A court hearing to determine indecent assault charges against veteran broadcaster Alan Jones has been set for August next year, and could extend over more than four months.<\/p>\n
Mr Jones faces 27 charges which relate to nine complainants, including 25 counts of indecent assault and two counts of sexual touching.<\/p>\n
The 84-year-old has denied all allegations and is defending the charges.<\/p>\n
A Sydney court was on Tuesday told up to 139 witnesses may be involved in the Crown’s case, but that number may change once conferences have been held between prosecutors and the defence.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Alan Jones faces 27 charges which relate to nine complainants. (ABC News: Ethan Rix)<\/p>\n
In September, there was a reconfiguration of the case which defence lawyer Bryan Wrench described at the time as a “downgrade”.<\/p>\n
Eleven counts of aggravated indecent assault were replaced with lesser offences, and the number of complainants was reduced by two.<\/p>\n
The changes also meant the proceedings would remain in the Local Court before a magistrate, instead of in the District Court before a jury.<\/p>\n
Defence team asks to ‘see all the cards’<\/p>\n
Mr Jones did not appear at Sydney’s John Maddison Tower as Mr Wrench again raised concern about the time it was taking prosecutors to disclose all the evidence and confirm whether the investigation was complete.<\/p>\n
“We need to see all the cards,” he told the magistrate.<\/p>\n
Mr Wrench proposed a timetable including dates for disclosure and the serving of tendency notices from the Crown, saying he wanted to ensure the upcoming hearing did not go “off the rails”.<\/p>\n
He said he expected to call a significant defence case.<\/p>\n
“Whilst he’s been deprived of a jury trial, we don’t want to deprive Mr Jones of a fair hearing in this court.”<\/p>\n
Magistrate Glenn Walsh set the main hearing to begin from August 3 next year.<\/p>\n
Preliminary legal issues are likely to be argued during an earlier hearing in May.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A court hearing to determine indecent assault charges against veteran broadcaster Alan Jones has been set for August…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":278023,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[161248,72202,161250,161254,161251,161253,161252,139812,161249,43,161247,29925,59558,44,161246,41,39,42,40,51],"class_list":["post-278022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-139-witnesses","tag-alan-jones","tag-alan-jones-charges","tag-alan-jones-court-date","tag-alan-jones-hearing","tag-alan-jones-hearing-date","tag-alan-jones-legal","tag-court-hearing","tag-defence-lawyer-bryan-wrench","tag-headlines","tag-indecent-assault-charges","tag-local-court","tag-magistrate","tag-news","tag-sydney-court","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-veteran-broadcaster"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278022"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278022\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/278023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}