>
Brittany Higgins is pictured out of court. She was not in court this week because her accused rapist Bruce Lehrmann is on trial
Jurors in the trial of the accused rapist of Brittany Higgins have been urged not to watch social media this weekend as they will be sent home.
The jury’s eight women and four men will return to their deliberations Monday after being fired for a week by ACT Supreme Court Justice Lucy McCallum Friday afternoon.
“Please remember the memories I have given you as you come into contact with a wider range of people on the weekends,” Judge McCallum said.
‘It’s very important at this stage that you don’t start a conversation, you could accidentally address someone who might tell you something that could be problematic.
“Give yourself a social media vacation.”
They will return to court at 10 a.m. Monday to further determine whether Bruce Lehrmann sexually assaulted the former Liberal staffer in the parliament building in March 2019.
He pleaded not guilty to sexual intercourse without consent. The jury has been instructed to reach a unanimous verdict. Judges started deliberating since about 3 p.m. on Wednesday after an explosive three-week trial.
Bruce Lehrmann (pictured out of court) is accused of having sexual intercourse without consent. He pleaded not guilty
In his closing remarks this week, Lehrmann’s lawyer Steven Whybrow criticized Ms Higgins’ evidence that she believed she would do a TV interview about her alleged rape and then return to anonymity.
He pointed out that she landed the book deal before she finished talking to the police.
Mr Whybrow said, in 2021 Ms Higgins was talking to (News Corp journalist Samantha Maiden, talking to The Project, going to the police, got a book deal for $325,000. This is a big story.”
“I am not here to prove why she is going back to the police and starting this (investigation) again,” Mr Whybrow said. ‘I’m not sure why. But there are 325,000 reasons why this case is important from her perspective.’
Speaking about the evidence that Ms Higgins gave to the jury earlier in the trial, Mr Whybrow invoked ‘fraudsters’. Mr Whybrow said ‘We have things like that called scammers because behavior is sometimes hard to pick up’.
The defense attorney said he was not suggesting what Ms Higgins’ behavior on the witness stand was an act, and told the jury, “You’ve all seen it.”
He argued: ‘She doesn’t know what happened and she has reconstructed the events in such a way that she now truly believes they are true. That doesn’t mean they’re true.’
Meanwhile, Crown Prosecutor Shane Drumgold told the jury that Lehrmann Ms. Higgins to Parliament House the night he allegedly raped her because ‘it was the most convenient place to get her drunk and confused’.
Prosecutor told court Lehrmann took Ms Higgins (pictured center) to parliament building because it was ‘convenient’
He suggested that this was the answer to one of the most important questions for jurors to consider – why did Lehrmann and Mrs. Higgins go to the parliament building that night?
Drumgold said the jury should also consider whether they believed Lehrmann and Ms Higgins had sex — and whether it was consensual — and whether he was attracted to the alleged victim and whether he was “reckless” regarding her consent.
‘[The case is not about] whether young people, regardless of their gender, have the right to drink whatever they want or to be safe. Whether Mrs Higgins likes Linda Reynolds, or whether the House of Representatives has responded appropriately,” he said.
“This case is certainly not about the experiences of other women in parliament or the ‘Me Too’ movement, media interviews or book deals.”
Mr Drumgold said the case was about ‘what happened on a couch in a room’ on 23 March 2019 – between the time Ms Higgins and Lehrmann entered Parliament at 1.41am and the time when the accused left alone at 2.31am .
In her closing statement on Wednesday, Judge McCallum reminded jurors that Lehrmann was presumed innocent unless or until his guilt was proven beyond reasonable doubt by the prosecution.
They were ordered to act impartially, without emotion or prejudice, and to make a truthful statement according to the evidence presented in court.
Steven Whybrow, Lehrmann’s lawyer, is photographed out of court with his defense counsel, Katrina Musgrove
“You are not responsible for popular opinion… however you think it swings,” Judge McCallum said.
“Your verdict, whether guilty or innocent, must be unanimous.”
Judge McCallum also addressed parts of attorney Steven Whybrow’s closing arguments, including when he spoke about Ms Higgins’ memory of the events.
On Wednesday morning, Mr Whybrow told the jury that Ms Higgins “don’t know what happened” and reconstructed the events in her head based on what others told her.
He quoted Ms Higgins’ comments to police as she watched CCTV footage of her and Lehrmann entering the parliament building at 1:41 am: “My memory is getting a little fuzzy.”
Judge McCallum urged the jury to also look at the portions of Ms. Higgins’ evidence in which she recalled events that did not need to be substantiated by anyone else.
In particular, the moment she remembered sitting alone on a windowsill in Parliament, looking out over the Prime Minister’s courtyard before the alleged rape took place.
“That was something she described as a memory of herself, not being reconstructed,” she said.