School of Social and Political Sciences - Theses

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    The Ryan case: an analysis of the decision of the Victorian Cabinet to impose the death sentence on Ronald Joseph Ryan, and of the public and mass media protest campaign
    RICHARDS, MICHAEL JOHN ( 1976)
    Between the years 1955 and 1972 Victorian politics was dominated not merely by the Liberal Party but by one man, Mr. (later Sir) Henry Bolte. Not since the (co-extensive) era of Sir Robert Menzies on the national scene had the political life of a community so completely been in the shadow of a single politician : as A.F. Davies has put it, for most people politics in Victoria for a long time had meant "Henry Bolte". But Sir Henry Bolte has not merely been the longest serving Premier in our history ; his coming to office in June 1955 marked the beginning of an era of continuity and stability in Victorian politics that had never before been experienced in the State. Before Bo1te came to power in 1955, there had been eighteen Governments since 1924, the longest-serving of which had been the Country Party Minority Government of A.A. Dunstan, which had ruled - with Labor support till July 1942 and thereafter with United Australia Party support - from April 1935 to September 1943. What is more, as A.F. Davies has pointed out, all the Ministries from 1924 to 1952 were either minority Governments or composite Ministries. Moreover, only two of the seven governments between 1924 and 1932 lasted a full parliamentary term, and only two of the twelve governments between 1943 and 1958. With the advent of the Bolte era "the inherent instability of Victorian Cabinets", as it had come to be termed, was at an end. While there has already been a searching political biography of Sir Henry, the politics and style of “the Bolte era" has so far not attracted extensive research. This thesis, then, is a contribution to our understanding of that era by concentrating on the most significant issue of the Bolte premiership : the decision by the Bolte Cabinet in December 1966 to hang convicted murderer Ronald Joseph Ryan. Only twice during his record term of more than seventeen years as Premier did Sir Henry Bolte meet with sustained, hostile public criticism and protest. Both occasions involved a decision to invoke the death penalty. The first involved the decision not to commute the death sentence on Robert Peter Tait for the murder of an elderly woman in Hawthorn in 1961. Following involved legal procedures by Tait's counsel, which culminated in a last minute intervention by the High Court to restrain the Government from proceeding with the hanging, the death sentence on Tait was finally commuted. (From Introduction)
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    Punishment and crime: guilt and grandiosity in the life of Ronald Ryan
    RICHARDS, MICHAEL JOHN ( 1999)
    This thesis examines the life and crimes of Ronald Joseph Ryan, the condemned man at the centre of the most politically divisive capital punishment case in Australia's history and the last man judicially executed in Australia. Ryan was born Ronald Edmond Thompson in Melbourne in February 1925, the son of impoverished working class parents. His father was a violent, alcoholic miner crippled by miners' phthisis and his mother (who, at the time of the birth, was married to another man) was an alcoholic and sometime prostitute. Ryan's childhood was characterised by early traumatic deprivation, parental abuse and neglect. Following a petty theft at age 11, Ryan was removed from his parents and, by court order, made a ward of state and placed in custodial care at an institution for "wayward and neglected' boys. He absconded from his wardship at age 14 and joined his half-brother, later travelling to Balranald, N.S.W., where he worked as a timber-cutter. The period from age 15 to his mid-20s were relatively productive and law-abiding - he was married in 1950 - but aspects of his personality also became more obvious: his gambling compulsion and certain obsessive compulsive behavioural traits. In 1953, now back in Victoria, Ryan was involved in arson of his rented family home in order to claim insurance monies, although he was subsequently acquitted of the offence. Beginning in 1956, a string of forging and "break-and-enter' offences ensued. When arrested Ryan typically confessed, and later court appearances led to his first brief imprisonment for theft in 1956. Further breaking offences followed in 1959 and 1960, in a period in which he was virtually a professional criminal, and he was eventually prosecuted, convicted and sentenced to 8 ½ years imprisonment. While in prison Ryan appeared strongly motivated toward rehabilitation, successfully undertaking further education. He was regarded by prison authorities as an outstanding, high-achieving model prisoner. Released after serving 3 years, Ryan quickly returned to crime, however, and his offences at times involved violence. A series of shop- and factory-breakings and safe-blowings between 1963 and 1964 saw him convicted and returned to prison for 8 years. In 1965 he escaped from Pentridge prison in Melbourne, during which he shot and killed a pursuing prison officer. Following his recapture, Ryan and his co-escapee, Peter Walker, were tried in the Victorian Supreme Court. Ryan was convicted of murder and Walker convicted of manslaughter. Despite exhaustive legal appeals and unprecedented media and community opposition, Ryan's death sentence was not commuted by the Victorian Cabinet and he was hanged on 3 February 1967. Utilising archival records, primary sources and extensive interviews with his family and contemporaries, the thesis presents a biographical account of Ryan's life. It documents the social conditions of Ryan's childhood and institutionalisation and his later criminal and prison history, but more particularly it seeks - through the evidence of his behaviour and his writings - to elucidate his inner life as a way of understanding the contradictions between Ryan as model prisoner and ambitious professional criminal. The thesis advances a hypothesis about Ryan's criminal personality: grandiose in his phantasied criminal role, a prisoner to obsessive rituals and compulsive gambling for much of his life, driven by a compulsion to confess to his crimes, and prone to hero phantasies and acts of rescue and reparation. Drawing on psychoanalytic theory, the thesis explores the extent to which Ryan's criminality can be understood as an expression of his unconscious wish for punishment, as derived 'from a sense of guilt' , and shaped by his narcissistic grandiosity.