A top prosecutor is yet to decide whether Greg Lynn will be charged with killing a second missing camper when he faces retrial after a successful appeal.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Three Victorian Court of Appeal judges on Thursday found Lynn, 59, had faced a “substantial miscarriage of justice” and ordered his murder conviction over the death of Carol Clay, 73, be set aside.<\/p>\n
They found the former commercial pilot’s lawyers had proven a number of irregularities in Lynn’s 2024 jury trial over the deaths of missing campers Ms Clay and her secret lover Russell Hill, 74.<\/p>\n
The jury acquitted Lynn of Mr Hill’s murder following a split verdict and prosecutors were asked during the appeal whether they will bring a manslaughter charge against him over his death.<\/p>\n
“I take it that on any retrial, the prosecution would not try to prefer a charge of manslaughter in relation to Mr Hill by filing an indictment containing a charge of manslaughter?” appeal judge Phillip Priest said.<\/p>\n
“It simply hadn’t occurred to me as a possibility,” prosecutor Kathryn Hamill told the court.<\/p>\n
She asked to speak with the Director of Public Prosecutions Brendan Kissane and pass on a note to the court.<\/p>\n
In written reasons, the three appeal judges said the director had responded to the court.<\/p>\n
“…That these issues cannot be known in advance, noting that whether manslaughter is left will be a matter for the trial judge and the parties at the time,” the judges said.<\/p>\n
A prosecution spokeswoman told AAP it did not wish to comment and Mr Kissane declined to speak as he left court on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Ms Clay and Mr Hill disappeared from a remote campsite in Victoria’s High Country, where Lynn was also camping, in March 2020.<\/p>\n
Lynn was initially charged with two murders and took it to trial, admitting he burned their bodies but said the deaths were accidental.<\/p>\n
He told the jury he struggled over his shotgun with Mr Hill when it accidentally discharged and shot Ms Clay in the head, and Mr Hill died after a struggle with Lynn over a knife.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The prosecution argued Lynn’s motive for Ms Clay’s killing was because he wanted to cover up Mr Hill’s death, whom they said died first.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The jury delivered its split verdict in June 2024, convicting him of Ms Clay’s murder.<\/p>\n
Lynn appealed the conviction with his lawyers submitting it was an unsafe verdict as prosecutors put forward an “unfair” case, a claim the legal team denied.<\/p>\n
Court president Justice Karin Emerton delivered Lynn’s appeal win at a brief hearing on Thursday, saying there were “a number of serious irregularities” at trial, which gave rise to “a substantial miscarriage of justice”.<\/p>\n
“Mr Lynn’s conviction for the murder of Carol Clay will be set aside and a new trial will be ordered.”<\/p>\n
In written reasons published after the hearing, the judges said the prosecution’s conduct had “so compromised the fairness of the trial that there was a substantial miscarriage of justice”.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors had breached the rules of fairness in their closing address to the jury by challenging the credibility of Lynn’s evidence without ever putting it to him when he was a witness.<\/p>\n
This meant Lynn was not given an opportunity to respond to alleged post-offence conduct including burning the bodies and destroying the campsite and his version of events about the two deaths.\u00a0<\/p>\n
They further accused prosecutors of having “unfairly attacked” the reliability and credibility of its own firearms expert without giving him a chance to respond.<\/p>\n
Ms Clay’s daughter Emma Davies and Mr Hill’s daughters Deborah and Colleen appeared emotional as the decision was handed down.<\/p>\n
Lynn, who had waved to his son Geordie when he entered the dock, grinned as he was remanded in custody and will face the Supreme Court for a directions hearing on January 28.<\/p>\n
Lynn’s lawyers could apply for him to be released on bail before a fresh trial.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A top prosecutor is yet to decide whether Greg Lynn will be charged with killing a second missing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":180226,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-180225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180225\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/180226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}