I'm Andrew Ruhle. This is Life and Crimes. As we speak, the jury in the trial of Greg Lynn continues to deliberate. We have here our Ace Court reporter Miles Proost, who has run all the way from the Supreme Court to talk to us to fill us in on what's going on. Miles, Welcome to Life and Crimes. Tell us more.
Thanks Andrew, great to be here. So the jury has just completed their third full day of deliberations. They were sent out on Friday afternoon last Friday, but they actually started deliberating on Monday last week. We had the judge's charge and this is his legal directions that he provides the jury and that took up over a day I think. So after that they were sent out on Monday and now we're at the third day.
Is there anything you can say about the judges charge?
So that's the legal directions that he's actually telling the jury what the legal sort of basis for how they should consider that evidence. Interesting thing that came out of that is he told the jury they would no longer consider a charge of manslaughter, So this was an alternative charge to murder. So if the jury found miss DeLine not guilty of murder, they would then have to consider a charge of manslaughter as part of their deliberations, but now they will no longer.
Have to do this reason being So.
The reason for that is the judge explains to them, was that counsel and he had agreed that if they couldn't convict miss de Lne on murder, there would be no basis for them to convict him on manslaughter. So they just say it's sort of accident or nothing essentially.
Yeah, yeah, okay, an all or nothing defense.
Well I think it Actually, I think it makes the juri's job a bit easier. They don't have to consider this alternate charge. Now it's just the first charge, and there are elements of the murder charge. So the four elements of the charge against mister Lynn is that he caused the act, that he did so consciously, voluntarily and deliberately, and that he intended to kill or cause serious injury
and it wasn't in self defense. So those are the four elements that the jury must consider when they of this charge, and the prosecution must prove those four elements beyond reasonable doubt for the jury to convict Misdeln. So Justice Croutcher also summarized the evidence of the forty nine witnesses the jury heard from seventeen days, and that included hunters, campers, family and friends of the missing campers, police forensics experts,
and Misdelin himself. And he said, as part of considering their evidence, the jury must consider their credibility and their reliability. So the credibility of a witness is if someone is telling the truth and being honest, whereas reliability is if they were recalling things correctly. So a witness can be you know, the credibility can be good, that can be honest, but they might have a bad memory, or they might
be forgetting things, and that's related to their reliability. The judge said, in reaching a verdict, the jury must be put aside all other sort of considerations, So that's things like bias or feelings of sympathy or prejudice. He gave some examples such as feeling sympathy towards mister Hill and missus Clay's family, believing that their affair was morally wrong, or believing that mister Lynn's actions in covering up their deaths was terrible. He said, your function and your duty
is to use your heads, not your hearts. So that was over two days Thursday and half of Friday. The charge was finished about twelve thirty on Friday, but because the jury only sits half days on Fridays, they decided to return on Monday to start deliberating, and that's what
they've done. So we've had three days now it's Wednesday afternoon, and on Wednesday the jury had requested copies or recordings of mister Lynn's evidence and the evidence of a ballistics expert with Victoria Police, a guy called Paul Griffith's yep, Paul Griffith. He's a ballistics expert with vic Pole and he conducted testing on mister Lynn's shotgun, some of the trajectory testing. And he's also the officer who brought mister Lyn's shotgun into court and it actually showed to the
jury how it worked. He's also the one who he didn't mean to, but he's pointing at the journalists at the other end of the table, and the judge quipped and asked him to turn it around so it was facing the wall instead.
That was nice of me. He shouldn't point guns at anyone, even if they're empty. Here a lapse on his part.
Absolutely. I wasn't in court that day, I was covering it on the link. But I don't think anyone wants to gunpointed at them. So as part of their deliberations, the jury will be in the jury room. There's small rooms that are next to the court rooms that are set aside for juries to deliberate in. There's usually a table and chairs and they can have access to coffee and that sort of thing. And inside those rooms, we don't know what they'll do. There's any number of ways
they could discuss the evidence or reach their verdict. But they will have access to all the exhibits that were presented during the trial. So that's things such as like photographs, footage, diagrams and maps. And just as I mentioned earlier, they requested recordings of these two witnesses evidence as well, which was granted. They'll be given those recordings on a USB and they'll be able to play that as they want.
What's the gender split on the jury.
Six men and six women age? The real mix that there is from I would say in their twenties or thirties right up to older fifties, sixties, even older.
I think background a real mix as well.
It's a very diverse jury, I must say.
Interesting, that's modern Australia, it really is. Yeah.
Absolutely, And as part of that charge last week we also had a balloting of process. So initially in this trial there was fifteen jurism paneled. One of them became sick halfway through the trial, so she was excused and then we had fourteen left at the end of the trial. But of course only twelve can return a verdict, so as part of this process, two of them were randomly balloted off. And the way this works is that all
the juris have a number. It's put in a little box, and then some of the associates, so the people who help out the judge, they pulled out two numbers and those two people were excused from the jury.
Two men. Yeah, So justices are very scientific and painstaking process, and yet ultimately a jury verdict could be swayed by which name came out of the box, because if two of them came out who were red hot on one answer or the other, they could sway the entire jury. It's just luck of the drawer, that's right.
The verdicts have to be unanimous, so all it takes is one person whose mind has been made up can't be talked around, and that could result in a deadlock, which would result in a hung jury and a new trial if it came to.
That, which no one wants, not at all.
Last time we spoke on Tuesday, Defense Barrister Dermot Dan was still delivering his closing address yep. So that continued on Wednesday, and he had a real go at the prossution. I think we spoke about this last time. He said there was seventeen low lights of their case. Well, he continued last Wednesday, saying there was no evidence to prove the charges against his client. He said the jury were being asked to find a man guilty of murder on a case that had no factual basis, no factual foundation,
and zero motive. He continued on about some of these failures of the prosecution case and that included things that was said in Daniel Portrait of the Crown Prosecutor's closing address that weren't put to mister Lynd during cross examination.
So mister Dan said this broke rules of fairness and it essentially boils down to mister PORTRADEU said some things that I guess allegations that he never gave mister Line an opportunity to do to respond to, and so a lot of mister Dan's criticism was around.
That, around the actual verbal tactics employed by the prosecution.
Parent failure to put things to mister Lynd during cross examined, so he had a chance to respond.
To as an experience court reporter, do you feel that the prosecution has been outgunned?
Well, the judge in his charge actually made a point about this and said there were failures in the prosecution case to not put some of these allegations or things they've said in their closing address to mister Lyne during cross examination. The judge during his charge made a point of this and noted that the prosecutor had failed to put some of these things to mister Lynn, and he did give some legal directions about that.
So miles way too from here, what's happening.
Look, it's just a waiting game at this point. We don't really know what's going to happen next. We don't know how long the jury will take to reach a verdict. But the way it works for us is we hang around the court, we get notified that has been reached and we usually don't have much time to get to the courtroom, but we're just hanging out waiting for that. When that comes through, that message comes through, we will
race straight to the court and take our seats. And there's others as well who were who hang around the court. Some of the police officers involved in the case, they've been around. We have an office in the Supreme Court, so we're just in them working on other things. I have been covering other cases as well, but it's just a matter of having your emails open and making sure you're ready to go.
So it's all by email. It is. Yep, you wouldn't want to get forgetful. Well, thanks for coming all the way back to the office, to this office, to the soundproof room in the cone of silence to talk to us.
Thanks Andrew. The next time we speak will probably be whenever it it has been reached.
That will be perfect. I look forward to it. Thanks for listening. Life in Crimes is a Sunday Herald Sun production for True Crime Australia. Our producer is Johnty Burton. For my columns, features and more, go to Heraldsun dot com dot au forward slash Andrew Rule one word. For advertising inquiries, go to news Podcasts sold at news dot com dot au. That is all one word news podcasts sold. And if you want further information about this episode, links are in the description.