Date set for Bruce Lehrmann’s lawyers to quiz witnesses about alleged Toowoomba rape
Lawyers for Bruce Lehrmann will grill witnesses in June as they seek to have allegations he raped a woman in Toowoomba in 2021 dismissed without proceeding to trial.
The former Liberal staffer is facing two charges of rape relating to an incident in Toowoomba in October 2021.
The 28-year-old, who is on bail, is yet to enter a plea although his legal team have indicated he will deny the allegations.
His barrister, Patrick Wilson, flagged his intention to cross-examine witnesses during a committal hearing in December.
At Toowoomba magistrates court on Monday, Wilson told the magistrate, Mark Howden, that he and the crown prosecutor, Nicole Friedewald, had agreed to the scope of crossexaminations – a process he anticipated would take half a day.
Howden set a committal crossexamination for 17 June, enlarged bail and ordered the parties file a draft order outlining that agreement by Friday, in a hearing that lasted less than three minutes.
Lehrmann, who is yet to appear in person before the Toowoomba magistrates court, was excused from December’s hearing as he was attending a federal court defamation trial against Network Ten and journalist Lisa Wilkinson in Sydney. He did not appear in Toowoomba on Monday.
Lehrmann’s lawyers have previously sought medical evidence and extensive phone text message records from the alleged victim.
Lerhmann was thrown into the national spotlight in February 2021 after he was accused of raping another woman, former colleague and Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins, at Parliament House in Canberra in 2019. He has always maintained his innocence, pleading not guilty at trial. An initial criminal trial into Higgins’ allegations was discontinued after juror misconduct. In December 2022, prosecutors dropped the charges against Lehrmann.
In October, Lehrmann was revealed as the man at the centre of the Toowoomba rape allegations, after previously being referred to as a “high-profile” man due to Queensland law that prevented accused rapists from being named until they were committed to stand trial.
Last September the state overturned that law, bringing Queensland into line with most other states and territories. Lehrmann then lost a bid for a non-publication that would have prevented his name from being reported.