Worst own goal
I blogged on this a while back, but now we have an outcome that is staggering.
The background is in Australia a former Liberal staffer accused another staffer of raping her. It became very political, with allegations Ministers covered up or were not sympathetic and then then Labor Opposition attacked over it.
It eventually went to trial and was a hung jury. The ACT Director of Public Prosecutions, Shane Drumgold, was so outraged by what he saw as Police reluctance to charge and political interference by (then) Ministers he demanded a public inquiry. He got one, headed up by the former President of the Queensland Court of Appeal.
The inquiry has concluded and The Australian reports:
ACT chief prosecutor Shane Drumgold knowingly lied to the Supreme Court, engaged in serious malpractice and grossly unethical conduct, “preyed on a junior lawyer’s inexperience”, betrayed that junior lawyer who trusted him, and treated criminal litigation as “a poker game in which a prosecutor can hide the cards,” the Sofronoff Inquiry has found.
In findings that are certain to end Mr Drumgold’s career as ACT Director of Public Prosecutions and may lead to criminal prosecution against him for perverting the course of justice, inquiry head Walter Sofronoff KC ruled that every one of the allegations made by Mr Drumgold that sparked the inquiry was baseless.
This is a damning damning finding, and again it comes from an inquiry Drumgold himself insisted on.
“The result has been a public inquiry, which was not justified by any of his allegations, that has caused lasting pain to many people and which has demonstrated his allegations to be not just incorrect, but wholly false and without any rational basis,” Mr Sofronoff concluded.
It gets worse:
In one of many particularly pointed findings, he said he preferred the evidence of TV presenter Lisa Wilkinson and prosecutor Skye Jerome over Mr Drumgold.
“I do not believe any part of Mr Drumgold’s purported recollection unless it is consistent with the recollection of those witnesses,” he said.
The judicial equivalent of liar, liar pants on fire.
Drumgold will be sacked soon. He may even be disbarred or prosecuted. All due to his own hubris that he wanted to get a conviction in an iconic prosecution and failed.
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