PROSECUTORS have dropped the charges against a former bikie once accused of shooting a rival in the upper thigh during a dispute at Waratah in 2017.
Harley Charles Austin, 39, had pleaded not guilty to a string of firearm and assault charges and was expected to face a trial in Sydney's Downing Centre District Court starting on Monday.
But on Thursday, he was re-arraigned and pleaded guilty to four separate assault charges after prosecutors said there would be no further proceedings on all charges relating to the shooting at Waratah in June, 2017.
Austin, who was granted strict conditional bail last year after spending more than five years behind bars in New Zealand and Australia, will be sentenced in June and prosecutors have already said he is unlikely to be sent back to jail.
In the days after the assaults, Austin boarded a flight to Auckland and "fled the jurisdiction", prosecutors said. But by October, 2017, he had been arrested in New Zealand for conspiring to damage property by fire.
He was later jailed for a maximum of four years and nine months, with a non-parole period of two years.
But after his non-parole period expired in October, 2019, Austin was denied parole at least 10 times and was left languishing in jail, his lawyers told the Newcastle Herald in 2022.
Despite his lawyers submitting to extradition and petitioning the New Zealand government to fast track his deportation to Australia to face the shooting charges, Austin remained behind bars, a situation his lawyers said was a breach of his human rights.
It appeared the New Zealand parole board wouldn't release Austin while he had an active extradition warrant.
But the warrant, which was granted in September 2020, did not seem to be a priority for Australian authorities and by March 2022, before authorities finally acted to extradite Austin to NSW, he was getting close to serving his entire sentence - four years and nine months - behind bars in New Zealand.
After he was extradited and formally charged over the shooting, Austin spent another 15 months behind bars in NSW before he was granted bail in 2023 because his trial was going to be delayed by another year.
The DPP appealed the decision to grant Austin bail to the NSW Supreme Court, but it was refused.
Prosecutors outlined the long history of the case on Thursday and said the time Austin had served in New Zealand, including while he should have been on parole, would be a relevant factor for the sentencing judge to take into account.
