Chris Dawson trial: Seven-minute shave to help defence save face

Something inexplicable happened late on Tuesday in the epic murder trial of Christopher ­Michael Dawson.

Chris Dawson leaving the Supreme Court in Sydney on Tuesday. Picture NCA Newswire / Gaye Gerard

Something inexplicable happened late on Tuesday in the epic murder trial of Christopher ­Michael Dawson.

At precisely 3.23pm, judge Ian Harrison pulled the pin for the day, a full seven minutes before the usual court adjournment schedule.

I know it’s a little early, he said. Adjourned to 9.30am tomorrow.

This was a first in a trial that began in autumn and has pushed forward almost nine weeks into wet and chilly winter.

And it was out of character for this judge, a man with, to the casual observer, a punctilious air who is a stickler for efficiency. To up stumps with several minutes worth of gas in the tank was noticeable, but Justice Harrison had a good reason for the early mark, which we’ll come to.

The day itself began with Crown Prosecutor Craig Everson SC continuing his final submission; if his narrative was a thriller, it built in tension throughout the morning.

The crown took us through the early infatuation schoolteacher Dawson had with his student JC, and the impact that relationship had on his marriage to Lyn Dawson in the final months of 1981.

The court heard of Dawson and JC’s sexual relationship, the pair’s aborted trip to Queensland just before Christmas Day and Lyn’s lingering doubts about her relationship and confusion at her husband’s almost constant anger.

During one brief discussion with Justice Harrison, Everson said he had in fact “cut to the chase” on his summary of a situation, to which His Honour replied: “I like … that.”

Perhaps deferring to the judge’s predilection for order, Everson broke his summing up into chapters, and broke down those chapters even further into sub-points. This gesture to economy seemed to loosen Justice Harrison’s humour valve, glimpsed sporadically during the trial. It is a formidable valve. Even beneath horsehair, he has a loose resemblance to great British film comic Charles Hawtrey (perhaps more Hawtrey as Percy Thorne in The Ghost of St Michael’s than as Private James Widdle in Carry On Up the Khyber).

Comedy, like the work of any good jurist, is also about timing, and Justice Harrison treated the public gallery to an array of witticisms without disrespecting the seriousness of the trial.

At 1.58pm, Everson stated: A true verdict according to the evidence is guilty. And that was it, the crown case.

Defence barrister Pauline David stood to open her final submission with a bang. Chris Dawson did not kill Lynette Dawson. Moreover, he didn’t have a ­motive to kill her.

She said after 30 years of investigations in this case, everybody had looked at everything Chris Dawson had ever said and done through the prism of him being guilty. “He has never been afforded the presumption of innocence,” she told the court.

It was a strong start, yet very soon her submission started to wobble, abandoning in part a logical sequence, its disparate elements having to be guided back into play by Justice Harrison.

In arguing why nurse and mother of two Lyn walked away from her marriage and two young daughters, David invoked a string of character traits in Lyn that left the public gallery huffing and puffing in disagreement.

Was this proof in point of David’s assertion that the accused had only ever been viewed through a prism of guilt? Or was it a narrative that had such a tin ear to true emotion that it, to borrow a phrase used by Everson earlier in the week, “placed an incredible strain on human experience”?

After 3pm, David discussed the possibility of Lyn disappearing from home at the encouragement of religious groups. With titters from the gallery in play, the moment was turned Kafkaesque.

It was then that Justice Harrison adjourned proceedings, allowing David time to think over the religious theory overnight. Thus the 3.23pm finishing time.

After 42 days at trial, those shaved seven minutes might not have amounted to much – but on the back of a strange afternoon, they were chasmic.