A controversial Queensland magistrate has been rebuked for running a trial “infected by unfairness of the most extreme order” after he convicted a man in his absence despite being presented with a medical certificate.
The district court ruled that Stuart Shearer committed a “gross denial of justice” by refusing to allow defendant Adrian Laurent the chance to contest a speeding fine in the Gladstone magistrates court in October.
Judge Brad Farr, who set aside Shearer’s ruling, said Shearer’s statement that Laurent should front court if he was well enough to attend a medical centre was “illogical to the point of being nonsensical”.
Even police supported the overturning of Shearer’s ruling, the latest legal misstep by a magistrate dubbed “Judge Dread” by a newspaper because of his reputation for tough treatment of offenders.
Guardian Australia revealed in April that Shearer had left his country court circuit early after being accused of improperly influencing a case by contacting a witness due to appear before him.
Shearer was one of a number of contentious judicial appointments made by the former Newman government from the Brisbane barristers chambers that produced chief justice Tim Carmody.
Laurent, who was booked for speeding on a highway near Gladstone in 2013, sought to contest the fine on the grounds of an “extraordinary emergency”.
He was due to appear before Shearer on 2 October but obtained a medical certificate stating he was “unfit and unwell” on the day of the hearing and the previous day.
Shearer, without viewing the medical certificate, rejected a request by solicitor Cassandra Ditchfield to adjourn the trial because of Laurent’s ill health. He then refused Ditchfield’s application to stand the matter down so she could obtain a medical certificate with more detail, saying this could take “the entire day”.
Shearer stated that “if the appellant was well enough to attend a medical centre, then he was well enough to appear in court,” Farr said in his judgment.
The magistrate then refused Ditchfield’s final request to allow her to contact her client to see if there was any way he could attend the hearing.
Farr noted that Shearer “indicated that he intended to deal with the matter in ‘one minute’ [whereas] in fact, the matter commenced three minutes later”.
Shearer proceeded to trial and then directly to sentencing Laurent “without an opportunity being given for submissions to be made in mitigation of penalty”, Farr said.
Shearer convicted Laurent and fined him $700.
Farr overturned the conviction on appeal by Laurent, saying Shearer had denied him “his right to an opportunity to present [a] defence”.
The judge noted that even police in written submissions “conceded that the ground of appeal is a good one and that the appeal should be successful”.
Farr took exception to Shearer’s “remarkable contention” that Laurent was well enough to attend court by virtue of attending a medical centre.
“Based on that logic, no employee would ever be entitled to a sick day if they consulted a doctor on the day of their illness,” he said.
Farr ruled that “allowing the trial to proceed in these circumstances and then proceeding to sentence without receipt of any submissions constitutes a gross denial of natural justice, and the trial was infected by unfairness of the most extreme order”. He ordered the case back to the Gladstone magistrates court for “rehearing before a different magistrate”.
Earlier this year, Shearer was forced to withdraw from a case involving an Indigenous defendant whose lawyers sought to change a guilty plea. The magistrate allegedly phoned a witness, prompting the lawyers to complain to the state’s chief magistrate, Ray Rinaudo, who repeatedly spoke and gave “advice” to Shearer.
Shearer then finished his stint in Emerald, central Queensland, several months early and is now hearing matters in Brisbane because of what Rinaudo has described as “an ongoing medical issue”.
Appointed in 2012 by former attorney general Jarrod Bleijie, Shearer worked in John Jerrard chambers alongside the future chief justice Carmody, future magistrate Aaron Simpson, whose wife was a Bleijie staffer, and a former Bleijie adviser, Ryan Haddrick.
That run of appointments earned it the nickname “the magical chambers” in the Brisbane legal scene.
In March the Courier-Mail reported that Shearer’s tough stance towards offenders meant “defence lawyers loathe him but police love him”.
