Arabic version: المحكمة العليا تعيد إدانة رجل من كانبيرا بالقتل

According to ABC News, the High Court has unanimously restored Michael O’Connell’s murder conviction and ordered his case be returned to the Court of Appeal.

An ACT Supreme Court jury had found O’Connell guilty of murdering his partner, Danielle Jordan, and he was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Jordan died from catastrophic head injuries in April 2022 after falling from the bonnet of O’Connell’s car in Melba while trying to stop him leaving during an argument.

The prosecution argued that O’Connell was recklessly indifferent to the probability of causing Jordan’s death. O’Connell later challenged the conviction on several grounds, including that the verdict was unreasonable. He also raised concerns about the reliability of a 13-year-old witness central to the prosecution case.

The Court of Appeal set aside the murder conviction and subsequently substituted a manslaughter verdict, an unusual move. O’Connell was re-sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment. The ACT Director of Public Prosecutions appealed, arguing that the jury had advantages from seeing evidence unfold at trial and visiting the crime scene.

The High Court found the Court of Appeal majority had not made full allowance for the jury’s advantages and had failed to consider the combined effect of the prosecution evidence relevant to reckless indifference. It referred O’Connell’s challenge to the reasonableness of the verdict back to the Court of Appeal, while dismissing his separate appeal over the court’s power to substitute manslaughter for murder.