Chris Dawson to stand trial for murder of wife Lynette

After an appeal was dismissed, Chris Dawson will now stand trial for the murder of his wife Lynette in Sydney nearly 40 years ago.

Chris Dawson leaves Supreme Court in Sydney last year. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Jeremy Piper

Chris Dawson has been committed to stand trial for the murder of his wife Lynette on Sydney’s northern beaches nearly 40 years ago, after the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal rejected an application aimed at permanently halting the proceedings over concerns that “extensive pre-trial publicity” would lead to an unfair trial.

Mr Dawson, 72, was arrested in December 2018 over the alleged murder of his first wife, Lynette Dawson, who vanished from the couple’s Bayview home on Sydney’s northern beaches in January 1982. Despite repeated investigations spanning more than three decades, she has never been found and police have never recovered a body.

Lynette Dawson.

The former high school PE teacher and ex-rugby league star was charged with murder in 2018 after the publication of a popular podcast, which cannot be named for legal reasons, became a “key issue” at a permanent stay application in the NSW Supreme Court last year.

In a decision published on Friday, three Court of Appeal judges dismissed Mr Dawson’s appeal, saying the decision to grant a permanent stay of proceedings was “reserved for the most extreme cases, where there is nothing that a trial judge can do during the trial to relieve against the unfairness”.

NSW Chief Justice Thomas Bathurst and Justices Christine Adamson and Geoffrey Bellew found the “extensive pre-trial publicity” faced by Mr Dawson was not enough to grant a permanent stay of proceedings. A permanent stay would mean Mr Dawson’s murder charge would not have proceeded to trial.

“A key issue in the appeal related to extensive pre-trial publicity, including in the form of a podcast, which was adverse to Mr Dawson,” a judgment summary reads.

But the court found that the judge who rejected Mr Dawson’s application for a permanent stay of proceedings last year had not “failed” to take into account the prejudice caused by the pre-trial publicity.

While the appeal court agreed with Justice Elizabeth Fullerton that the prejudice to Mr Dawson caused by the publicity and the subsequent delay in the case had been “very serious”, they found that “such prejudice” was able to be remedied or sufficiently ameliorated by careful directions which the judge at the trial would give to the jury.

“Another issue concerned the lengthy delay which has occurred in the bringing of the prosecution,” the judges said.

As well, Chief Justice Bathurst noted that a fair trial was not “necessarily a perfect trial”. He found that while fairness to the accused was “one consideration”, so too was the public interest.

In the two-page judgment summary on Friday, he said it was in the public interest to bring “those charged with serious criminal offences to trial”.

The court, in dismissing the appeal, found Justice Fullerton applied the “correct test” and did not fail to take into account relevant considerations in her judgment. The court also found that it was not unreasonable for Justice Fullerton to refuse to grant a permanent stay, as that conclusion had been “open to Her Honour”.

Mr Dawson was initially committed to stand trial in the NSW Supreme Court in February last year, after he was committed by Magistrate Jacqueline Trad in the Downing Centre Local Court. The court’s full reasons have been “temporarily restricted” in the interests of justice, to ensure Mr Dawson can receive a fair trial.

Shortly after his arrest, Mr Dawson was granted bail on strict conditions, which included a $1.5m bail surety on his home.

He is scheduled to face trial this year.