The extent to which the judge took account of the accused’s intoxication and the part it played in his state of mind is an issue for the court of criminal appeal.įairly shortly after meeting, they were kissing each other passionately and the accused asked whether she would like to go somewhere more “private”. Up to then, he’d had about nine drinks and the judge found that he was “moderately drunk. Lazarus introduced himself at the Soho bar, where he soon made known that he had a special status in the place. The crown and the complainant contended that she was “intoxicated and confused”. The judge assessed her consumption as 10 standard drinks but found that she was “not particularly intoxicated. Pre-fuelling with three-quarters of a 700ml bottle mixed with bourbon and coke, about seven standard drinks according to the judge half a teapot of a “fairly strong” cocktail at the World Bar down to the Soho bar for a vodka and cranberry juice back to the World Bar for a vodka and orange a meet-up at McDonalds in Darlinghurst Road and then back to the Soho. This is a story of a young woman, according to the evidence a virgin, 18 years old, from the NSW Central Coast, on her first trip with friends to the nightlife and bars of Kings Cross, ending up in an alleyway being anally penetrated by the son of the owner of the Soho bar in Victoria Street, within minutes of meeting him. Lazarus then made a successful application to the district court for a trial by judge alone, largely on the ground that media reporting of his earlier conviction would prejudice a jury – demonstrating once again that faith in the jury system only goes so far. No doubt she was starting to feel that she was in a difficult situation but I accept the evidence of the accused. In April 2016 the court of criminal appeal ordered a new trial because it considered the original trial judge, Sarah Huggett, had misdirected the jury on the question of the accused’s belief in the victim’s consent.īy that stage Lazarus had served 11 months of a minimum three-year prison sentence. It was Lazarus’s second trial on the indictment which read: “On at Potts Point in the state of New South Wales, did have sexual intercourse with SM, without the consent of SM knowing she was not consenting.” It’s a tangle that the judge spent the better part of 74 pages trying to reason. Judge Tupman acquitted Lazarus on an indictment of rape because she found that he thought the complainant was consenting to penile anal intercourse, even though she didn’t believe she was consenting. There are confronting and disturbing elements. Justice Derek Price, the chief judge of the New South Wales district court, said that “due to limited resources, the fact judges are busy presiding over court cases and hundreds of judgments are made every year (some that have taken a number of hours to hand down) only a limited number are able to be published on Caselaw”.įor the public to access the court’s work more comprehensively, he said, it “will require more resources”. It would normally be expected that judicial reasons of significant public interest would be available fairly promptly on Caselaw, or any of the other online judgment resources, as is the case with the supreme and federal courts. A day later, a version of Her Honour’s reasons arrived by email allowing for the first time full access to the outcome of the second trial of the rape case – a case that goes to the heart of contemporary mores, and the place where alcohol, sexual adventurism and the law collide. New submissions were made to the attorney general’s office and the Department of Justice.
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