Dwell
An inquiry into the dealing with of the case in opposition to former Liberal staffer Bruce Lehrmann has taken an enormous step ahead with a choice on who will head the evaluate.
Retired Queensland choose Walter Sofronoff KC has been named to steer the inquiry which can look into the conduct of police and prosecutors within the aborted trial.
The board of inquiry is the ACT authorities’s equal of a royal fee.
The evaluate was introduced in December after the ACT’s chief prosecutor Shane Drumgold claimed the police had pressured him to desert the trial.
ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr has stated the inquiry would examine the “rigour, impartiality and independence” of the legal justice system within the Lehrmann case.
Mr Sofronoff is a retired solicitor common of Queensland and previously headed the Queensland Court docket of Attraction.
He led the Grantham Floods Fee of Inquiry in 2016 and extra just lately oversaw a fee of inquiry into failings at Qld’s DNA testing laboratory.
Bruce Lehrmann confronted a trial within the ACT Supreme Court docket in October, which was derailed as a result of juror misconduct.
The fees in opposition to him had been later dropped as a result of issues concerning the affect a second trial would have on Brittany Higgins’ psychological well being.
Mr Lehrmann has denied raping Ms Higgins in Parliament Home in 2019.
On the weekend it additionally emerged Liberal Senator Linda Reynolds was pursuing defamation action against Ms Higgins’ partner David Sharaz.
In a writ lodged with the Supreme Court docket of Western Australia, the native senator claimed Mr Sharaz falsely defamed her through two tweets posted in 2022.
Ms Higgins alleged she was raped in 2019 by Bruce Lehrmann inside Senator Reynolds’ ministerial workplace, for whom they each labored as staffers.
