Felicity Gerry KC (Call 1994: Silk 2014) regularly appears in in the Supreme Court of Victoria and the Victorian Court of Appeal in contested hearings and conviction and sentence appeals. She has also appeared in the High Court of Australia. She largely defends in criminal matters, often with an international element. Since taking silk her practice has increasingly had an overlap with Administrative, Constitutional and International Law and she is often briefed to advise on legislative operation and transnational strategic litigation.
She is admitted to the list of counsel for the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the Kosovo Specialist Chambers and in England & Wales and in Victoria and had ad hoc admission in Hong Kong and Gibraltar. She has advised and appeared in major terrorism, international fraud and money laundering matters, multi claimant and multi defendant cases, administrative action to heritage list Aboriginal land, a Federal challenge for women and children in Syrian camps and in a potential class action relating to illegal logging. She has also advised on a range of death penalty matters in ASEAN, including assisting in a successful reprieve.
Felicity is also a Professorial Fellow at Restorative Justice NGO RJ4All and an Honorary Professor in the School of Health and Society at the University of Salford and has a long history of teaching legal issues around contemporary international legal challenges - including Sanctions Law, War Crimes, Modern Slavery, Digital/Tech law, Terrorism, and Art Law.
Felicity has a particular interest in the law on complicity, having led in 12 cases on this topic in 6 jurisdictions including an Amicus Curiae brief in the ICC in The Hague (Radovan Karadžić Appeal 2019), a successful petition for mercy in the NT (Zak Grieve 2018), an application for special leave to the High Court of Australia (R v Spilios 2016), in the Court of Final Appeal in Hong Kong (Chan Kam-shing 2016) and she led in R v Jogee [2016] UKSC 8, where the UK Supreme Court (formerly the House of Lords) held that extended common purpose (known there as ‘joint enterprise’) was an erroneous tangent of law. The BBC described the judgment as ‘a moment of genuine legal history’. This was followed by a successful appeal on the law of joint principalship (R v Lewis 2018).
Felicity takes a keen interest in improving the law and has contributed to submissions to governments which have changed the law in Australia and overseas. Felicity has provided training / CPD and presented at conferences on a range of legal issues including War Crimes, Terrorism, Homicide and Sexual Offending as well as the use of science and technology in legal practice. She provided training to the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association Modern Slavery Project and the Bangladesh Judiciary Project and has developed a teaching module for UNODC on the linkages between human trafficking, smuggling of migrants and cybercrime. She is an Ambassador for The Advocate’s Gateway (TAG) which produces toolkits for advocacy with vulnerable people. TAG pioneered the use of intermediaries. Her Publications include to Lexis Advance, Bourke’s Criminal Law Victoria, (contributor) Chapters Sex Work and Children (December 2019).
