Prominent Perth lawyer Martin Bennett has revealed he was followed by WA Police in 2017 during the opening weeks of Lloyd Rayney’s high-profile defamation trial against the West Australian government.
Rayney dragged the state government to court in 2008, several months after a detective declared him “the prime and only suspect” in the murder of his wife and the mother of his two children, Supreme Court registrar Corryn Rayney.
The prominent barrister was arrested and charged with murder in 2010 before ultimately being acquitted two years later.
Speaking at a Business News breakfast on Tuesday, Bennett told managing editor Sean Cowan that he became aware he was being watched as the trial in the decade-long defamation case began.
“I went about six years without having had a breathalyser administrated… I had three in as many weeks of that trial,” he told the breakfast.
“One, maybe, but three was not a coincidence.
“I later found out that I was being followed for about the first three to four weeks of the trial, but I was intensely boring.”
Bennett recalled taking precautions after realising he was being surveilled, driving slowly to and from work, and rising early to take another vehicle for his daily swim.
He insisted he did not perceive the police action as intimidation, but an attempt to embarrass him.
He told the breakfast the incident was not nearly as intimidating as what unfolded while representing late BGC construction magnate Len Buckridge, during which time he alleged he was held at gunpoint by a unionist.
Rayney, a prominent barrister, secured more than $2.6 million in damages, one of the largest payouts ever awarded for a case of its kind in Australia.
Bennett’s firm, Bennett Litigation, later led and won a separate lawsuit against a former forensic investigator who inferred Rayney “got away with murder” during a Curtin University seminar.
The investigator was ordered to pay more than $400,000 in damages, but was declared bankrupt in 2024.
Corryn’s body was found buried head first at Kings Park in August 2007, about 10 days after she was last seen at a boot scooting class. The murder remains unsolved.