By Erin Pearson and Chris Vedelago
Director of Public Prosecutions Kerri Judd, KC, has been appointed Victoria’s newest Supreme Court judge.
In an email seen by The Age, Supreme Court Chief Justice Anne Ferguson acknowledged Judd’s appointment, effective immediately.
Victorian Director of Public Prosecutions Kerri Judd, KC.Credit: Paul Jeffers
Judd was appointed to the director’s role at the Office of Public Prosecutions (OPP) in March 2018, making her the first woman to hold the position in Victoria, after being admitted to practise law in 1989.
She has been supported in the role by chief Crown prosecutor Brendan Kissane, KC, who will be promoted to the position of director.
An OPP spokesperson said Judd would take to the court more than 30 years’ legal experience as a lawyer who had led or advised on some of the state’s most high-profile criminal matters.
Those include the prosecutions of Peter Dupas, George Pell and James Gargasoulas, as well as appearing for the OPP in Faruk Orman’s legal challenge in the Victorian Court of Appeal, where the appeals judges commended Judd for her “conspicuous fairness” as a prosecutor.
Brendan Kissane, KC (left), will replace Judd as Victoria’s director of public prosecutions.Credit: Jason South
Judd has also acted in a number of significant inquiries and commissions, including the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, and the Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission.
Judd’s appointment follows the retirement of Elizabeth Hollingworth after more than 20 years on the bench.
Kissane said: “Her appointment represents a wonderful gain for the bench and public confidence in the administration of justice, although a corresponding loss for our office, which will be keenly felt.”
In her farewell note to OPP colleagues, Judd said she left with mixed feelings of sadness and joy, and thanked her colleagues for their hard work and unswerving commitment to the organisation.
“The reality is, working for the Office of Public Prosecutions was challenging, and as director, those challenges had found daily expression in the familiar drumbeat of difficult decisions,” she wrote.
“I hope and trust you know that every decision I’ve made as DPP, and indeed as acting chief Crown prosecutor and senior Crown prosecutor before that, was arrived at without ever losing sight of what our distinct role demands – which is not to win for winning’s sake, but rather to present every case with scrupulous fairness.
“We can pull in different directions, assess the weight of evidence differently. Indeed, the very finest of legal minds do not always agree, and sometimes it’s not possible to right the gap between what is objectively the correct decision in a case and public opinion that bends in the opposing direction.”
This year, Judd inflamed tensions with some members of the state’s judiciary when she lodged a complaint against a second judge in as many months, and issued a letter warning two senior lawyers about their professional responsibilities.
Judd outside the Supreme Court in 2018 while prosecuting James Gargasoulas’ murder trial.Credit: Justin McManus
One of those judges – the Supreme Court’s Lex Lasry – resigned in protest over criticism of his handling of the complaints process around the trucking company boss charged over the deaths of four police officers on the Eastern Freeway.
On Tuesday, Lasry rejected the accusations that his conduct was unbecoming.
“I totally reject the suggestion that any conduct of mine was ‘unbecoming’, in particular to the extent that it relates to me the implication in her letter that the complaint she made against me was ‘guard[ing] those strengths and seeking accountability for conduct that [fell] short of what we know the community expects and what we know to be right’,” Lasry said after Judd’s announcement.
“There was nothing about what I did or said that fell short of what was right or what the community expects. Judges are expected to be rigorous and robust in the management of cases.”
In the case of County Court judge Geoff Chettle, Judd made an application during a sex crimes trial asking the judge to recuse himself on the basis he had made “grim” observations about the quality of the prosecution case that suggested he was biased.
Judd also had a public quarrel with special investigator and former judge Geoffrey Nettle over whether police officers should face charges over the Lawyer X scandal.
In her farewell note to OPP staffers, Judd thanked her colleagues who “endured – with dignity – the public scrutiny” after she had made those two formal complaints.
“I expressed opposition to what I considered behaviour unbecoming of the bench,” she wrote.
“An argument can be made, of course, that two complaints out of the many tens of thousands of matters that have come before our office in my time as director is very few.
“If anything, it casts the enviable strengths of our legal institutions into sharp relief.”
Judd said she believed that “truly honouring” legal institutions required more than mere words that celebrate such strengths.
“It requires deeds, action – a resolve to jealously guard those strengths and seek accountability for conduct that falls short of what we know the community expects and what we know to be right,” she said.
“I leave you in the steady hands of Brendan [Kissane], who’s already demonstrated all that’s required to become the finest of DPPs, as well as the incomparable Diana Piekusis, KC, who fittingly makes history today as the first woman in Victoria appointed to the office of chief Crown prosecutor.”
Shadow attorney-general Michael O’Brien said the OPP had weathered a number of significant controversies under Judd’s leadership, including a failure to lay charges over the Lawyer X scandal and the Pell miscarriage of justice.
He said the appointment Kissane as the new director presented an opportunity for fresh leadership for an office that is critical to the Victorian justice system.
“Nonetheless, I congratulate Ms Judd on her appointment to the Supreme Court; a court where she raised a complaint which led to the early retirement of Justice Lasry,” O’Brien said.
Attorney-General Jaclyn Symes also congratulated Judd on her appointment to the Supreme Court, and Kissane and Piekusis on their new roles.
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