Judge Robert Newlinds benched over DPP criticisms

Judge Robert Newlinds SC blasted the state’s prosecuting office over a failed rape case. Now the Judicial Commission has done the same to him.

District Court Judge Robert Newlinds SC.

The District Court judge who blasted the state’s prosecuting office over a failed rape case should be removed from hearing criminal cases, the NSW judicial watchdog has recommended.

A Judicial Commission panel has made a blistering criticism against Judge Robert Newlinds SC in response to his scathing condemnation of the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions at the end of the case in December last year.

The panel, headed by Chief Justice Andrew Bell, recommended that the District Court’s Chief Judge Sarah Huggett only assign Judge Newlinds to hear criminal cases “when she considers it appropriate to do so”.

It also found that Judge Newlinds abused his power by making “swingeing criticisms” against the state’s top prosecutor, Sally Dowling SC, belittled a rape complainant and bullied a prosecuting lawyer.

The judge’s behaviour meant that it was “inappropriate that he sit in state criminal matters for the foreseeable future”, the panel’s report said.

The panel found the judge had engaged in judicial bullying by calling the Crown “gutless” in refusing to pull the case.

Judge Newlinds blasted Ms Dowling’s office at the conclusion of a Sydney man’s case who was found not guilty by a jury of rape.

In ordering the state pay the man’s legal costs, Judge Newlinds told the court the “should never have been prosecuted” while the female complainant had made similar complaints, resulting in five other men being charged.

Judge Newlinds called for “reform” on laws that prevent rape complainants’ prior sexual experience and reputation being used as evidence in trials.

“I am left with a deep level of concern that there is some sort of unwritten policy or expectation in place in the (ODPP) … that if any person alleges that they have been the subject of some sort of sexual assault then that case is prosecuted without a sensible and rational interrogation of that complainant so as to at least be satisfied that they have a reasonable basis for making that allegation…,” Judge Newlinds told the court.

The Sydney man was charged with raping the woman in May 2021 after she got drunk and invited him to her apartment. He spent eight months behind bars with bail refused.

His trial heard the woman had a tendency to get blackout drunk and have sex with men only to then accuse them of sexual assault because she could not remember what occurred.

Judge Newlinds in yet to respond.