Chris Dawson has alleged he is the victim of a miscarriage of justice as he asks the state’s top criminal appeal court to overturn his conviction for the murder of his wife Lynette Simms.
In 2022, Justice Ian Harrison sentenced the now 75-year-old to a maximum of 24 years in prison for his act of “self-indulgent brutality” and set a non-parole period of 18 years.
Harrison said it was likely that Dawson would “not live to reach the end of his non-parole period” in 2040, when he would be 92, and “the unavoidable prospect” was he would “probably die” in prison.
Lawyers for Dawson, led by senior public defender Belinda Rigg, SC, last week filed amended appeal grounds in the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal, ahead of a three-day hearing starting on Monday.
Dawson’s team have identified five grounds of appeal, including that Harrison failed to find Dawson suffered a significant disadvantage as a result of the delay in instituting the criminal proceedings, “and to take that disadvantage into account when considering the evidence”.
They also argue Harrison’s verdict was “unreasonable and unable to be supported”, either because the Crown relied on inadequate evidence to disprove that Lynette was alive at any stage on the afternoon of January 9, 1982, or it was not open on the evidence as a whole to be satisfied of Dawson’s guilt.
Harrison said in his judgment in August 2022 that “proof by the Crown that Lynette Dawson died on or about 8 January 1982 is an indispensable link in the chain of reasoning upon which the Crown relies”.
“The Crown must prove beyond reasonable doubt that Lynette Dawson’s date of death was on or about 8 January 1982, which description includes the early morning of the following day.”
Lynette’s body has never been found, and her family said after Dawson’s sentencing in December 2022 that she should now be known by her maiden name.
“Chris Dawson discarded her; the Dawsons disregarded her; from today on, we would like her to be known and remembered as Lynette Joy Simms,” Lynette’s brother Greg Simms said.
The telephone call
In a new ground of appeal, added last week, Dawson’s lawyers say a “miscarriage of justice was caused” by Harrison.
They point to the judge’s finding that Dawson, a former teacher and rugby league player, did not receive a telephone call from his wife at Northbridge Baths on January 9, 1982, as well as Harrison’s finding that Lynette was dead by that afternoon.
In a record of interview with NSW Police on January 15, 1991, Dawson said he and Lynette had been having “matrimonial problems” and that he received an STD call from her that day while he was at Northbridge Baths, where he had a part-time job.
He told police he was expecting his wife to meet him at the baths that afternoon after a shopping trip.
“She said she needed time away … and she’d ring me in a few days’ time after she’d had time to sort things out,” Dawson said in the interview.
He told police that in “the following few weeks I had similar phone calls from Lyn, more STD calls saying that she needed extra time, that she needed more time to sort it out”.
Harrison said the “only evidence” that Dawson received a call from his wife that day came from Dawson himself. The judge concluded this was a lie.
The judge said in his subsequent judgment on sentence in December 2022 that Lynette was killed at the couple’s Bayview home, on Sydney’s northern beaches, “for the selfish and cynical purpose of eliminating the inconvenient obstruction she presented to the creation of the new life with [his former student and daughters’ babysitter] JC that Mr Dawson was unable to resist”.
He said he was satisfied that Dawson had murdered his then-wife on or about January 8, 1982.
“The evidence does not reveal how Mr Dawson killed Lynette Dawson. It does not reveal whether he did so with the assistance of anyone else or by himself. It does not reveal where or when he did so,” Harrison said. “Nor does it reveal where Lynette Dawson’s body is now.”
The Crown will be represented at the appeal by Brett Hatfield, SC.
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