The police officer son of former senator and New South Wales premier Kristina Keneally has been found guilty of fabricating evidence, which landed a man behind bars. 25-year-old Daniel Keneally was charged over a statement he made claiming a man had threatened police in a phone call.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00 In 2019, he was a proud Police Academy graduate, his beaming mother by his side.
00:08 But Daniel Keneally is now a disgraced police officer, limping into court to learn his fate,
00:14 flanked by his father and his lawyer.
00:17 In 2021, the Newtown police officer was on a night shift when he took a call from Goulburn
00:21 man Luke Moore.
00:23 After the 12-minute conversation, Keneally wrote a statement saying Mr Moore had threatened
00:27 police.
00:28 Keneally's statement claimed the caller named a Goulburn detective, saying he was
00:33 dead, as good as gone, and "I'm coming for him when he least expects it."
00:38 Mr Moore spent three weeks behind bars after being charged with using a carriage service
00:42 to menace and threaten to kill.
00:44 But a recording he'd secretly made during the call later proved he had not said the
00:49 things Keneally had claimed.
00:51 Police dropped the charges and apologised, then the Law Enforcement Commission charged
00:55 Keneally with fabricating evidence with the intent to mislead a judicial tribunal.
01:01 Keneally told the court he'd opened Mr Moore's website during the call, and may have mixed
01:05 up some of what he'd read on screen with what he'd heard.
01:08 During the hearing, Keneally gave evidence that he was tired and wasn't really coping
01:12 with things in his job.
01:14 He admitted he wasn't 100% confident where he'd gotten some aspects of his statement
01:18 from, but maintained he didn't purposefully add any material that he knew to be false.
01:24 But the Magistrate found Keneally had deliberately misled, saying "clearly a false statement
01:29 has been made.
01:30 An intelligent policeman on a matter of this importance could not make this mistake inadvertently."
01:36 His lawyer says Keneally will appeal.
01:38 Mr Keneally holds his head high.
01:40 This won't be the last that we've heard of this particular matter.
01:44 He'll be sentenced next month.
01:46 [BLANK_AUDIO]