Brian McMurtrie: Bathurst man pleads guilty to misconduct while holding a public office

A 63-year-old Bathurst man has admitted to misconduct while he was an officer at Lithgow Prison, after being named in a NSW ICAC commission in 2019.

Picture: Brett Wortman.

A former officer at a maximum security all-male prison has admitted to misconduct while in public office.

Brian Keith McMurtrie, of Bathurst, pleaded guilty in June to misconduct while holding a public office, with the matter mentioned at Downing Centre District Court on Friday.

The 63-year-old was formerly a corrective services NSW (CSNSW) officer at Lithgow Correctional Centre, a maximum-security facility for males in the Blue Mountains.

In 2019, the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) found McMurtrie along with the five other CSNSW officers and employees engaged in serious corrupt conduct regarding the use of excessive force on an inmate on February 19, 2014, and the associated cover-up of the incident.

In a report released in 2019, the Commission found the former LCC general manager and five former officers undertook various roles in an incident in which a prisoner, whose name has been suppressed, sustained injuries that required hospital treatment.

The prisoner told his father in a telephone call he had been “flogged by the squad”, the report states.

The Commission found McMurtrie created a false intelligence report concerning the presence of the heroin and methadone withdrawal substance buprenorphine in the cell of the prisoner who sustained injuries as a result of excessive force.

The matter will return to court later this month.