Magistrate’s misconduct complaints due to mental illness triggered by ‘crushing workload’

A magistrate is facing disciplinary proceedings for misusing her powers and subjecting vulnerable members of the community to repeated mistreatment which caused them fear and distress, a Judicial Conduct hearing has been told.

A magistrate is facing disciplinary proceedings for misusing her powers including placing a young offender in a glassed-in dock in court to give him a scare.

Dominique Burns is facing a week-long Judicial Commission Conduct Division hearing into a string of complaints made about her work in courts in the state’s mid north between June 2016 and February last year.

Counsel assisting Kristina Stern SC said the magistrate, who is currently suspended, subjected vulnerable members of the community to repeated mistreatment which caused them fear and distress.

Magistrate Dominique Burns leaves the Law Courts Building at Queens Square in Sydney. Picture: Richard Dobson

Ms Stern told the NSW Supreme Court complaints against Ms Burns relate to 17 defendants and seven different misconduct categories including procedural unfairness that was “particularly pervasive and problematic”.

She said Ms Burns handed a 19-year-old cognitively disabled indigenous man a suspended sentence twice the maximum penalty after he pleaded guilty to stealing a bike.

The magistrate placed an 18-year-old accused offender in a glassed-in dock despite intending to grant bail to give him “a bit of a scare”, the court heard.

Ms Burns urged a police prosecutor to apply for a bail revocation for another defendant accused of stealing a poker machine payout ticket worth $170, and he spent seven days in custody before that decision was reversed, Ms Stern said.

On three occasions Ms Burns sought to influence police prosecutors to lay extra charges in a “particularly serious demonstration of misbehaviour,” the court heard.

“The fact that knowledge of wilful blindness of this is not admitted is very telling,” Ms Stern said.

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Ms Burns faced ‘a tsunami’ of pending criminal hearings before she even took up her post, her barrister told the hearing. Picture: Richard Dobson

Another complaint was that Ms Burns indicated that she’d grant bail to another alleged offender if he changed his not guilty plea to guilty.

Ms Stern said Ms Burns was aware before she took up the Port Macquarie Magistrate’s posting in January 2016 that “the circuit was overwhelmed and that there would be a backlog of cases.”

The Judicial Commission body headed by Justice Anthony Payne will issue a report to state parliament which has the power to sack Ms Burns if necessary.

Her barrister Arthur Moses, who last week failed in a bid to suppress her identity, said Ms Burns accepted that mistakes were made but insisted they were not deliberate.

He said his client developed depressive and anxiety disorder which was an explanation but not an excuse for her conduct.

“Those errors need to be examined through the prism of what was a crushing workload,” he said.

Mr Moses said the magistrate was confronted with a caseload of 1100 to 1200 pending criminal hearings before she even took up her post.

“That can be described as a tsunami, not just a huge caseload,” he said.

The magistrate warned her seniors she couldn’t hold on for 12 months unless extra judicial officers were sent to the region and was ignored, Mr Moses said.

But Ms Stern said 70 days of relief or assistance were provided to Ms Burns during her 14-month tenure.