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A police hard drive in Bruce Lehrmann’s Queensland rape case was destroyed, his lawyer has claimed, as she argued setting a date for trial was premature.
Lehrmann, 30, is expected to face trial over allegations he raped a woman he met on a drug-fuelled night in 2021 at a nightclub in Toowoomba, west of Brisbane.
The former federal Liberal Party staffer is expected to fight the charges, and his legal team are yet to decide whether to ask for a judge-alone trial.
Bruce Lehrmann was committed to stand trial last year. Credit: Dan Peled
In a hearing on Thursday, his lawyer Zali Burrows told the Toowoomba District Court it would be premature for a trial date to be set down.
She said Lehrmann was only indicted in December last year, and the defence team was still actively seeking disclosure of material.
One witness was contacted by police for the first time nearly four years after the event, she said.
Burrows said it was only in April this year that the complainant was shown CCTV footage from the night she met Lehrmann “in order for her to remember things and ... she’s come up with a new invention that was not in her original statement”.
Burrows also said the prosecution was giving her material in a piecemeal fashion, with parts redacted and missing.
The court heard there was an application to stay the proceedings because of the destruction of a police hard drive containing full briefs of evidence, copies of witness statements and video and digital recordings.
“The officer in charge of this investigation has lost material that was stored on a personal hard drive … because she claimed that a hard drive malfunctioned for unknown reasons,” Burrows said.
“Defence has sought access to that hard drive for an independent interrogation by our own experts, but we’re told that the hard drive has now been destroyed.”
Burrows also argued the trial could not be set because further applications may arise. She had previously sent a subpoena to the Queensland Police Commissioner regarding evidence.
Representing the commissioner on Thursday, barrister Michael Bonasia said most of the subpoena would be answered in coming weeks. However, Bonasia said he may argue possible claims of legal professional privilege or public interest immunity in relation to some evidence.
Last week, Burrows suffered a legal setback after abandoning part of their application to have his rape case thrown out.
Part of the application sought a declaration that recordings of phone calls between Lehrmann’s previous lawyers and Queensland police were illegally obtained.
Burrows last week told the court that it would be an “unfair tactical advantage” for a police officer to record a conversation with a lawyer, if the lawyer inadvertently breached the client’s privilege.
Ultimately, Burrows accepted that the legal privilege would still remain, and confirmed she was not asserting the previous lawyers had disclosed anything legally privileged to police.
The remainder of the application remains before the court, and Lehrmann’s case will be heard again on August 28.
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