ACT’s top prosecutor and a top military lawyer: the lawyers in the Lehrmann trial
The legal team prosecuting Bruce Lehrmann is headed by a “has been boxer”, who rose from housing commission in Sydney’s west to the peak of the justice system.
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The legal team fighting to prosecute Bruce Lehrmann is headed by a “has been boxer”, who rose from housing commission in Sydney’s west to the peak of the justice system.
The man pushing to clear his name is a high powered military prosecutor, who has worked with the ADF’s most important internal inquiries.
Lehrmann has pleaded not guilty to one count of sexual intercourse without consent with Brittany Higgins, and being reckless as to her consent, in the early hours of March 23, 2019.
The path to top prosecutor for ACT’s Director of Public Prosecutions Shane Drumgold SC began in Mt Druitt housing commission, online biographies reveal, before he dropped out of high school and struggled to gain acceptance into university.
After moving to the NSW mid-north coast town of Taree, and working up through Australia Post, Mr Drumgold completed multiple degrees in law and economics.
He has worked with restorative justice in Indigenous communities and the Australian government attempts to broker peace in the Solomon Islands after a brutal civil war in the 1990s.
He describes himself online simply as a “has been boxer”.
His junior prosecutor, Skye Jerome, is involved in some of the most complex prosecutions in the ACT including mulitple alleged sexual assault trials.
Lerhmann’s chief defender is barrister Steven Whybrow, a former prosecutor himself in the ACT courts with a background in organic chemistry and forensic science.
Mr Whybrow’s career has largely been carved out in military courts and tribunals as an RAAF legal officer working in court martials.
“He is an Assistant Inspector General of the ADF and undertakes inquiries into Service Related Deaths and other major incidents and reviews of other military inquiries,” the biography reads.
Lehrmann’s junior counsel for the trial is Katrina Musgrove, a former ACT prosecutor who has appeared in high profile trials in Canberra involving allegations of sexual assault and serious injuries.
HIGGINS TAKES TO THE STAND
Three years after Brittany Higgins alleged that she was raped in a ministers office inside Parliament House, she has returned to the capital to testify against the accused, former colleague Bruce Lehrmann, in the case that triggered a political reckoning and is likely to see ministers and Canberra insiders summoned to the witness box.
Lehrmann, on Tuesday morning, pleaded not guilty to raping Ms Higgins – specifically having sexual intercourse without her consent, and being reckless as to her consent, in the early hours of March 23, 2019.
Before him sat Chief Justice Lucy McCallum, a jury, a public gallery packed with journalists and, on the walls, video screens that would show Ms Higgins, the trial’s first witness, in tears by the end of the day.
Ms Higgins dialled into the court, from another room in the ACT court building, to state she had spoken honestly with police after her interviews with the media when the case first became public in early 2021.
The screens around the court flicked back two years to show Ms Higgins speaking with the Australian Federal Police in February 2021.
BRITTANY HIGGINS’ 2021 POLICE INTERVIEW
Ms Higgins told police how her “strange, adversarial relationship” with Lehrmann appeared to be improving as he bought her drinks at a work function.
She recalled her staffer mates “bullied” her Bumble date, she became “really, really, really inebriated” and she went to an 80s dance bar with Lehrmann and two others.
Ms Higgins told police she recalled Lehrmann telling her he needed to get something from Parliament House as they caught a cab toward their homes at the end of the night.
“I didn’t have all my devices about me and I look back – I question it all now – but it didn’t seem unsafe,” Ms Higgins told detectives.
“It didn’t seem like a situation that was dangerous, it seemed like I was going into work for a second with a colleague.”
Prosecutors told the court a recording would show Lehrmann buzzed security, told them he had forgotten his pass and needed to pick up documents.
Security guards allowed Lehrmann in, along with the visibly drunk Ms Higgins, prosecutors said.
One guard, prosecutors told the jury, noticed she had a grass stain on her dress but there was no explanation why.
Ms Higgins told police, in the 2021 interview, she was too drunk to sign her own name on the security ledger.
Ms Higgins told police she recalled sitting on a ledge in Minister Linda Reynolds’ office, where they both worked, and then ending up on the couch before she lost consciousness.
The next memory, she told police, was pain in her leg shocking her back to awareness.
“He had his knee on my thigh and I was stuffed in the corner (of the couch) and I couldn’t get him off me,” Ms Higgins told police.
“At this point I was crying throughout the entire process …” she paused.
“I said no at least half a dozen times. He did not stop, he kept going.”
PUBLIC ‘SOLD A PUP’: LEHRMANN’S DEFENCE
She described Lehrmann as slightly overweight, dimpled and dressed in the “standard liberal attire of RM (Williams) boots, the suits and polo Ralph Lauren shirts”.
One guard, the prosecution told the court, is expected to testify they found Ms Higgins naked in the room when one decided to check on her welfare.
The interview was cut at 4pm, and the screens flicked back to Ms Higgins in the nearby witness room – crying through red eyes and smudged makeup.
Lehrmann stared at his feet, RM Williams, clutching a notebook in his hand.
Lehrmann’s lawyer, Steven Whybrow, opened his defence by claiming the 27-year-old Lehrmann was a victim of “trial by media” that was determined to prosecute a case against the toxic culture in Canberra politics and sexual violence against women and children.
“The Australian public has been sold a pup on this story, there’s a story out there that isn’t true,” he told the court.
Mr Whybrow said the media campaign against Lehrmann began when Ms Higgins’s partner, David Sharaz, spoke to The Project journalist Lisa Wilkinson about a young woman, sexually assaulted in Parliament House.
“This unstoppable snowball began rolling down the mountain, becoming an avalanche that could not be stopped by something as mundane as, in this particular case, that the allegations were not true,” the barrister told the court.
“This was a story whose time had come. Mr Sharaz and Ms Wilkinson were not going to let facts get in the way of a good story.”
HIGGINS’ TEXTS IN PROSECUTION CASE
Crown Prosecutor Shane Drumgold opened his case reading texts where a friend asked Ms Higgins if someone “took advantage” of her.
“I was barely lucid, I don’t feel like it was consensual at all,” Ms Higgins told her friend, the prosecutor told the court.
“If he thought it was OK why did he just leave me there like that?”
WHO ARE THE JURORS?
Justice McCallum warned prospective jurors that the trial “had a momentum of its own” after the allegations became public and implored people to disqualify themselves if they could not be impartial.
“If you went to the March for Justice in March 2021, if you had gone to any public function at which Ms Higgins spoke, if you follow her on Twitter … If you’re a member of the party faithful. If you’ve formed a preconceived view about this case which you do not think you can stand back from in light of the evidence you should come forward,” she said.
The trial continues before a jury of 16; six men and 10 women.
WHO ARE THE WITNESSES?
Brittany Higgins is expected to face her first questions in court over the allegations on Wednesday.
The trial of Bruce Lehrmann, in the ACT Supreme Court, will potentially see multiple high profile politicians and their top advisers called to give evidence.
Crown Prosecutor Shane Drumgold read a list of potential witnesses to the jury, close to 50 names, at the onset of the trial on Tuesday.
Among them is Michaelia Cash, former Attorney-General, Linda Reynolds, former Defence Minister, John Kunkel, Scott Morrison’s former chief of staff as well as numerous other advisers and political insiders.
Journalists Lisa Wilkinson and Samantha Maiden are also on the potential witness list, Mr Drumgold said.
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