Ex-Brisbane Lions star loses three-year battle over speeding charge

Former AFL star Jason Akermanis has lost a nearly three-year legal battle to overturn a conviction for exceeding the speed limit by more than 40km/h.

Akermanis’ Toyota Kluger was detected travelling at 141km/h in a 100km/h zone on May 22, 2022 at Mutdapilly south-west of Brisbane

A magistrate later convicted and fined the Brownlow medallist and Brisbane Lions triple premiership player $1500 following a hearing that lasted most of a day.

The Queensland Court of Appeal last week denied Akermanis, 48, leave to appeal following his attempts to overturn the conviction in the District Court in February 2024.

Akermanis had claimed the officer who detected his speeding did not correctly operate his LiDAR equipment, which fires a laser beam at objects and measures the time taken for the reflected beam to return.

Justices Debra Mullins, Susan Brown and Thomas Bradley on Friday published their written reasons for denying Akermanis leave to appeal.

“The [magistrate’s] finding that the LiDAR accurately recorded the speed within a small margin of error was not a matter of speculation,” the justices said in their reasons.

“There was positive evidence that the officer had operated the Lidar correctly.”

A senior designer for the company that manufactured the LiDAR device was called by the prosecution to give evidence in the District Court appeal.