The jury has begun deliberating in the trial of Bruce Lehrmann, who is accused of raping fellow political staffer and colleague Brittany Higgins in parliament house in the early hours of 23 March 2019.
Chief justice Lucy McCallum summed up the case and concluded her directions to the jury on Wednesday afternoon, instructing them on how they should approach their task of weighing up the almost three weeks of evidence heard in the ACT supreme court.
She urged the jury to ignore the significant media interest in the trial and reminded them they were not “answerable in this trial to public opinion”.
“You will have seen the number of journalists in the courtroom each day,” McCallum said. “They’re practically hanging from the rafters.”
She told jurors their task was to weigh up the evidence, using their common sense and life experience, something she described as the “great strength of the jury system”.
They must then decide whether the prosecution has proven that Lehrmann raped Higgins beyond reasonable doubt.
Jurors, McCallum said, were protected by anonymity and offences against the public revelation of any aspect of their deliberations.
“To put it in the vernacular: what goes in the jury room stays in the jury room,” she said.
A ballot was used to remove four of the 16 jurors who have sat through the entirety of the trial at the end of McCallum’s summing up.
The remaining 12 jurors were told they would need to return a unanimous verdict.
The jury heard closing submissions from both prosecutor Shane Drumgold SC and Lehrmann’s counsel, Steven Whybrow, on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Drumgold said that Lehrmann had taken Higgins back to parliament after a night of drinking in Canberra bars because it was the best place to get her alone. He described Higgins as vulnerable and heavily intoxicated.
The prosecution say Lehrmann then raped Higgins on the couch opposite the desk of their boss, then defence industry minister Linda Reynolds, before leaving the building in haste, leaving Higgins in the room alone.
She was found naked later that morning by a parliament security guard, who had been sent in for a welfare check after Lehrmann’s departure.
The prosecution has pointed to Higgins numerous complaints in supporting her allegation, made to friends, colleagues, family and police in the days and months after the alleged rape.
It says the complaints were consistent and that Higgins “never faltered”, despite the “strong political forces” that surrounded her.
McCallum advised the jury how they could use such evidence, known as complaint evidence. She said the fact that an allegation has been repeated multiple times did not make it any more reliable. It was also not independent evidence that the alleged rape occurred, because the source was still ultimately Higgins.
But the judge said it could be used to assess Higgins’ consistency and credibility.
“A false and inaccurate statement doesn’t become more reliable by being repeated. That said, evidence of complaint is capable of providing some support for the crown’s case,” she said.
“We search for consistency, members of the jury, as a badge of honesty. You might consider whether Higgins was consistent in the allegation that she had been sexually assaulted, even though her circumstances changed.”
Drumgold has also accused Lehrmann of lying and giving multiple accounts of why he went back to parliament with Higgins after 1.30am.
He initially told parliament security he was there to pick up documents, before telling his boss, chief of staff Fiona Brown, he was there to drink whisky. He later told police he was there to pick up keys and work on some question time briefs.
There was evidence that Lehrmann found Higgins attractive and had attempted to kiss her on a prior occasion, the court heard.
“We can comfortably be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt of what Brittany Higgins said occurred, just as she said it did,” Drumgold said.
Lehrmann’s defence says that there was no intercourse – either consensual or non-consensual – after Higgins and Lehrmann went back to parliament.
He has pleaded not guilty to a charge of sexual intercourse without consent.
Earlier, Whybrow accused Higgins of fabricating the allegations after being found in the office naked. He said Higgins was “humiliated” and feared for her dream job.
Lehrmann did not give evidence during the criminal trial, though he did speak to the police in 2021, after the allegations were made public.
McCallum reminded the jury that he was not obliged to give evidence at trial and had the right to silence.
“Although an accused person is entitled to give or call evidence in a criminal trial, there is no obligation on him to do so,” she said. “He is presumed to be innocent until you have been satisfied beyond reasonable doubt by the evidence led by the prosecutor that he is guilty of the offence charged.”
“I direct you that the accused’s decision not to give evidence cannot be used against him in any way during your deliberations.”
The defence focused its closing submissions on attacking Higgins’s credibility.
It said she had “made up” evidence and had been caught out doing so. That included evidence about the dress she said she wore that night, which she said she stored under her bed for six months, unused and unwashed.
When a photo of her emerged wearing the dress at a birthday event for Reynolds’, she conceded that she had worn it and washed it once.
Whybrow also pointed to Higgins’s claim she had been to a doctor in Canberra’s south in the weeks after the alleged rape. There was no evidence that she had done so.
It also raised doubts about a photo showing bruising on Higgins’ leg, which she said was taken after the alleged rape. The court heard there was no trace of the photo on Higgins’s phone prior to 2021 and that she had not mentioned any bruising to police in 2019.
“She’s been caught out,” Whybrow said. “Other people have come along and checked the receipts and there’s no evidence of this.”
The defence alleged Higgins initially paused her complaint with police in 2019 when she realised her job was safe, before a book deal with a $325,000 advance in 2021 motivated her to re-instigate it.
Whybrow said he didn’t need to prove why Higgins had made a false complaint, reminding the jury that Lehrmann was presumed innocent.
