The ACT's former top prosecutor has successfully challenged findings made by an inquiry on Bruce Lehrmann's trial.
The conduct of a former judge who headed an inquiry into Lehrmann's rape trial gave rise to "a reasonable intention of bias", a court heard today.
In 2023, former Queensland judge Walter Sofronoff was tasked with examining the role of police and prosecutors in relation to the high-profile trial.
Though the inquiry's final report vindicated investigating officers, it found the Director of Public Prosecutions Shane Drumgold had engaged in malpractice and unethical conduct.
Drumgold launched legal action in August to invalidate the adverse findings against him, with his lawyers claiming Sofronoff's communications with The Australian's columnist Janet Albrechsten had "infected" him with bias.
Today, Justice Stephen Kaye noted that Sofronoff's behaviour "gave rise to a reasonable intention of bias".
"The communications that took place ... was such that a fair-minded observer might reasonably have apprehended that (Sofronoff) might have been influenced by the views held and publicly expressed by Ms Albrechtsen," he told the ACT Supreme Court.
Kaye upheld seven of the eight inquiry findings Drumgold disagreed with, but said its accusations that the prosecutor had engaged in "grossly unethical conduct" during the cross-examination of Senator Linda Reynolds was "legally unreasonable".
The inquiry was launched after police and prosecutors made claims about each other's conduct during the trial of former political staffer Lehrmann.
In 2019, Lehrmann was accused of raping his then-colleague Brittany Higgins inside the Parliament House office of Reynolds.
But his 2022 ACT Supreme Court trial was abandoned due to jury misconduct and a retrial dismissed over concerns about Higgins' health, leaving no findings against him.
Lehrmann has always denied the allegation.
Drumgold resigned in August after the release of Sofronoff's report.
On Friday, the ACT government apologised and paid former defence minister Reynolds $90,000 after Drumgold accused the senator of "disturbing" conduct in a letter of complaint to the Australian Federal Police.
Support is available from the National Sexual Assault, Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service at 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732).
