An error involving the swearing of police officers could be "fatal" for the legal case against a detective accused of sharing photos of ex-footballer Dani Laidley.
Murray Gentner is accused of accessing details about Ms Laidley's arrest in May 2020 including a photo of her shown on a custody management system.
He's also accused of relaying details of charges against her in a WhatsApp group with fellow officers, called the "SD1 Gentlemen's Club".
He allegedly made references to Ms Laidley as "now a full blown ice head and tranny".
Gentner, 43, is fighting six charges in a contested hearing in Melbourne Magistrates Court.
But it faces potential disruptions after Victoria Police revealed on Thursday that more than 1000 police officers were improperly sworn into the force.
Detective Senior Sergeant Josh Chadwick, who charged Gentner, doesn't believe he is among them, but it's yet to be confirmed.
"If there's an issue with the swearing of Detective Chadwick that may be fatal to the prosecution case," prosecutor Neill Hutton said.
"It may not be because the government may fix it up in the interim, but we just don't know."
Thursday's hearing began with the playing of Gentner's voluntary interview with investigators 10 days after two photos of Ms Laidley were leaked.
Gentner said he checked Ms Laidley's arrest record while on a day off and viewed the "remarkable" photo of Ms Laidley in the interview room.
He admitted banter in the chat group about Ms Laidley's football career, conversations he said used to happen over a beer.
Gentner said he would still look at the photo "100 times out of 100" but regrets doing so only because of the "s***storm" that followed.
"Whoever has leaked this out into out of the circle of us as police - the words I have are probably not fit to be recorded," he said.
"We've all done the wrong thing, there's huge errors of judgment in this whole thing, that's apparent, but that to me is a huge break of trust out of like our circle."
Gentner said he panicked when he saw the mugshot photo and custody number photo go viral, and he shared it in the group to let colleagues know it was bad news.
He said he advised former Senior Constable Shane Reid to contact his boss, after he admitted taking the photo, and that he himself got rid of texts and entire conversations threads containing the photo once they went viral.
He also left the WhatsApp group.
"It was a bad place to be. That's why. Time to wrap things up," he said.
Gentner said he was sorry for what it had done to Ms Laidley, and more so for what it had done to Victoria Police.
"What started as something fairly innocuous shows how quickly some errors in judgment can basically perpetuate and how big they can get," he said.
Gentner's barrister Chris Carr SC is set to argue there is no case for his client to answer.
