{"id":910837,"date":"2026-09-30T09:32:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T09:32:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/910837\/"},"modified":"2026-09-30T09:32:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T09:32:11","slug":"judge-recuses-himself-in-rohan-dennis-case-of-driving-while-disqualified","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/910837\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge recuses himself in Rohan Dennis case of driving while disqualified"},"content":{"rendered":"

A District Court judge has recused himself in the matter of former professional cyclist Rohan Dennis, who previously pleaded guilty to driving while disqualified.<\/p>\n

Lawyers for Dennis had previously told the court it would be “inappropriate” for the appointed sentencing judge to preside over his current case.<\/p>\n

Last year, Dennis was given a suspended sentence and a five-year driving ban<\/a> for the events leading up to a crash which killed his wife, Olympic cyclist Melissa Hoskins.<\/p>\n

Ms Hoskins, a two-time Olympian cyclist, was struck by a car driven by Dennis outside the couple’s Medindie home in Adelaide’s inner-north in December 2023.<\/p>\n

When Dennis was sentenced for the crash, Judge Ian Press told him that if he was caught driving while disqualified he could expect to be sent to prison.<\/p>\n

“It will be a serious criminal offence, and you can expect that you would then have to serve the sentence that I have just imposed because you will have breached that bond by not being of good behaviour,” Judge Press had said at the sentencing.<\/p>\n

“I cannot stress how important it is that you comply with the conditions of the bond.”<\/p>\n

At the time, Dennis indicated in court that he understood.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Police caught Rohan Dennis driving with two children in the vehicle in June. (Supplied: SA Police)<\/p>\n

In June, police caught Dennis driving<\/a>, with two children as passengers in the vehicle, not far from where his wife died.<\/p>\n

Judge Press today recused himself from the driving disqualified case on the basis that a member of the public may deem him not impartial or unprejudiced given he presided over Dennis’s previous sentence.<\/p>\n

He noted there may be an impression that he had prejudged what should happen, given his prior warnings and that Dennis had breached the bond.<\/p>\n

The matter will return to court before a new judge for arraignment in November.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A District Court judge has recused himself in the matter of former professional cyclist Rohan Dennis, who previously…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":910838,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[64,63,784,478625,13328,478624,354009,271937,271938,85],"class_list":["post-910837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cycling","tag-driving-while-disqualified","tag-judge","tag-judge-ian-press","tag-medindie","tag-melissa-hoskins","tag-rohan-dennis","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910837","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=910837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910837\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/910838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=910837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=910837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=910837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}