Shane Drumgold has always maintained his conduct was proper and appropriate.
But that hasn’t stopped the integrity of the former Australian Capital Territory’s director of public prosecution from being publicly challenged on a number of occasions.
First, when an inquiry into Bruce Lehrmann’s prosecution was established in December 2022. Leading up to the report’s premature release, the Australian newspaper published photos of Drumgold in the driveway of his Canberra home, drinking a beer in the daytime.
The front page story included the headline, “Crown Lager or Drumgold Bitter. Prosecutor Calls Beer O’clock”.
Then, the report’s findings, released prematurely to selected media outlets, found “several serious findings of misconduct” against Drumgold.
Those findings of misconduct in Walter Sofronoff KC’s inquiry were then investigated by the ACT Bar Association after a complaint was made. Drumgold disputed the findings, but resigned.
But Drumgold, who has shied from the public spotlight since stepping down from the top legal job in Canberra, might finally be vindicated. On Tuesday, the ACT Bar Association dismissed complaints of misconduct against Drumgold that echoed the original complaints in the Sofronoff inquiry.
The announcement came months after a judicial review of Sofronoff’s board of inquiry found the chapters on Drumgold “gave rise to an impression of bias”.
So, how did we get here?
The beginnings
On 1 January 2019, Shane Drumgold took up the position of the ACT’s director of public prosecutions. About three months later, an event about 3km away from his office started the ripples that would rock his career.
The former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins claimed that, on 23 March 2019, her then colleague Bruce Lehrmann raped her on a couch after a late and boozy night out.
Since then, more than a dozen legal cases have been brought – including several involving Drumgold, who led the prosecution of Lehrmann.
The aftermath
While the story began with that night in March 2019, Drumgold’s personal legal woes began with a letter.
After Lehrmann’s 2022 criminal trial was aborted due to juror misconduct, Drumgold wrote to the ACT police chief, Neil Gaughan, criticising the conduct of Australian federal police officers.
He wrote there was “inappropriate interference” and pressure on him not to prosecute and that there should be a public inquiry into “both political and police conduct” in the case. The following year, Drumgold said he no longer held those views about a “political conspiracy”.
On 2 December 2022, Drumgold announced that the Lehrmann retrial would be discontinued, after he received medical reports about Higgins’ mental health.
Later that month, on 21 December 2022, the ACT chief minister, Andrew Barr, announced the establishment of an inquiry into Lehrmann’s prosecution to be headed by Walter Sofronoff KC. The board of inquiry – known as the Sofronoff inquiry – was “to ensure that the Territory’s framework for progressing criminal investigations and prosecutions is robust, fair and respects the rights of those involved”.
“This involves ensuring the Territory’s criminal justice entities work effectively together, and appropriately within their respective statutory frameworks. Specifically, the inquiry will examine the conduct of criminal justice agencies involved in the trial of R v Lehrmann,” a release about the inquiry said.
The report – which Sofronoff would go on to release prematurely to selected media outlets – found “several serious findings of misconduct” against Drumgold.
Drumgold disputed the findings, but resigned.
A blow against the Sofronoff inquiry findings
Shortly after his resignation, Drumgold filed for a judicial review of Sofronoff’s findings.
The judgment, handed down in March this year, found Sofronoff’s extensive communication with Janet Albrechtsen, a columnist at the Australian, gave rise to an impression of bias. A fair-minded observer might “reasonably have apprehended that Mr Sofronoff … might have been influenced by the views, held and publicly expressed by Ms Albrechtsen, concerning the conduct by the plaintiff of the prosecution of the criminal proceedings against Mr Lehrmann”.
It also found that Sofronoff’s finding of “grossly unethical conduct” during his cross-examination of the former Liberal senator Linda Reynolds was “legally unreasonable”.
The judge found Drumgold had not been afforded natural justice in allegations he had given a false statement about a freedom of information request for the aforementioned letter.
The AFP v Drumgold and the letter
In April this year, AFP officers brought a defamation action against Drumgold over the letter he sent to Gaughan and sought $1.42m in damages. They said that letter brought them into “public disrepute, odium, ridicule and contempt”.
The case was withdrawn, and the applicants had to pay Drumgold’s $12,500 legal costs.
Earlier, Reynolds launched legal action against the ACT government and Drumgold over allegations in the letter accusing her of “disturbing conduct” during the Lehrmann trial.
Reynolds was awarded $90,000 and received an apology from the ACT government in a compromise settlement.
The ACT Bar Association’s findings
On Tuesday, the ACT Bar Association dismissed complaints of misconduct against Drumgold that echoed the original complaints in the Sofronoff inquiry.
The association’s council had made a complaint alleging Drumgold had “engaged in professional misconduct or unsatisfactory professional conduct” on 11 grounds. It brought in independent senior counsel to investigate.
One of the grounds was withdrawn and the rest were dismissed on the basis there was “no reasonable likelihood” he would be found guilty.
One dispute was whether Drumgold had made a misleading statement over his dealings with the journalist Lisa Wilkinson, a potential witness for the prosecution in Lehrmann’s criminal trial, regarding her proposed Logies speech. Wilkinson said she had not been warned not to give the speech.
Drumgold said he had told her he could not advise her on the speech, but that the resultant publicity could give rise to an application to stay the case, which it did.
“On balance” the ACT Bar Associations’s external counsel was not satisfied that he intended to or knowingly misled the court.
Other complaints included his handling of the FoI request that revealed his letter to Gaughan, of an affidavit written by a junior colleague and of his treatment of Reynolds.
The counsel found that, on occasion, Drumgold had a lapse in judgment or due care while suffering stress, but that there was “no reasonable likelihood” he would be found guilty.
Drumgold said in a statement he had “always maintained that [his] conduct has been proper and appropriate”.
“The ACT Bar Association has found there is no evidence to support a finding that I engaged in either professional misconduct or unsatisfactory professional conduct in relation to any conduct surrounding the prosecution of Bruce Lehrmann,” he said.
Not the end of the story
Drumgold seems to be out of the legal woods for now. But it is not the end of the overall story.
Lehrmann has launched an appeal after a defamation trial judge found, on the balance of probabilities, that Lehrmann raped Higgins.
Reynolds has asked the National Anti-Corruption Commission to investigate the government’s $2.445m payout to Higgins.
And the ACT Integrity Commission is still investigating Sofronoff’s premature release of his report to two journalists, which it said may “constitute corrupt conduct”.
- additional reporting by Sarah Basford Canales
