Tasmania’s director of public prosecutions Tim Ellis has been found guilty of negligent driving causing death over an accident that killed a Launceston woman.

Ellis, 59, had pleaded not guilty to the charge after his Mercedes was involved in a collision on the Midland Highway between Hobart and Launceston in March last year.

Natalia Pearn, 27, was killed when her Toyota Corolla crashed into Ellis’s car.

Ellis’s lawyers had argued that the DPP, who suffered sleep apnoea, was asleep at the wheel when the collision occurred.

But magistrate Chris Webster found sleep was not a factor.

“I am satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that Mr Ellis consciously drove his vehicle onto the incorrect side of the road, and continued to drive his vehicle on the wrong side of the road until the point of impact,” he wrote in is decision.

Ellis will be sentenced on July 22.

His lawyer Michael O’Farrell SC told the Hobart Magistrates Court an appeal would be lodged.

AAP