As accused killer Greg Lynn waits for his case to be retried in the Victorian Supreme Court, his shocking bid for freedom has been denied.
Last week, Lynn, who allegedly killed Carol Clay during a camping trip in March 2020, applied for bail after his original 32-year sentence was quashed following a successful appeal.
While no further court dates have been set, Justice David Beach who is presiding over the case, said the retrial could begin in August if there are no delays.
Justice Beach also said he would explain the reasons why Lynn was denied bail soon.
WHY LYNN IS BEING RETRIED
In December, the Victorian Court of Appeal ruled that Lynn’s original conviction for allegedly killing Carol should be set aside due to “a number of serious irregularities in the course of the trial” that resulted in a miscarriage of justice.
“Unhappily, we have concluded that the conduct of prosecuting counsel so comprised the fairness of the applicant’s trial that a substantial miscarriage of justice resulted,” the appeal judges Karin Emerton, Phillip Priest and Peter Kidd wrote in their judgement.
“In those circumstances, the applicant’s conviction for murdering Mrs Clay cannot be permitted to stand.”
In June 2024, Lynn, 59, was found guilty of killing Carol, and was sentenced to 32 years in prison with 24-year-non-parole-period that November.
He has always maintained his innocence and maintains both deaths were accidents.
Appealing against Lynn’s conviction, his defence team raised four grounds of appeal, of which the first two were upheld by the Court of Appeals.
The first issue related to the closing address delivered by the prosecution to the jury that questioned the credibility of the evidence given by Lynn and one witness without putting those matters to them.
“This occurred over repeated objections by defence counsel and despite warnings from the trial judge,” the appeal judges wrote in a summary of their judgement.
“In doing so, counsel breached a rule of fairness. The matters the subject of those breaches, including as to Mr Lynn’s post-offence conduct and his versions of events surrounding the shooting of Mrs Clay, were important to the case against Mr Lynn and he should have been given an opportunity to respond to them.”
The second ground related to the prosecution attacking the reliability and credibility of their firearms expert witness in their closing address without letting them respond.
During the trial, Paul Griffiths was cross-examined by the defence about how his gunshot trajectory tests, based on Lynn’s account of events, were plausible, which was dismissed by the prosecution as “total speculation” without providing evidence as to why.
“That approach wrongly invited the jury to ignore evidence which was favourable to Mr Lynn, and represented a significant departure from the obligations of fairness owed by a prosecutor to the accused,” the judges wrote in the summary.
WHAT’S NEXT FOR LYNN?
Last week, Lynn’s lawyer Dermot Dann, argued that Lynn should be given bail due to his vulnerability in prison, and extended delays in returning the case to court due to “sensational” media coverage.
“He cannot possibly be thought to have a fair trial in the near future,” Dann told the court on Thursday.
“It cannot be just to just have him sitting in jail and waiting for the damage to unravel somewhow, only with the passage of time.”
If bail was granted, Dann said Lynn would live with his son who has put up his life savings and home equity to guarantee bail – and supported by his wife, who marked their 22nd wedding anniversary on February 28.
“He’s got a tight family unit,” Dann said. “He’s got a role to play in that family unit.”
Across the courtroom, the prosecution argued that “exceptional circumstances” have not been met and that “bare bones facts” related to the case were serious enough to deny bail.
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