Doug Winning to fight attempt to bribe police conviction in court of appeal hearing

Notorious foul-mouth Rockhampton solicitor will spend his conviction anniversary in Brisbane in the court of appeal

Notorious foul-mouth Rockhampton solicitor Doug Winning, who was found guilty of attempting to bribe police last year will one day shy of the anniversary, appeal his conviction in a Brisbane court.

The bankrupted lawyer’s appeal hearing is set for October 6, 2021, in Brisbane.

The 67-year-old was sentenced in Rockhampton District Court on October 7, 2020, to nine months‘ jail, wholly suspended for 18 months.

Solicitor Doug Winning leaves Rockhampton Magistrates Court. No Credit

Queensland Law Society cancelled his practising certificate in January 2020 but, according to Legal Services Commission Queensland, he has not been removed from the QLD roll of practitioners.

Mr Winning had pleaded not guilty to the charge which stemmed from allegations he tried to bribe two police officers after he was caught drink-driving.

Five weeks prior to Mr Winning’s trial, he was roasted by Supreme Court’s Justice Graeme Crow over the contents of an email meant for a prosecutor which landed in Supreme Court staff inbox.

Mr Winning, who was admitted to practice as a solicitor in 1986, has a notoriously foul-mouth language which landed him in trouble with the Legal Practice Tribunal in 2008 where he was found guilty of multiple instances of professional misconduct and part of the orders was to be publicly reprimanded.

In the decision handed down by LPT in 2008, it stated Mr Winning used “grossly offensive and insulting language; and/or displayed a lack of professional courtesy to members of a law enforcement agency”; and had the potential or tendency to bring the legal profession or justice system into disrepute , in June 2004.

The decision stated Officers of the Australian Crime Commission executed a search warrant on June 2, 2004, and Mr Winning displayed the unprofessional behaviour towards those officers during the search.

The LPT decision also talked about Mr Winning, he carried out the same unprofessional conduct with ACC 12 days later, particularly with a paralegal during a telephone call where he told the paralegal to tell a manager “to stick her f---ing petrol money up her f---ing c---” along with “f--- coppers’ and “f---ing filthy scumbag coppers who were corrupt”.

The next month, Mr Winning’s unprofessional conduct was carried out at the bar table in the Supreme Court in Rockhampton.

The comments included: “(Female) is nothing but a f---ing drunk”, “she falls off her f---ing bar stools every five minutes”, “(male) should stop listening to f--ing coppers and use what’s between his f---ing ears” and many more.

Mr Winning was again publicly reprimanded, as ordered by the Legal Practice Tribunal, in 2015 over comments about a Crown prosecutor during a District Court.

The decision published stated the comments were offensive, discourteous, provocative and/or compromised the integrity and reputation of the legal profession.

Mr Winning accused the Crown prosecutor of dishonesty, of misleading the court and having instructed a witness to be difficult in giving evidence, in circumstances where the Judge was forced to intercede many times and admonished Mr Winning for his behaviour in “very strong terms”.

 Mr Winning was contacted by The Morning Bulletin ahead of the appeal hearing, but he declined to comment on what the grounds were for the appeal.

However, The Morning Bulletin has been advised the grounds are as follows:

Ground 1 – A miscarriage of justice occurred because the learned trial judge failed to give a direction in terms of either Edwards v The Queen (1993) 178 CLR 193 or Zoneff v The Queen (2000) 200 CLR 234 a to the use of the lies in the Channel 9 interview.

Ground 2 – The verdict was unreasonable and cannot be supported by the evidence.