The former judge who presided over an inquiry into former Liberal staffer Bruce Lehrmann’s prosecution gave a draft of his report to a journalist at The Australian before it was delivered to the ACT government, and she texted back that she “loved the section … on presumption of innocence”.
A cache of documents released by the ACT Supreme Court this week reveal the extent of the communications between Walter Sofronoff, KC, and Janet Albrechtsen, a columnist at the News Corp masthead.
Journalist Janet Albrechtsen and Walter Sofronoff, KC.Credit: Edwina Pickles, Robert Shakespeare
In December 2022, the ACT government launched an inquiry into the conduct of criminal justice agencies involved in Lehrmann’s ultimately aborted prosecution for the alleged rape of his former colleague Brittany Higgins in Parliament House. The inquiry was headed by Sofronoff.
Lehrmann has always maintained his innocence. His criminal trial in 2022 ran for 12 days and the jury deliberated for five days. But the trial was aborted due to juror misconduct after it emerged one juror had brought a research paper on sexual assault into the jury room.
The documents confirm Sofronoff engaged directly with Albrechtsen repeatedly in the days before he delivered his report to the government.
Text messages between Walter Sofronoff, KC, and Janet Albrechtsen, in which the latter says she loved a section of his draft report in the inquiry into the Bruce Lehrmann prosecution.
In an email on July 28 last year, titled “Draft report as it currently stands”, Sofronoff sent a copy of the document to Albrechtsen at 10.47am. On July 30, he sent a draft of chapter one.
On July 30, Albrechtsen texted: “I loved the section towards the end of your report on presumption of innocence (my editor side coming in now – I’d put that up front – when I read it, I wished I had read it much earlier – it’s an important and clear exposition of the legal principle and the norm).”
Apprehended bias
In his final report, delivered to the ACT government on July 31 last year but not released publicly by the government until August 7, Sofronoff found the prosecution was properly brought, but made a range of damaging findings against the then ACT director of public prosecutions, Shane Drumgold, SC.
Drumgold subsequently launched proceedings in the ACT Supreme Court to challenge those findings. The former top prosecutor argued successfully that Sofronoff’s communications during the inquiry with Albrechtsen gave rise to a reasonable apprehension of bias on Sofronoff’s part. This is not a finding of actual bias but of the appearance of it.
The ACT Supreme Court heard Sofronoff and Albrechtsen had 273 interactions, including texts, emails and calls, over seven months during the inquiry last year.
One of the emails released by the ACT Supreme Court.
Albrechtsen was consistently critical of Drumgold in her articles, the court heard, and acting Justice Stephen Kaye concluded “a fair-minded lay observer” might reasonably have “apprehended that Mr Sofronoff … might have been influenced” by her views.
The communications released by the ACT Supreme Court were exhibits in Drumgold’s civil case.
The ACT government criticised Sofronoff for giving an embargoed copy of his report to Albrechtsen and an ABC journalist, after stories on the findings were published before the government officially released them.
Bruce Lehrmann in June.Credit: Dan Peled
The Australian has said it did not breach an embargo and has not revealed its sources.
In an email to an editor at The Australian on August 9 last year, Sofronoff said he was “grateful” for the masthead’s editorial and claimed it was “shocking” the ACT government and Supreme Court preferred to “defend” Drumgold than “address the evil wrought by a prosecutor who was eager … to jail a man who may be innocent”.
Introduction to Albrechtsen
The Australian’s national chief correspondent, Hedley Thomas, had introduced Sofronoff to Albrechtsen.
In an email on February 4 last year, Thomas described her as “a lawyer and a conservative columnist for The Oz for many years” whom he regarded as “scrupulously straight and professional”.
“Janet has been doing much of the post-verdict reporting and commentary on the Higgins case, including breaking several recent and very interesting stories about complaints being levelled against the DPP,” Thomas wrote.
“I think it would be fair to speculate that Janet’s relationship with the defence team in the Higgins case would be much more rosy than with the DPP.”
Later that month, Thomas said Albrechtsen was “happy to collate her writings for you and your inquiry” and “Janet has done her homework and expressed great confidence in your appointment”.
‘Pleasure to engage’
In a text message in April last year, the former Queensland judge replied, “truly, a pleasure to engage” after Albrechtsen thanked him for a legal explanation.
Text messages between Walter Sofronoff, KC, and Janet Albrechtsen.
On June 2 last year, Sofronoff texted, “I am more than flattered. But I’m afraid not” as he turned down an interview request from Albrechtsen. She had proposed to publish the interview after the report was released.
Weeks before the report was delivered to the government on July 31, Albrechtsen asked the former judge on July 12 for “copies of potential adverse findings” that he might make against people who had appeared before the inquiry.
She made clear that she did not intend to publish the potential findings but that it would assist her reporting.
“Please email me … I’ll respond with proposed findings,” Sofronoff replied at 3.40pm.
Two days later, Albrechtsen texted Sofronoff that she would “love an embargoed copy” of his report and asked if he was likely to deliver it to the government sooner than July 31.
“Not before 31. Embargoed copy ok,” he said.
Albrechtsen also texted that “any drafts [sic] chapters would be very welcome reading”. Sofronoff texted her the final version of the report on July 31.
Albrechsten had texted Sofronoff in May: “You may not realise memes are being made about you. Ones you may like.” He responded with a pensive or quizzical emoji.
On June 1, she sent him a composite image of himself and Winston “The Wolf” Wolfe (Harvey Keitel) from Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 film Pulp Fiction.
A meme Janet Albrechtsen texted to Walter Sofronoff, KC.
Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.