David Jackson (judge)

David Jackson QC
Justice of the Supreme Court of Queensland
Incumbent
Assumed office 8 October 2012

The Honourable Justice David Jackson is a Judge in the Supreme Court of Queensland which is the highest ranking court in the Australian State of Queensland. He was appointed to the Supreme Court of Queensland on 8 October 2012.

Career

Jackson was called to the Queensland Bar in 1977 and appointed Queen’s Counsel in 1990. Jackson now sits on the Commercial List of the Supreme Court of Queensland. In August 2014 he was appointed as Chair of the Queensland Law Reform Commission.

The appointment of Jackson as a judge was very controversial as he was, and is still currently, being investigated over his role in the collapse of investment company Equititrust which raised hundreds of millions of dollars from members of the public and collapsed owing $260 million to the investors causing many to lose their homes and life savings. The offices of the company were raided by the Australian Federal Police on October 20, 2011 with Jackson having resigned as a director only three days before. Jackson is expected to be examined over his conduct with this company in the Federal Court in 2018.

Jackson caused outrage by releasing a notorious female sex offender, Jan-Maree Farrenkothen, back into the community deeming her not a risk despite the sentencing judge labelling her in the worst category of offenders. Farrenkothen and her husband were convicted for raping two young girls in Gladstone. Farrenkothen used her own son to lure a 10-year-old girl to their home where the child was then drugged, gagged, handcuffed, forced to perform sex acts and raped both anally and vaginally multiple times. While raping the child Farrenkothen asked her husband "how are you going?" and threatened to break the child’s neck after she complained her handcuffs were too tight. When police arrested Farrenkothen, she revealed she believed her husband had planned to kill the girl, had police not found her. The couple were also convicted of anally and vaginally raping her four year old grand daughter.

In October 2015 Jackson, sitting on the Court of Appeal, made an order that a woman, who had been previously convicted of acts of bestiality with a dog after pleading guilty to the offences, be eligible for a "blue card" allowing her to work with children in Queensland. The woman had earlier been deemed not suitable by a Government agency to work with children. The unnamed woman, who Jackson refused to allow to be named, responded in 2013 to a Craigslist advertisement from a man who sought a female willing to perform bestial acts, which he recorded. She agreed and had sex with the man’s dog which the Herald Sun reported was believed to be a terrier.

In January 2018 Jackson ordered serial rapist Nigel Patrick Robinson be released from custody despite a request by the Queensland Attorney General for Robinson to remain behind bars due to his being a continued threat to society. Robinson's convictions span twenty years and include rape, attempted rape, indecent assault of a child under 12, deprivation of liberty, assault of a female prison staff member, serious assault of a police officer while armed with a weapon and he had previously been found to be a serious danger to the community. Robinson has been returned to custody on five different occasions for breaching the terms of his release on probation and during a 12 month period committed 56 breaches of his release order. Robinson was examined by two psychiatrists with Doctor Sundin finding Robinson "very concerning" and "preoccupied with sexually violent fantasies which he has demonstrated a past capacity to act out" and "is a moderate to high risk of committing a serious sexual violence offence, likely against a vulnerable female". Despite these findings Jackson released Robinson back into the community.