A former police sergeant-turned-solicitor with the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions has received a reprimand and a finding of unsatisfactory professional conduct for misleading officers in two separate matters she had carriage of.
Solicitor Kristy Anne Speirs, who was formerly a police officer between May 1999 and January 2009, was found to have unintentionally misled a Detective Sergeant and Detective Senior Constable in two matters she had carriage of. In addition to the reprimand, Ms Speirs was ordered to pay the Legal Services Commissioner’s costs.
The first matter took place in or around 2016 and concerned an allegation of murder. During a telephone conversation and then again in emails, the Detective Sergeant sought an authority to obtain an induced statement from a witness.
The police had previously obtained approval to obtain this statement, and so the detective sergeant inquired of Ms Speirs whether the earlier authorisation would be sufficient in protecting the witness during a further interview. Responding to one of the detective sergeant’s follow-ups, Ms Speirs said the report was with chambers.
Ms Speirs said she does not recall sending the email and believes that if the report was not with chambers when she did send the email, then it was a mistake on her part brought on by the stress of carrying about 50 or so files. This was “well in excess” of the maximum 25 matters set by workplace agreements.
Four months later, the detective sergeant had yet to hear from Ms Speirs and contacted someone else at the ODPP, who advised him that they were seeking a replacement for his matter, that Ms Speirs was having issues at work, and that she agreed “four months to obtain this authority is way too long”.
