogh claimed that these were submitted to prevent insurance agencies he had established from lapsing, and that the amount eligible to claim was closer to $400,000. The prosecution conceded during the trial that Cheney was aware of at least two of these policies.

The conviction was overturned on December 19, 2014

The third trial was set for March 2016 but a key prosecution witness fell ill. On November 13, 2015 the DPP announced they had entered a nolle prosequi and would not be proceeding with a retrial at this stage.

In a petition lodged in 2002, Keogh's legal team, led by Kevin Borick QC, provided material in support of a substantial number of complaints. Keogh's key complaint was against then chief forensic pathologist Colin Manock's handling of the autopsy on Cheney and his evidence in the trial.

South Australian Deputy Premier Kevin Foley said that after considering the report of the Solicitor General, delivered after an exhaustive examination over two and a half years of the 37 complaints contained in Mr Keogh's third petition, he formed the opinion that it did not disclose any arguable basis on which the Supreme Court could find that there had been a miscarriage of justice.

In May 2007, Mr Keogh applied for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of South Australia. The appeal was dismissed on 22 June 2007.

On 16 November 2007, the High Court of Australia rejected Keogh's application for special leave to appeal against a decision by the South Australian Court of Criminal Appeal that it did not have jurisdiction to reopen his appeal.

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