The Snitch: Heston Russell uses break in court case to promote sponsor

Australian soldier Heston Russell has used a break in his defamation battle against the ABC to focus on his side project, while DPP boss Sally Dowling has set some time aside for her staff. Don’t miss The Snitch.

Snitch loves a side hustle. And it appears so too does Australian soldier Heston Russell.

Russell is in the middle of a high-stakes defamation battle with the ABC in the NSW Supreme Court.

He took legal action against the national broadcaster over stories published by the ABC in 2021 that Mr Russell claims made it look like he was being investigated for shooting an unarmed prisoner.

As we said, it’s pretty tense high-level courtroom combat.

So do you reckon in one of the breaks in proceedings you’d duck to the bathroom for a nervous whizz? Probably.

Not Heston. He hit the courtroom steps, set his phone to selfie mode and began plugging a bit of product on Instagram.

Heston Russell seen promoting Savvy Beverages outside court in Sydney on social media.

In this case, it was what appeared to be a health-slash-energy drink.

Mr Russell, who served in East Timor, Iraq and Afghanistan, told his 103,000 followers that he’d had a hard week in the Supreme Court but thanked the good folk at the drink company for getting him through it.

He then dutifully held up the can so his followers could see the branding and posted a discount code, “Heston”, on the screen that they could use to get a discount.

No judgement here, though. These are modern times.

Maybe that other soldier, Ben Roberts-Smith, could have learned a thing or two from Mr Russell tapping into revenue streams on social media.

Roberts-Smith owes a few quid after losing a pricey defamation case to another media outlet, the name of which escapes me at the moment.

NOT IN THE COURSE NOTES

Sydney solicitor Alev Rojda Oncu received an unwelcome two-week crash course into the criminal justice system.

Only recently admitted to practice as a lawyer in NSW, Oncu was herself charged with attempting to cover up a murder and stood trial for two weeks in Parramatta District Court.

Prosecutors had alleged that Ms Oncu tried to destroy evidence linking her husband to a murder.

That came to an end on Friday when a jury took just two hours to find Ms Oncu not guilty.

“She has learnt more about the criminal justice system in the last two weeks than during the entirety of her university career,” Ms Oncu’s lawyer Paul McGirr said outside of court.

Alev Oncu has been found not guilty of destroying evidence.

“She is in the infancy of her career and was facing years in jail because of these allegations,” Mr McGirr said.

“It’s a tragedy. A man is dead and now she is in a fight to get back on the solicitors roll.”

Mr McGirr said he will be making representations to the NSW Law Society that the ban on Ms Oncu from practising as a lawyer should be lifted.

Ms Oncu was suspended from practising after being charged.

Police accused her of attempting to delete footage that showed her husband and another man leaving her Blacktown home before the murder was committed.

Oncu strongly denied the allegations, and the trial was told that a technician may have deleted the footage.

CAN WE TALK (FOR NOT TOO LONG)

Director of Public Prosecutions Sally Dowling SC wants to talk — but not for too long, so keep it to a tight 15, please.

Perhaps in response to a recent workplace survey that found that the prosecuting troops at the Office of the DPP aren’t too happy, Ms Dowling has reached out for a series of “Chat with the Director Sessions”.

Sally Dowling SC has established Chat with the Director sessions at the DPP.

“Under this initiative, interested staff will be able to reach out to my executive assistant … and organise a time to have a 15 minute (max) chat with me about your role, your career, and the Office generally,” Ms Dowling wrote.

“I would like these conversations to be informal, productive and honest, and hope that all of you will consider lining up a chat under the initiative.”

Earlier this year, the ODPP’s “People Matter” employee survey, in which lawyers working at the state’s prosecuting authority shared their thoughts on the state of their workplace, showed putting bad guys in jail was becoming a grind.

Almost every category in the survey was worse compared to when it was taken in 2021.

The big finding was that only 27 per cent of the respondents to the survey said they did not feel burnt out by their workload.

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