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Chris Dawson’s last chance at freedom · The Front

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Speaker 1: From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Kristinamiot.
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Speaker 1: It's Tuesday, June tenth, twenty twenty five. Newly minted Opposition
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Speaker 1: Energy and Admissions Production spokesman Dantien says he'll take his
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Speaker 1: time on the fate of the coalition's contentious net zero target.
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Speaker 2: He says there'll be a conversation.
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Speaker 1: About nuclear two, but any future models won't replicate the
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Speaker 1: one proposed by Ouster Liberal leader Peter Dutton. Criminal cases
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Speaker 1: involving Aboriginal people could be heard in closed court or
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Speaker 1: by female judicial officers. Those are the new guidelines given
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Speaker 1: to judges in a revised New South Wales bench book.
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Speaker 1: That exclusive story is live right now at the Australian
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Speaker 1: dot com dot au. Chris Dawson has launched a last
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Speaker 1: ditch bid to have his conviction for the nineteen eighty
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Speaker 1: two murder of his wife quashed. The High Court of
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Speaker 1: Australia will this week consider an application made by the
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Speaker 1: former rugby league star for special leave to appeal of
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Speaker 1: finding that upheld the conviction.
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Speaker 3: That's today's episode, Christopher Michael Dawson on the charge that
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Speaker 3: don are about eight January nineteen eighty two, at Dayview
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Speaker 3: or elsewhere in the state of New South Wales.
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Speaker 4: You did murder Lynette Dawson. I find you guilty. All
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Speaker 4: the message down.
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Speaker 1: This was a moment more than forty years in the making.
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Speaker 1: On a bright winter's day in twenty twenty two, New
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Speaker 1: South Wales Supreme Court Justice Ian Harrison found Chris Dawson
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Speaker 1: guilty of the murder of his first wife, Lynette Simms,
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Speaker 1: who vanished from their home at Bayview in the early
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Speaker 1: nineteen eighties. She was thirty three years old, a doting
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Speaker 1: mum to two little girls, and a dedicated employee at
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Speaker 1: a childcare center on Sydney's Northern Beaches. Her fate was
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Speaker 1: unknown for decades until the Australians podcast The Teacher's Pet,
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Speaker 1: created by National Chief correspondent Hedley Thomas, exposed Lynnette's husband,
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Speaker 1: Chris Dawson, as a murderer. He's always maintained he played
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Speaker 1: no role in Lynette's disappearance, and claims she left the family,
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Speaker 1: her daughters, her husband and the home she loved of
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Speaker 1: her own accord. The story captured national and international attention,
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Speaker 1: and in late twenty eighteen, within months of the podcast release,
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Speaker 1: police arrested and charged Chris Dawson with Lynette's murder.
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Speaker 5: The key thing to come out of this divena is
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Speaker 5: that the police are now confident of a prosecution. Remember,
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Speaker 5: a coroner twice has recommended charges in this case and
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Speaker 5: the DPP in the eighties said no. But now they
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Speaker 5: believe they have enough evidence.
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Speaker 1: More than three years after his arrest, Justice Ian Harrison
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Speaker 1: would find Chris Dawson murdered Lynette to replace her with
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Speaker 1: a teenage babysitter who'd become his second wife. Dawson was
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Speaker 1: sentenced by Justice Harrison to twenty four years in prison
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Speaker 1: with a non parole period of eighteen years.
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Speaker 6: I recognize that the unavoidable prospect is that mister Dawson
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Speaker 6: will probably die in jail.
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Speaker 4: Mister Dawson, would you please stand.
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Speaker 1: The new South Wales government introduced nobody no parole legislation
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Speaker 1: known as Lynn's Law in the months following Chris Dawson's conviction,
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Speaker 1: that means he won't be eligible for parole unless he
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Speaker 1: reveals the location of Lynette's remains to the authorities. In
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Speaker 1: twenty twenty four, Chris Dawson launched a bid to quash
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Speaker 1: his murder conviction in the New South Wales Court of
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Speaker 1: Criminal Appeals, arguing he suffered a forensic disadvantage in improving
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Speaker 1: his innocence due to the long delay in bringing the
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Speaker 1: case to trial. He also argued there'd been a miscarriage
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Speaker 1: of justice due to Justice Harrison's reliance upon lies allegedly
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Speaker 1: told by Chris Dawson following Lynd's murder as evidence of
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Speaker 1: a consciousness of guilt, and that the verdict was unreasonable
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Speaker 1: because the Crown's case was wholly circumstantial and a hypothesis
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Speaker 1: consistent with Dawson's innocence wasn't excluded beyond a reasonable doubt.
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Speaker 1: Chris Dawson's barrister in the appeal, Belinda Rigg SC, told
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Speaker 1: the court transactions were made on Lynette's bank card in
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Speaker 1: the weeks following her disappearance, and that she'd called the
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Speaker 1: kiosk at the Northbridge Baths, where he worked part time
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Speaker 1: as a lifeguard, to let him know she needed some
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Speaker 1: time to herself, but the proof had been lost to time.
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Speaker 1: The three judge panel of Justices Julie Ward, Christine Adamson
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Speaker 1: and Anthony Payne unanimously dismissed the appeal, writing that Justice
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Speaker 1: Harrison's reasoning was sound, that the Crown's circumstantial case was compelling,
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Speaker 1: and that Chris Dawson failed to establish that the forty
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Speaker 1: year delay in bringing charges had caused him a forensic disadvantage.
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Speaker 1: A voice actor is reading part of the Justice's reasons.
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Speaker 7: First, given the applicants different versions of events, it was
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Speaker 7: unclear whether the unavailability of certain bank card statements was relevant,
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Speaker 7: and in any case, it was his own failure to
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Speaker 7: retain those statements, not any delay that caused them to
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Speaker 7: be unavailable. Secondly, the lack of records showing the applicant
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Speaker 7: was working at the north Bridge Barths on nine January
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Speaker 7: nineteen eighty two caused no disadvantage, since the Crown conceded
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Speaker 7: the applicant was working there on that day. Thirdly, records
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Speaker 7: of phone calls made to the north Bridge Baths on
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Speaker 7: nine February nineteen eighty two were unavailable because of limited
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Speaker 7: technology at the time, not because of delay, and records
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Speaker 7: of phone calls to the applicants house would not have
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Speaker 7: assisted the applace.
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Speaker 1: Now, Chris Dawson is taking the fight to the nation's
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Speaker 1: highest court in a last ditch effort. To have his
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Speaker 1: murder conviction quashed. For two weeks every month, the High
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Speaker 1: Court of Australia sits in Canberra to consider a whole
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Speaker 1: range of civil and criminal matters. Chris Dawson has applied
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Speaker 1: for special leave to appeal his murder conviction. That means
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Speaker 1: he's asking the High Court to grant him an appeal hearing.
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Speaker 1: If that application is granted on Thursday, he'll ask the
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Speaker 1: court to quash the twenty twenty two murder conviction made
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Speaker 1: by Justice Harrison and grant him a new trial.
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Speaker 6: Well, I think this is Chris Dawson's final role of
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Speaker 6: the dice in so far as his attempt to beat
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Speaker 6: the murder conviction of twenty twenty two Guys.
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Speaker 1: Headley Thomas is the Australian's National Chief correspondent and the
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Speaker 1: creator of the Teacher's Pet podcast.
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Speaker 6: Now he's seeking leave from the High Court to run
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Speaker 6: similar arguments that his conviction should be quashed, and much
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Speaker 6: of his argument turns on his claim that he had
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Speaker 6: a significant forensic disadvantage because of the age of the
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Speaker 6: case and the failure in his view of the police
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Speaker 6: at certain stages.
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Speaker 1: A voice actor is reading part of the grounds of
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Speaker 1: the former school teacher's High Court application.
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Speaker 8: The Court of Criminal Appeal irred by failing to find
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Speaker 8: that the applicants trial miscarried because the trial judge failed
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Speaker 8: to find that the applicants suffered a significant forensic disadvantage.
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Speaker 4: The Court of Criminal Appeal.
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Speaker 8: Irred by failing to take the applicants significant forensic disadvantage
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Speaker 8: into account when considering whether the verdict was unreasonable and
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Speaker 8: unable to be supported by the evidence.
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Speaker 2: Chris Dawson says significant witnesses, namely Sue Butlin, who purportedly
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Speaker 2: saw Lyn Dawson getting into a car at a fruit
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Speaker 2: shop on the New South Wales Central Coast, had died
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Speaker 2: by the time the case was tried by Justice Harrison
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Speaker 2: alone in twenty twenty two, and that important documents from
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Speaker 2: the abandoned initial homicide investigation had been lost.
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Speaker 4: We have in.
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Speaker 6: Sue Butlin, the wife of a guy called Ray Butlin.
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Speaker 6: Ray Butlin was a rugby league coach on the Central
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Speaker 6: Coast and he got to know and coach the Dawson twins,
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Speaker 6: Christ and Paul after they'd finished their professional careers with
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Speaker 6: the Newtown Jets. The version that we have from either
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Speaker 6: Chris Dawson or Ray Butlin, is that Sue Butlin saw
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Speaker 6: a woman she believed was Lynn Simms in a vehicle
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Speaker 6: at a fruit barn on the Central Coast shortly after
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Speaker 6: the Crown says Chris Dawson murdered Lynn in the home
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Speaker 6: at Bayview on the Northern Beaches. Now, we don't have
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Speaker 6: any direct evidence from Sue Butlin about that. What we
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Speaker 6: do know because Ray Butlin disclosed this in the inquest
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Speaker 6: where he was questioned about his wife's purported sighting of Lynn,
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Speaker 6: and Ray Butlin said of his own wife, who had
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Speaker 6: been dead for some years, that she did have a
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Speaker 6: tendency to exaggerate things and she might.
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Speaker 4: Have embellished the story.
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Speaker 6: However, he felt sure that if she were on the stand,
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Speaker 6: she would say, yeah, I saw Lynn. Now, the problem
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Speaker 6: here is that the police investigation in the early nineties
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Speaker 6: stopped as a result of Chris Dawson telling homicide detectives
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Speaker 6: that his mate's wife saw Lynn. But there's no no
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Speaker 6: evidence of any attempt by those homicide detectives to try
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Speaker 6: to corroborate Chris's claims that his mate's wife saw Lynn.
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Speaker 6: So the police didn't go directly to Sue Butler, who
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Speaker 6: was still alive in nineteen ninety two, to take any
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Speaker 6: kind of statement from her.
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Speaker 4: So there's nothing in writing.
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Speaker 6: There's just this hearsay account, and this is being held
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Speaker 6: up as one of the pieces of evidence that was
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Speaker 6: crucial to Chris Dawson's defense and should have been obtained.
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Speaker 6: And I think that many people who have followed this
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Speaker 6: case close he would think that, yes, the police should
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Speaker 6: have got a statement, but that the police failures in
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Speaker 6: this case early on cut both ways.
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Speaker 4: It is strongly arguable.
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Speaker 6: In my view that if police had done a much
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Speaker 6: better job in the early stages after Lynn's disappearedearrance, then
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Speaker 6: Chris Dawson would have been prosecuted and convicted of murder
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Speaker 6: very early on. So it doesn't necessarily follow that he
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Speaker 6: has been denied justice. It may be that he's actually
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Speaker 6: experienced freedom because of the police failures and the delays
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Speaker 6: in doing things.
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Speaker 1: The application argues there's no onus on Chris Dawson to
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Speaker 1: establish the delay certainly caused him a significant forensic disadvantage,
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Speaker 1: only that there's a real possibility that it did.
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Speaker 8: It is unnecessary that each individual lost witness or document
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Speaker 8: singly would have demonstrated innocence, but rather that collectively for
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Speaker 8: lost evidence would have likely strengthened the applicant's position at trial.
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Speaker 1: John Paul Cashen is a partner at law firm Thompson Gear,
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Speaker 1: which advises the Australian.
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Speaker 9: It's an interesting one because in Australia we don't have
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Speaker 9: a statute of limitations. Here someone's committed murder or any
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Speaker 9: serious efets, really we can bring a charge against them ten, twenty, thirty,
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Speaker 9: forty fifty years after the fact, and I think courts
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Speaker 9: are reluctant to say that the mere fact that there's
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Speaker 9: a delay means that someone can't be brought to justice.
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Speaker 9: And what happened was in the late nineteen eighties there
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Speaker 9: was a case called Longman where the charges has been
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Speaker 9: brought about twenty years after the alleged defending and in
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Speaker 9: that case the court warned the jury that there was
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Speaker 9: a real risk that the evidence was unreliable and that
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Speaker 9: led to an acquittal. And there was a feeling after
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Speaker 9: that case that it shifted the boundary too much in
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Speaker 9: the favor of acquittals, and so they changed the law
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Speaker 9: to bring it back a little more in favor of
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Speaker 9: the policy of well, just because there's a delay doesn't
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Speaker 9: mean you can't face trial. And that's what this appeal
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Speaker 9: is really all about. In this case, there's no doubt
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Speaker 9: that Dawson has suffered some prejudice because of certain evidence
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Speaker 9: going missing, and so he said, well, he was never
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Speaker 9: able to truly test that, and the Court of Appeal
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Speaker 9: ultimately has to draw a line and say, well, did
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Speaker 9: you suffer a significant forensic disadvantage because of these things?
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Speaker 9: And the Court of Appeal said no, it was just
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Speaker 9: speculative that these things would have helped him. There wasn't
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Speaker 9: an actual prejudice, and he's upset about that. He says, now, no,
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Speaker 9: that puts the test too high, that shifts the burden
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Speaker 9: too far in favor of conviction, and that's really the
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Speaker 9: essence of this appeal before the High Court. Now where
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Speaker 9: do we draw that line?
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Speaker 1: Chris Dawson also says the Court of Criminal Appeal got
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Speaker 1: it wrong when it upheld Justice Harrison's reliance on lies
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Speaker 1: allegedly told by him as evidence of consciousness of guilt
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Speaker 1: because he had other reasons to lie.
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Speaker 9: One of the key parts of the first appeal was
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Speaker 9: that Justice Harrison had incorrectly looked at the lies told
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Speaker 9: by Chris Dawson. So one of the key ways a
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Speaker 9: person gets convicted is when they led to police, and
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Speaker 9: those lies are evidence of what we call consciousness of guilt.
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Speaker 9: And sometimes a lie will be strong consciousness of guilt,
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Speaker 9: but sometimes people lie for other reasons. And indeed, in
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Speaker 9: Dawson's case, there was a suggestion that he might have
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Speaker 9: been lying about certain things, not because he'd killed Lynette,
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Speaker 9: but because he was embarrassed or trying to hide the
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Speaker 9: fact that he was having a relationship with his former student.
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Speaker 9: And the Court of Appeal found that Justice Harrison didn't
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Speaker 9: deal with those lies and that consciousness of guilt appropriately,
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Speaker 9: So they did find that he'd made an error in
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Speaker 9: relation to those questions, but they have a broad discretion
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Speaker 9: to say, well, even if the trial judge made an error,
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Speaker 9: we're not going to overturn his decision unless we find
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Speaker 9: that a substantial miscarriage of justice occurred, and in this
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Speaker 9: particular case, they found that there wasn't a substantial miscarriage
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Speaker 9: of justice. So that will also form part of the
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Speaker 9: High Court judgment. And it sort of rolls into that
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Speaker 9: same question about well, what is the total cumulative amount
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Speaker 9: of prejudice suffered by the accused in this case? Is
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Speaker 9: it enough to overturn his conviction?
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Speaker 2: Coming up?
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Speaker 1: Why this isn't Chris Dawson's first High Court rodeo. This
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Speaker 1: isn't the first time Chris Dawson has made an application
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Speaker 1: to the High Court after his arrest. Applications for a
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Speaker 1: permanent stay of proceedings were dismissed by Justice Elizabeth Fulton
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Speaker 1: in the Supreme Court of New South Wales and later
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Speaker 1: by the Court of Criminal Appeal. Here's Headley Thomas.
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Speaker 6: Well before the murder trial in twenty twenty two, Chris
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Speaker 6: Dawson was determined to try to avoid trial altogether, and
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Speaker 6: he wanted to persuade the courts that he could not
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Speaker 6: get a fair trial as a result of failures of
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Speaker 6: police to find evidence that he says, would have been
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Speaker 6: in his favor that would have shown in his claims
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Speaker 6: that his wife Lynn had not been murdered, that in fact,
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Speaker 6: she had probably started a new life. And secondly, he
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Speaker 6: claimed that he couldn't get a fair trial because too
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Speaker 6: many people had listened to or heard about the Teacher's
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Speaker 6: pet and had a fixed view of his guilt. Now
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Speaker 6: he failed in those attempts to get a permanent stay
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Speaker 6: of proceedings and his final bid was to the High
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Speaker 6: Court and that was denied shortly before the murder trial
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Speaker 6: in twenty twenty two. When Chris Dawson was trying to
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Speaker 6: avoid trial altogether, he relied on a leading criminal defense lawyer,
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Speaker 6: Phillip Bolton, and then for the criminal trial, Philip Bolton
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Speaker 6: was not in that. In fact, that was run for
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Speaker 6: christ Dawson by a defense lawyer called Pauline David, and she.
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Speaker 4: Had known Dawson many years earlier.
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Speaker 6: In fact, when Chris Dawson was interviewed by homicide detectives
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Speaker 6: in nineteen ninety two on the Gold Coast and much younger,
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Speaker 6: Pauline David was Chris Dawson's solicitor during that interview. Then
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Speaker 6: we go forward thirty years. Philip Bolton didn't get involved
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Speaker 6: in the murder trial to our knowledge. However, Pauline David
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Speaker 6: at the end of the trial was appointed to the
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Speaker 6: District Court of New South Wales as a judge. So
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Speaker 6: Philip Bolton has returned and he's running this appeal to
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Speaker 6: the High Court, and in documents that have been filed
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Speaker 6: he has highlighted what he says were numerous errors by
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Speaker 6: the New South Wales Court of Criminal Appeal in its findings,
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Speaker 6: which said that Chris Dawson should not succeed with his
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Speaker 6: bid for freedom.
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Speaker 1: Headley Thomas is The Australian's national Chief correspondent. You can
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Speaker 1: listen to the Teacher's pet and access the nation's best
18:21
Speaker 1: journalism anytime at the Australian dot com dot au