Vic: Lawyer who tried to save Ronald Ryan dies

AAP General News (Australia)
08-26-2008
Vic: Lawyer who tried to save Ronald Ryan dies

MELBOURNE, Aug 26 AAP - The man who defended the last man hanged in Australia, Dr Philip
Opas QC, has died following a lengthy illness, aged 91, News Limited newspapers report
today.

Dr Opas never accepted that Ronald Ryan murdered prison warder George Hodson as he
and accomplice Peter Walker escaped Melbourne's Pentridge jail in 1965.

Ryan hanged for the crime in February 1967, and became the last man executed in Australia.

Dr Opas appealed the sentence to Britain's Privy Council unsuccessfully.

His efforts to save Ryan from the gallows embarrassed the government of then premier
Henry Bolte, which decided Ryan should have hanged as a demonstration of its will to enforce
the law, News Limited said.

Dr Opas later went into corporate law and local government.

He leaves behind two daughters, four grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.

His wife of 66 years, Stella, died three years ago.

Dr Opas, who served with the RAAF in the Pacific in World War II and was an Air Commodore
with the RAAF's legal services branch in the Vietnam era, will be cremated after a funeral
with full military honours on Thursday.

AAP jrd/wf

KEYWORD: RYAN LAWYER

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