Betty June King (c. 1951-) is an Australian

jurist A jurist is a person with expert knowledge of law; someone who analyses and comments on law. This person is usually a specialist legal scholar, mostly (but not always) with a formal qualification in law and often a legal practitioner. In the Uni ...

. She is a former

judge A judge is a person who presides over court proceedings, either alone or as a part of a panel of judges. A judge hears all the witnesses and any other evidence presented by the barristers or solicitors of the case, assesses the credibility an ...

of the

Supreme Court of Victoria The Supreme Court of Victoria is the highest court in the Australian state of Victoria. Founded in 1852, it is a superior court of common law and equity, with unlimited and inherent jurisdiction within the state. The Supreme Court comprises ...

, in the Australian state of Victoria. She has served as a judge in the

County Court of Victoria The County Court of Victoria is the intermediate court in the Australian state of Victoria. It is equivalent to district courts in the other states. The County Court is the principal trial court in the state, having a broad criminal and civi ...

. She served as a member of the National Crime Authority in the 1990s.

Education

King started her schooling at Westgarth Central School and then attended high school at University High School. She later studied law at Melbourne University, graduating in 1974.

Early legal career

After completing her articles, she joined the Victorian Bar in 1975 at the age of 24, becoming only the twenty-fourth female barrister. King was in 1986 the first female

Prosecutor A prosecutor is a legal representative of the prosecution in states with either the common law adversarial system or the Civil law (legal system), civil law inquisitorial system. The prosecution is the legal party responsible for presenting the ...

in Victoria, later becoming the first female

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prosecutor. In 1992 King was one of the first Victorian women to be promoted to

Queen's Counsel In the United Kingdom and in some Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth countries, a King's Counsel (Post-nominal letters, post-nominal initials KC) during the reign of a king, or Queen's Counsel (post-nominal initials QC) during the reign of ...

. During the late 1990s King was a member of the National Crime Authority at one point acting as chair of the authority.

Judicial career

County Court

In 2000 King was appointed a judge of the

County Court A county court is a court based in or with a jurisdiction covering one or more counties, which are administrative divisions (subnational entities) within a country, not to be confused with the medieval system of ''county courts'' held by the high ...

, serving until her appointment as a judge of the

in 2005.

Supreme Court

King was sworn in as a judge of the Supreme Court of Victoria on 21 June 2005 and served until 14 August 2015.

Melbourne gangland trials

King presided over the prominent cases involving Melbourne criminal figure Carl Williams and his associates arising from the Melbourne gangland killings. In 2008 King ruled that the ''

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'' television series could not be shown in the state of Victoria during Williams' murder trial. During the trial of

Evangelos Goussis Evangelos "Ange" Goussis (born 14 September 1967) is an Australian former boxer and kickboxer from Geelong, Victoria, and is a multiple murderer, guilty of the murders of two victims of the Melbourne gangland killings. Early life Goussis was ...

for the murder of Lewis Moran she banned a proposed television showdown on '' Today Tonight'' between Judy Moran and Williams' mother. While instructing the jury during Goussis' trial she referred to herself as the "queen of banning things".

Public statements

In May 2010 she spoke out against prominent defendants, their family members, and judges being treated as celebrities. King claimed to have had a

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article about her deleted. In 2008 a fake

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profile bearing her name was removed after a complaint.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:King, Betty 1950s births Living people Judges of the Supreme Court of Victoria Judges of the County Court of Victoria 21st-century Australian judges Australian King's Counsel Lawyers from Melbourne Melbourne Law School alumni People educated at University High School, Melbourne 21st-century Australian women judges