The ACT’s top prosecutor, Shane Drumgold, SC, has been accused by an Australian Federal Police assistant commissioner of acting outside his authority after allegedly directing a junior officer to prepare a murder charge against a suspect last year.
The Director of Public Prosecutions, who is central to an inquiry into the handling of the Bruce Lehrmann rape trial, is on leave from his role. The inquiry’s head, Walter Sofronoff, KC, will deliver his findings in a fortnight’s time.
ACT top prosecutor Shane Drumgold, SC, allegedly directed a junior police officer to lay a murder charge last year.Credit: Rhett Wyman
In a published statement by AFP assistant commissioner Peter Crozier, previously a deputy police chief of the territory, Drumgold allegedly wrote to an AFP senior constable, directing a murder charge be laid.
“After reviewing the relevant witness accounts, CCTV, photographs, and receiving advice of the cause of death, I am satisfied that there is a reasonable prospect of conviction for the offence of murder ... and direct that a charge be prepared,” Crozier quoted a May 3, 2022 email as saying.
Crozier said in his statement, recently released by the inquiry, that while he didn’t doubt the charge should be laid, “it was outside the DPP’s authority, [and] it undermined the independence of the police officer’s decision to charge”.
“I was also concerned about direct contact between the DPP personally and a junior police officer: I viewed it as unusual,” he said, adding it was the equivalent of a police chief contacting a junior prosecutor.
Drumgold’s barrister in the inquiry, Mark Tedeschi, KC, declined to comment. A spokesperson for the ACT’s Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions said it would be inappropriate to comment on any matter currently in front of the inquiry.
In August 2021, ACT Policing detectives charged Lehrmann, a former Coalition staffer, with sexually assaulting his former colleague Brittany Higgins, in the ministerial office of their then-boss, Liberal senator Linda Reynolds, in March 2019.
Lehrmann pleaded not guilty to the charge and the trial was aborted due to juror misconduct in October last year, before Drumgold dropped the case because of Higgins’ mental health. Lehrmann has maintained his innocence.
A public fallout between Drumgold and police led to the ACT government to call an inquiry into authorities’ handling of the case, putting the conduct of the DPP and detectives under national scrutiny earlier this year, with the findings due to be handed down on July 31.
The inquiry heard police believed Drumgold was dismissive of their concerns regarding the case, and Higgins’ evidence, while Drumgold said he encountered passionate opposition from investigators, who he believed were trying to undermine the trial.
It has also been alleged that Drumgold pondered circumventing police in 2021 to charge Lehrmann himself amid concerns over delays in the investigation. The DPP has ex-officio powers to lay a charge if the police don’t, although it is rarely used.
According to the statement of ACT Victims of Crime Commissioner Heidi Yates to the inquiry, Drumgold allegedly told her at a Canberra cafe he was thinking of using his power to go around ACT detectives more than a month before the charge was laid.
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