Ms Rhanee Rego

Rhanee is a PhD candidate at Newcastle Law School. She was awarded a Commonwealth Scholarship to undertake her doctoral studies. Her PhD research is a critical analysis of post-conviction review mechanisms in New South Wales. Having worked in the post-conviction review system as a solicitor for Kathleen Folbigg (a woman wrongly convicted of killing her four children in 2003), Rhanee's research is evaluating the effectiveness of review mechanisms in New South Wales and considering proposals for reform. Specifically, Rhanee is looking at a Criminal Cases Review Commission like those established in the United Kingdom, Scotland, Norway, New Zealand and Canada, to determine if this model is more independent, transparent and accountable as compared to the system in New South Wales. 

Rhanee is also a practising solicitor. Her area of focus is criminal law, with a special interest in miscarriages of justice. She has also worked previously in the areas of personal injury and workers compensation, insurance and superannuation, employment and industrial relations, administrative law and dealt with a range of novel property and contractual disputes. Rhanee also previously worked for the Older Persons Legal Clinic at Newcastle Law School where she provided free legal advice and representation to older people in the Newcastle and Central Coast regions. Rhanee is also a sessional academic at Newcastle Law School and has previously taught in the areas of property and tort law, legal system and method, and has been a guest lecturer on matters involving criminal law and ethics.

Outside of Rhanee’s doctoral research, she has varied scholarly interests that span across multiple areas of the law, including research into the impact of investigative genetic genealogy on due process in criminal investigations.