Federal copper who stalked his former girlfriend meets himself coming around corners … Various irreconcilable explanations in his applications for admission as a legal practitioner … ACT one day, Queensland the next … The naked photo … Catherine Holmes CJ gets to the bottom of it, as explained by Sohini Mehta 

A former federal copper’s application to join the lawyers’ jam roll has struck strife with a finding by Queensland CJ Catherine Homes that Jason William King has failed in his duty of candour to the court.   

There’ll be a further hearing by the Court of Appeal on May 2 to determine the impact of this finding of his admission application. 

King ham-fistedly tried to cover-up a charge of aggravated stalking with intent to intimidate for which he’d pleaded guilty, been convicted, fined and placed on a two-year restraining order.

When the stickybeaks at the ACT Legal Practitioners Admissions Board asked for more information relating to the charge, King decided to apply for admission in Queensland – without mentioning to the banana-benders that his ACT application was still pending.  

King presented at least five versions of the events leading to his conviction. 

In May and June 2016, he filed two affidavits relating to the charge in support of his ACT application before emailing a statement of material facts, which had been put before the Magistrates Court dealing with the offence. 

This was followed by a third affidavit in which King tried to rationalise inconsistencies between his earlier affidavits and the statement of material facts. 

On July 11, 2016, King filed a supporting affidavit to his Queensland application for admission disclosing the stalking conviction and, despite his guilty plea, disputed many allegations in the annexed statement of material facts. 

King also gave evidence on the matter at a Qld. Court of Appeal hearing on November 30 last year. 

The stalking charge concerned events between December 2011 and March 2012 and largely turned around three visits King made to Western Australia. 

The complainant was the applicant’s former partner. She held a Navy post and moved to a country town in WA in early December 2011. 

On December 14, 2011, she emailed King to confirm that their relationship was over, but continued to receive calls and text messages from him. 

On January 11, 2012, King flew to Perth. 

According to Holmes CJ’s reasons, the “starkest difference” between the versions given by King “is the acknowledgement in the first of his ACT affidavits that on his arrival in Western Australia the complainant ended the relationship and asked him to leave her property”. 

This acknowledgement is consistent with the statement of material facts and the note of indignation King struck in giving evidence about the complainant’s failure to recognise his sacrifice in moving to Western Australia: 

“… for [my former partner] to say it was over when I got to Perth was way off the mark because she knew the sacrifice I had made, you know, leave [sic] my son in Brisbane”. 

King states in his May 2016 ACT affidavit that he flew to Perth on January 11, 2012 because he and his former partner had moved to Western Australia together. 

Conversely, in his July Queensland affidavit, King says he was in Perth between January 11-15, 2012, to attend job interviews. He admits to contacting the complainant on 49 occasions – via calls, text messages and emails – but doesn’t find this excessive because she replied to some of his texts. He denies that the relationship had been “on and off” and that the complainant had ended it. 

By the statement of material facts, King travelled to Western Australia in February 2012 to attend job interviews and pressured the complainant to let him stay with her. After an argument, she paid for his outgoing flight as he’d refused to leave. 

In his July Queensland affidavit, King again disputes the version of facts on which he was sentenced. 

Everything was tickety-boo, King maintains. He visited a mutual friend to celebrate the complainant’s birthday with other friends; there was no argument in which he was asked to leave; he’d booked a return ticket for himself; she’d even sent him a naked photo of herself – unassailable proof of the robust, uninterrupted relationship!

Asked in cross-examination about whether he’d attempted to obtain evidence from his friends, King said that the mutual friend they’d visited had died and the friends with whom they celebrated the birthday were the complainant’s friends. 

King totally omitted his February 2012 visit to Western Australia from his May ACT affidavit. 

In his July Queensland affidavit, King claims that it wasn’t until March 2012 that the relationship suddenly and inexplicably broke down on his third visit to Western Australia, when he was served with a restraining order.

By the statement of material facts, King turned up at the complainant’s tennis club on March 13, 2012. She hadn’t told him where she played tennis. He followed her to her parked car. Afterwards, he continued to make calls and send texts and emails to the complainant. He asked for sex and, intimidated, she agreed. 

King was loitering at the front of her house when he was served with a restraining order on March 17, 2012. 

After the 72-hour order expired, King asked to meet the complainant, resulting in his arrest. 

If the restraining order was what it took for King to realise the relationship was over, why did he fail to disclose its existence to the ACT board when asked if there was a protection order in place at the time of his arrest? 

Asked in cross-examination about the differences between his versions as to whether the complainant ended the relationship, King said it was not “totally true” to say that his partner ended the relationship. 

“[T]hat was her version of – it is not that you know, of her saying, you know, she wanted it to end.” 

Holmes CJ was, y’know, thoroughly unconvinced by King’s lacklustre explanation. 

Fittingly, King didn’t manage to commit to memory a standard explanation for the inconsistencies between his affidavits and the Statement of Material Facts. 

When he emailed the ACT board the statement of material facts, he swore that he’d relied on his memory in his earlier ACT affidavits because he did not have a copy of the SMF; he’d “only managed to obtain a copy” of it when the ACT board had asked for it.  

But by his September Queensland affidavit, King rather miraculously found a copy of the statement in his own file on the matter when the ACT Board requested it. 

As King was a police officer who had given evidence on twenty or so occasions, Holmes CJ found it was “most improbable” that he’d plead guilty, if he wasn’t guilty, not only to the offence of stalking but also to the circumstance of aggravation. 

Now for the next round on May 2.