Inquiry report into abandoned prosecution of Bruce Lehrman to be handed to ACT government
By Elizabeth ByrneThe ACT government will today be informed of the findings from an inquiry into the trial of former Liberal staffer Bruce Lehrmann over the alleged rape of Brittany Higgins.
Key points:
- The government will today receive a report on the now-abandoned rape trial of Bruce Lehrmann
- The inquiry was sparked by the ACT's top prosecutor claiming police pressured him not to charge Mr Lehrmann
- Inquiry head Walter Sofronoff looked into the conduct of the prosecution, the police, and the ACT's Victims of Crime Commissioner
The now-abandoned case against Mr Lehrmann attracted intense public interest as it proceeded through the ACT courts last year, partly due to the messy entanglement with politics, after the alleged offence was claimed to have happened inside a minister's office at Parliament House.
Mr Lehrmann has maintained his innocence and there remain no findings against him after his trial was abandoned.
Late last year, an inquiry into Mr Lehrmann's prosecution was sparked by a letter from the ACT's Director of Public Prosecutions Shane Drumgold, which claimed police had pressured him not to charge Mr Lehrmann, and alleged political interference and a too close relationship between senior police and the defence team during the trial.
The ACT government announced a board of inquiry — the territory's equivalent of a royal commission — to be led by former Queensland judge Walter Sofronoff.
Mr Sofronoff looked into the conduct of the prosecution, the police and the ACT Victims of Crime Commissioner, who was criticised for accompanying Ms Higgins to court each day.
The inquiry has also looked into how the letter which led to its establishment was released under Freedom of Information Laws.
At first, it looked like the inquiry would be considering if the prosecution should have gone ahead or not, but that was quickly abandoned, and what unfolded was a series of backdowns from police and prosecutors over their claims against one another.
Mr Drumgold dramatically backed away from his claim of political interference, and Detective Superintendent Scott Moller, who expressed his doubts about the case, describing Ms Higgins in one report, as "evasive, uncooperative and manipulative", told the inquiry he had changed his mind about the case when he saw the brief of evidence.
Other senior police admitted not following their own procedure when Ms Higgins's counselling notes were illegally sent to Mr Lehrmann's original lawyers.
The inquiry heard from many witnesses in person, but also collected a voluminous number of statements from others, including Senator Linda Reynolds, for whom both Ms Higgins and Mr Lehrmann worked at the time of the alleged incident.
So what will the inquiry report reveal?
It is likely there will be criticism of some of the main players in the case.
And Mr Sofronoff may take the opportunity to recommend some changes to police practices, including consideration of the threshold for charging someone with rape, after none of the police involved could agree on the matter.
But, while the report will be handed to the government today, it is not saying yet when it will release it publicly.
"Transparency around this will be important, but we will need to be mindful of where there might be sensitivities in the report, and the act imagines those scenarios, and that is how the government will proceed," ACT Attorney-General Shane Rattenbury said on Friday.
"We will not know exactly how that will proceed until we see the content of the report, I have no indication of what's in the report at the moment."
Under the legislation, the report can be released before it is tabled in the Legislative Assembly, which is not sitting again until the end of August.