“There are no charges relating to the suggestion of aggravated indecent assault \u2026 or that indeed Mr Jones had these complainants under his authority, he did not have any power over these complainants,”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Mr Wrench said.<\/p>\n
Mr Wrench repeatedly described the changes as “a downgrade”.<\/p>\n
Lawyer calls out ‘leaks’ to media<\/p>\n
Mr Wrench suggested there were many pre-trial issues still yet to be sorted out and said the hearing may end up taking four to five months.<\/p>\n
But Emma Curran, representing the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP), said their estimate was closer to six weeks.<\/p>\n
Ms Curran flagged tendency and coincidence evidence that the prosecution will rely on.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Defence lawyer Bryan Wrench declined to speak outside court. (ABC News: Jamie McKinnell)<\/p>\n
Mr Wrench also took aim in court at what he claimed were continuing “leaks” of details about the case to the media.<\/p>\n
The case was adjourned to November to set a hearing date, which Deputy Chief Magistrate Freund said was likely to be next year.<\/p>\n
In a statement, the ODPP said a decision had been made to proceed with 27 charges of indecent assault and sexual touching against Mr Jones summarily in the local court.<\/p>\n
\n“Chapter 6 of the NSW ODPP’s Prosecution Guidelines sets out the criteria for determining whether an election should be made for a table offence,” the statement said.<\/p>\n
“The ODPP will not be commenting on the matter further, as it is before the courts.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Speaking outside court, Detective Chief Inspector Sam Courcoulos said the outcome was the ODPP’s decision.<\/p>\n
“The courts will decide whether it’s a strong case or not,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The matter will return to court on November 11.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Prosecutors have replaced the most serious charges faced by veteran broadcaster Alan Jones with lesser offences and withdrawn…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":235373,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[124911,4740,34474,281,126418,50,17364,9309,7207],"class_list":{"0":"post-235372","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-alan-jones","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-charges","11":"tag-court","12":"tag-downgraded","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-nsw","15":"tag-nsw-police","16":"tag-police"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115223109739323150","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235372","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=235372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235372\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}