Alleged prosecutor misconduct in the Bruce Lehrmann rape trial has drawn attention to potentially similar injustices across Australia, including three Gympie region cases.
The high profile Canberra case has led to explosive allegations against ACT chief prosecutor Shane Drumgold.
The three close-to-home Gympie examples indicate concerns not confined to the ACT, nor to higher courts, nor to sex offences – and the victims of injustice are obviously not always male.
They involve Gympie gun dealer Ron Owen, Rainbow Beach dingo conservationist Jennifer Parkhurst and Aboriginal land rights protester Diane Djaki Widjung (charged as Diane Redden-King).
As I watched these cases unfold, I was beyond disappointed at what I believe were prejudicial media releases, misleadingly shortened video evidence, seized property lost or damaged and important evidence withheld from the defence.
Ron Owen was raided at his McMahon Rd gun shop and threatened with the loss of his armorer’s licence and business the day after he succeeded in legal action against the then police commissioner.
Jennifer Parkhurst was prosecuted by the Environment Department after promoting a view the authorities claimed, Soviet style, was dangerous. Seized property needed for a proper defence was returned only after the trial, much of it in a damaged condition.
Diane Redden-King was charged over an invasion of Gympie Regional Council offices, but video proving her innocence disappeared from her phone while it was in prosecution custody, later only partly (but tellingly) recovered by her lawyers.
But the Gympie cases did not happen in a capital city.
So nobody cared.
