The barrister who defended former Liberal staffer Bruce Lehrmann during his rape trial said he was concerned ACT top prosecutor Shane Drumgold aligned himself with his client’s accuser,Brittany Higgins.
Steven Whybrow,SC,told the inquiry into the case that Drumgold,the territory’s Director of Public Prosecutions,took a “pejorative stab” at Lehrmann when Drumgold said he still believed there were reasonable prospects of conviction during his announcement of abandoning a retrial.
Drumgold’s barrister,Mark Tedeschi,KC,suggested to Whybrow that Drumgold had a great degree of sympathy for Higgins,to which Whybrow replied,“I was concerned that he had aligned himself with Ms Higgins”.
Tedeschi then said,“Each of you had concerns for the party that you were most closely associated with”.When Tedeschi asked Whybrow if he believed some senior investigators were resentful of Drumgold,Whybrow said,“My impression was it was Mr Drumgold who was hostile towards the police”.
Whybrow also said Drumgold had referred to police as “boofheads” in a private exchange with him during the trial and said their evidence wasn’t admissible.
“I thought it was an outburst by the director,” he said.
Tedeschi asked Whybrow whether he would agree he’d been involved in some cases where the credibility issues affecting the complainant had been “much more cogent” than those affecting Higgins.
Whybrow responded:“It’s hard to think of any cases where there were so many things that the complainant had said which were able to be demonstrated to be wrong,or inconsistent,or sometimes said knowing they were wrong but for a reason.”