Matt Wright’s<\/b> employee and friend Timothy Johnston<\/b> has denied telling “blatant lies” under oath to the jury in the crocodile wrangler’s criminal trial.<\/p>\n
When Crown prosecutor Jason Gullaci SC<\/b> resumed his questioning after lunch, he asked: “You understand what perjury is, don’t you,\u00a0Mr Johnston<\/b>?”<\/p>\n
“Yes,” Mr Johnston<\/b> replied.<\/p>\n
Mr Gullaci <\/b>reminded Mr Johnston<\/b> that a certificate he’d received immunising him from his evidence being used against him “doesn’t extend to telling lies in this court”.<\/p>\n “Are you still prepared to tell lies for Matt Wright<\/b> in that scenario?” he asked.<\/p>\n “I have never been prepared to tell lies for Matt Wright<\/b>,” Mr Johnston<\/b> replied.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Mr Johnston<\/b> agreed he was still “reasonably” close friends with Mr Wright,<\/b>\u00a0but initially said he “can’t confirm or deny” whether Mr Wright<\/b> had helped pay for renovations to his house.<\/p>\n “I can’t recall any time Mr Wright <\/b>has helped me financially renovate my house,” he said after further questioning.<\/p>\n “I’m putting to you directly that what you want to do, and out of loyalty and out of friendship I can understand it, you want to protect Mr Wright<\/b> at all costs?” Mr Gullaci<\/b> asked.<\/p>\n “Disagree,” Mr Johnston<\/b> replied.<\/p>\n “And you are prepared to tell blatant lies if in your mind it protects Mr Wright<\/b>?”<\/p>\n “No.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Mr Gullaci<\/b> said Mr Johnston<\/b> had exercised his right not to make a statement to authorities and had been compelled to testify in a pre-trial hearing.<\/p>\n He said there were “critical differences” between the account he gave just before the trial started and his evidence today.<\/p>\n “That’s because you became tangled in your own lies?” Mr Gullaci<\/b> asked.<\/p>\n “Disagree,” Mr Johnston<\/b> said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Mr Gullaci<\/b>\u00a0suggested\u00a0Mr Johnston<\/b> had previously said he “asked for his diary, his phone and MR <\/b>[maintenance release form]”, which the prosecutor said was “polar opposites” with what he said today.<\/p>\n “It’s exactly the same thing,” Mr Johnston<\/b> said.<\/p>\n “I sat next to [Mr Robinson’s <\/b>brother Jacob] Robinson<\/b>, there was a number of items there, I asked for those items and that’s what I’m saying to you happened.”<\/p>\n “You’re seriously asking this jury to accept that that’s the same thing, that’s ridiculous isn’t it?” Mr Gullaci<\/b> asked.<\/p>\n “No, it’s not,” Mr Johnston<\/b> replied.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Mr Gullaci<\/b> suggested Mr Johnston<\/b> was “willing to toe the Matt Wright<\/b> party line” even “at the risk of exposing yourself to perjury”.<\/p>\n “That’s how loyal you are,” he suggested.<\/p>\n “No, incorrect,” Mr Johnston<\/b> replied.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Mr Gullaci<\/b> suggested Mr Johnston’s<\/b> version of events was “nonsense”.<\/p>\n “It doesn’t make any sense that you would go to a hospital with someone so badly injured as Mr Robinson<\/b> and just ask to pick up stuff and have no idea what it was?” Mr Gullaci <\/b>said.<\/p>\n “It sounds like nonsense, yes,” Mr Johnston<\/b> said.<\/p>\n “”But that’s your evidence, isn’t it?”<\/p>\n “I’m just telling you what my account is.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Mr Johnston<\/b> said he was “trying to help out” and “it was presented in front of me, I said, ‘Do I take that?’.”<\/p>\n “He might need his phone, mightn’t he?” Mr Gullaci <\/b>said.<\/p>\n “Yeah, absolutely.”<\/p>\n “And having it in another state’s not very helpful?”<\/p>\n “No, not at all.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Mr Gullaci<\/b> also suggested there was no record of a phone call between Mr Johnston<\/b> and Mr Wright<\/b> or his wife Kaia Wright <\/b>on that day, but Mr Johnston<\/b> said that did not change his evidence.<\/p>\n “There will be a record, it happened,” he said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Matt Wright’s employee and friend Timothy Johnston has denied telling “blatant lies” under oath to the jury in…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":160759,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4740,93212,81995,8140,81993,93214,75302,77092,50,93210,13264,13263,93211,81999,278,93213,12433,7308],"class_list":{"0":"post-160758","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-australia","9":"tag-chris-willow-wilson","10":"tag-chris-wilson","11":"tag-criminal","12":"tag-crocodile-wrangler","13":"tag-jai-tomlinson","14":"tag-matt-wright","15":"tag-netflix-star","16":"tag-news","17":"tag-noelene-chellingworth","18":"tag-northern-territory","19":"tag-nt","20":"tag-nt-supreme-court","21":"tag-sebastian-robinson","22":"tag-supreme-court","23":"tag-timothy-johnston","24":"tag-trial","25":"tag-witnesses"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115060420510416555","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160758"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160758\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/160759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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