‘No stranger to staring down critics’: The former judge behind the Lehrmann inquiry
When Walter Sofronoff was appointed to lead the Queensland Court of Appeal in 2017, the state’s law society observed that the experienced silk was “no stranger to standing up for the rule of law and staring down critics in both the media and parliament”.
The former judge and Queensland solicitor-general has found himself at the centre of a different kind of fight after the ACT government suggested he handed his report into Bruce Lehrmann’s prosecution to select journalists even before it was delivered to government.
Former Queensland Court of Appeal president Walter Sofronoff, KC, chaired the inquiry into Bruce Lehrmann’s abandoned trial.Credit: Robert Shakespeare
The high-profile inquiry has yet to comment publicly, but the ACT government said on Thursday that “the board of inquiry ... has confirmed it provided a copy to some media outlets under an embargo”.
In a fresh statement on Friday, the government said Sofronoff had provided a “detailed written explanation for why he chose to release the report to selected journalists prior to providing it to the Chief Minister” on Monday. It said it was “extremely disappointed in this action”.
Sofronoff, who spent 40 years as a barrister including almost 30 as a silk, was appointed in February to lead the inquiry into the conduct of the criminal justice agencies involved in Lehrmann’s prosecution.
He has reportedly made a series of highly critical findings about ACT Director of Public Prosecutions Shane Drumgold, SC, who said on Thursday he had neither seen the report nor been informed of its contents and was not in a position to respond.
Walter Sofronoff has reportedly made a series of highly critical findings about ACT Director of Public Prosecutions Shane Drumgold, SC (pictured).Credit: Rhett Wyman
Lehrmann, a former federal Liberal political staffer, has denied raping his former colleague Brittany Higgins in Parliament House in Canberra in 2019. His trial was aborted in October last year due to juror misconduct and the charge was later dropped altogether amid concerns about Higgins’ mental health.
Sofronoff served as president of the Queensland Anti-Discrimination Tribunal and Queensland solicitor-general, the latter for almost a decade, before he was appointed to the Court of Appeal.
During his five-year stint on the bench, Sofronoff was involved in more than 550 decisions, Chief Justice Helen Bowskill said in a speech last year to mark his retirement.
The legal luminaries gathered were “dressed to the nines” while “Walter’s preference, on any given day at work, would usually be for black jeans and a T-shirt”, Bowskill said.
As is often the case in humanising sketches of lawyers, much has been made of Sofronoff’s guitar collection and penchant for adrenaline-fuelled pursuits including flying vintage aircraft, skydiving, motorcycle riding and trap shooting.
Educated at Anglican Church Grammar School in Brisbane, known colloquially as Churchie, the University of Queensland alumnus is the son of refugees including a Russian Cossack father who left his home on horseback aged 20. English was Sofronoff’s third language after Russian and Cantonese.
The King’s Counsel has been the go-to jurist for a range of inquiries, leading the 2015 inquiry into the Grantham flooding and a review of the Queensland parole system the following year. He also led a commission of inquiry into forensic DNA testing in Queensland last year.
The law society said in 2017 that Sofronoff took over the leadership of the Court of Appeal “at a time when the rule of law is being challenged from political and media pundits alike, and when rational assessment is being replaced by shrill populism in our public debate”. The observations seemed perennial.
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