Melbourne crime: Barrister Colin Lovitt sheds light on defendants he represented
CRIMINAL barrister Colin Lovitt has represented the defendants in some of Melbourne’s most high-profile murders. Here, he sheds some light on several of them.
Law & Order
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HOW can you defend someone for murder when you know they’re guilty?
It’s the question COLIN LOVITT was asked at least once a day when someone clued in to the fact he was a criminal barrister.
The esteemed QC says it is a question of ethics. He reveals all the answers in a book he is writing about the cases that shaped his illustrious career and made the recently retired silk a household name.
Lovitt says people think of him as a “hardened bare-knuckled barrister”. Former Carlton Football Club president and boardroom bare-knuckler JOHN ELLIOTT calls him “Barrister”. Carlton joker PERCY JONES calls the longtime Blues fan “The Embarrister”.
“People think I’m a really tough bloke,” he tells Page 13.
“Working about 200 murder trials will do that. It’s all been an act, deep down I’m a pussycat.”
He knows how to put on a show.
Lovitt once gave client and tough-as-nails crook MARK “CHOPPER” READ, a yank on what was left of his ears for getting lippy. Chopper had a Pentridge Prison inmate slice them off so he could get out of maximum security.
“I had my wig and gown on and was in the cells after the verdict ... It was a Friday night and I’d had a few drinks,” Lovitt chuckles.
“I pulled his earlobes, that was the only part of his ears that was left. I turned and ran and I heard a roar of laughter behind me. For all his blather and bravado, he was wimpish when it came to going to court, and always pleaded guilty.”
Lovitt had got him off the murder charge, the first time Read had ever pleaded not guilty.
He describes plenty of the book’s cases as having “a sting in the tail”.
But maybe Lovitt does have a bit of the pussycat in him. He tears up when describing a particularly difficult attempted murder case and ends the chapter writing “f---ing bastards”.
Lovitt has dropped a few clues about infamous gangster LES KANE’s murder.
“It was a fascinating case from start to finish and the biggest underworld murder trial of the ’70s.”
Then there is the case of murdered Moe toddler JAIDYN LESKIE, which shocked and saddened the community.
“Frankly, there were trials which I thought were evidentially more challenging,” he says.
“I didn’t think the case against GREG DOMASZEWICZ was that strong.
“Everyone thinks that this trial is the case I will write about. But relatives and witnesses were emotionally damaged by the child’s death and its aftermath.
“It is still too early, in my view, for a lawyer in the case to talk publicly about the issues.
“For many of the main witnesses — the child’s parents, the accused — the nerves are still too raw.
“I’m prepared to write about some issues around it. But it doesn’t get to the heart of whether he was guilty or not. One day I might.”
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Gypsy Joker sergeant-at-arms GRAEME SLATER was another high-profile client.
Slater was charged with, and ultimately acquitted of, the murders of former Perth CIB chief DON HANCOCK and his bookie mate LOU LEWIS, killed in a car bombing outside the retired police detective’s house.
Lovitt said he grew tired of practising as a barrister.
“I thought 45 years was enough and always planned to retire when
I turned 70,” he says.
But now we can get the untold stories of what it was like to tweak a few judges’ tails. “A lawyer’s place is on his feet and not on his knees. But I admit there were times when I was a little cheeky,” he says.
The book is due out in a year or so.
Until then the jury is out on The Barrister’s greatest cases.
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