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<\/p>\nA Queensland jury has been discharged and the fraud trial of a Cape York Peninsula traditional owner declared a mistrial over “irregularities in the evidence”.<\/p>\n
Ankumuthi traditional owner Larry Joe Woosup has pleaded not guilty to two aggravated counts of fraud, with the prosecution telling the court he allegedly misused mining royalties in 2014.<\/p>\n
After six days of evidence, statements and summaries beginning in Cairns District Court last Monday, Judge Joshua Trevi\u00f1o KC today dismissed the jury a little over two hours after it had retired to deliberate.<\/p>\n
This afternoon, the court heard a juror noticed redacted information relating to an exhibit in an evidence folder and raised it with the bailiff.<\/p>\n
Judge Trevi\u00f1o then told the jury that, following an examination, another juror’s working copy of the evidence was also irregular.<\/p>\n
“This raised issues about substantial prejudice that might be caused if that irrelevant material was put before the jury. There was a risk of unfair prejudice to the defendant in that material,” Judge Trevi\u00f1o told the court.<\/p>\n
He said the irregular evidence might have been before the jury since the start of the trial.<\/p>\n
“If I could be satisfied that that was the only error or difference \u2026 then I may have given more consideration to whether I give strongly worded directions,” he said.<\/p>\n
“It was the crown’s responsibility to prepare those documents and ensure that the documents that you were provided were the same as those that were tendered.<\/p>\n
“You have been deliberating on, potentially, documents and material that is not evidence. That’s a significant irregularity that I cannot cure.”<\/p>\n
In another error, Judge Trevi\u00f1o said the jury’s phones were not removed when they were sent out to deliberate at 1.43pm today, until the error was realised an hour later.<\/p>\n
“They had not been collected from the jury as would be the normal practice,” Judge Trevi\u00f1o told the court.<\/p>\n
Judge Trevi\u00f1o said the events were most unfortunate and thanked the jurors for their service.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Crown prosecutor Christian Peters (right) has taken responsibility for “irregular” copies of evidence provided to jurors in his case against Larry Joe Woosup. (ABC Far North: Brendan Mounter)<\/p>\n
During the trial, the court heard Mr Woosup and another community member arranged a deal with a mining company over the right to mine bauxite on traditional lands a year after a separate deal with the community reached a stalemate.<\/p>\n
Mr Woosup then set up trust accounts with two different banks for the Ankumuthi community, for which he was sole trustee.<\/p>\n
The jury was told it was an undisputed fact that Mr Woosup then used the overdraft capacity on one account to transfer and withdraw $110,000 and deposited a cheque for $95,000 from the mining company into the other account, which was then also withdrawn.<\/p>\n
The requirement for both trusts was for all money to be used for the benefit of the Ankumuthi community, the court was told.<\/p>\n
Mr Woosup’s matter has now been adjourned and will return to the District Court for mention on September 28.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Queensland jury has been discharged and the fraud trial of a Cape York Peninsula traditional owner declared…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":79232,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[22,23,21,121319,1066,7820,7821,6022,121317,121316,121312,46221,121318,212,121315,121313,121314,90634],"class_list":["post-79231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-austrlia","tag-cairns-courthouse","tag-coastal-town","tag-far-north-queensland","tag-fnq","tag-fraud","tag-gulf-alumna","tag-gulf-of-carpenteria","tag-leichardt-electorate","tag-mining-royalties","tag-mistrial","tag-queensland","tag-tourist-town","tag-tropic-of-capricorn","tag-tropics","tag-western-cape-york"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79231\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}