Speaker 1: I'm Andrew Ruhle. This is Life and Crimes. As we speak,
Speaker 1: the jury in the trial of Greg Lynn continues to deliberate.
Speaker 1: We have here our Ace Court reporter Miles Proost, who
Speaker 1: has run all the way from the Supreme Court to
Speaker 1: talk to us to fill us in on what's going on. Miles,
Speaker 1: Welcome to Life and Crimes. Tell us more.
Speaker 2: Thanks Andrew, great to be here. So the jury has
Speaker 2: just completed their third full day of deliberations. They were
Speaker 2: sent out on Friday afternoon last Friday, but they actually
Speaker 2: started deliberating on Monday last week. We had the judge's
Speaker 2: charge and this is his legal directions that he provides
Speaker 2: the jury and that took up over a day I think.
Speaker 2: So after that they were sent out on Monday and
Speaker 2: now we're at the third day.
Speaker 1: Is there anything you can say about the judges charge?
Speaker 2: So that's the legal directions that he's actually telling the
Speaker 2: jury what the legal sort of basis for how they
Speaker 2: should consider that evidence. Interesting thing that came out of
Speaker 2: that is he told the jury they would no longer
Speaker 2: consider a charge of manslaughter, So this was an alternative
Speaker 2: charge to murder. So if the jury found miss DeLine
Speaker 2: not guilty of murder, they would then have to consider
Speaker 2: a charge of manslaughter as part of their deliberations, but
Speaker 2: now they will no longer.
Speaker 1: Have to do this reason being So.
Speaker 2: The reason for that is the judge explains to them,
Speaker 2: was that counsel and he had agreed that if they
Speaker 2: couldn't convict miss de Lne on murder, there would be
Speaker 2: no basis for them to convict him on manslaughter. So
Speaker 2: they just say it's sort of accident or nothing essentially.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, okay, an all or nothing defense.
Speaker 2: Well I think it Actually, I think it makes the
Speaker 2: juri's job a bit easier. They don't have to consider
Speaker 2: this alternate charge. Now it's just the first charge, and
Speaker 2: there are elements of the murder charge. So the four
Speaker 2: elements of the charge against mister Lynn is that he
Speaker 2: caused the act, that he did so consciously, voluntarily and deliberately,
Speaker 2: and that he intended to kill or cause serious injury
Speaker 2: and it wasn't in self defense. So those are the
Speaker 2: four elements that the jury must consider when they of
Speaker 2: this charge, and the prosecution must prove those four elements
Speaker 2: beyond reasonable doubt for the jury to convict Misdeln. So
Speaker 2: Justice Croutcher also summarized the evidence of the forty nine
Speaker 2: witnesses the jury heard from seventeen days, and that included hunters, campers,
Speaker 2: family and friends of the missing campers, police forensics experts,
Speaker 2: and Misdelin himself. And he said, as part of considering
Speaker 2: their evidence, the jury must consider their credibility and their reliability.
Speaker 2: So the credibility of a witness is if someone is
Speaker 2: telling the truth and being honest, whereas reliability is if
Speaker 2: they were recalling things correctly. So a witness can be
Speaker 2: you know, the credibility can be good, that can be honest,
Speaker 2: but they might have a bad memory, or they might
Speaker 2: be forgetting things, and that's related to their reliability. The
Speaker 2: judge said, in reaching a verdict, the jury must be
Speaker 2: put aside all other sort of considerations, So that's things
Speaker 2: like bias or feelings of sympathy or prejudice. He gave
Speaker 2: some examples such as feeling sympathy towards mister Hill and
Speaker 2: missus Clay's family, believing that their affair was morally wrong,
Speaker 2: or believing that mister Lynn's actions in covering up their
Speaker 2: deaths was terrible. He said, your function and your duty
Speaker 2: is to use your heads, not your hearts. So that
Speaker 2: was over two days Thursday and half of Friday. The
Speaker 2: charge was finished about twelve thirty on Friday, but because
Speaker 2: the jury only sits half days on Fridays, they decided
Speaker 2: to return on Monday to start deliberating, and that's what
Speaker 2: they've done. So we've had three days now it's Wednesday afternoon,
Speaker 2: and on Wednesday the jury had requested copies or recordings
Speaker 2: of mister Lynn's evidence and the evidence of a ballistics
Speaker 2: expert with Victoria Police, a guy called Paul Griffith's yep,
Speaker 2: Paul Griffith. He's a ballistics expert with vic Pole and
Speaker 2: he conducted testing on mister Lynn's shotgun, some of the
Speaker 2: trajectory testing. And he's also the officer who brought mister
Speaker 2: Lyn's shotgun into court and it actually showed to the
Speaker 2: jury how it worked. He's also the one who he
Speaker 2: didn't mean to, but he's pointing at the journalists at
Speaker 2: the other end of the table, and the judge quipped
Speaker 2: and asked him to turn it around so it was
Speaker 2: facing the wall instead.
Speaker 1: That was nice of me. He shouldn't point guns at anyone,
Speaker 1: even if they're empty. Here a lapse on his part.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. I wasn't in court that day, I was covering
Speaker 2: it on the link. But I don't think anyone wants
Speaker 2: to gunpointed at them. So as part of their deliberations,
Speaker 2: the jury will be in the jury room. There's small
Speaker 2: rooms that are next to the court rooms that are
Speaker 2: set aside for juries to deliberate in. There's usually a
Speaker 2: table and chairs and they can have access to coffee
Speaker 2: and that sort of thing. And inside those rooms, we
Speaker 2: don't know what they'll do. There's any number of ways
Speaker 2: they could discuss the evidence or reach their verdict. But
Speaker 2: they will have access to all the exhibits that were
Speaker 2: presented during the trial. So that's things such as like photographs, footage,
Speaker 2: diagrams and maps. And just as I mentioned earlier, they
Speaker 2: requested recordings of these two witnesses evidence as well, which
Speaker 2: was granted. They'll be given those recordings on a USB
Speaker 2: and they'll be able to play that as they want.
Speaker 1: What's the gender split on the jury.
Speaker 2: Six men and six women age? The real mix that
Speaker 2: there is from I would say in their twenties or
Speaker 2: thirties right up to older fifties, sixties, even older.
Speaker 1: I think background a real mix as well.
Speaker 2: It's a very diverse jury, I must say.
Speaker 1: Interesting, that's modern Australia, it really is. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And as part of that charge last week we
Speaker 2: also had a balloting of process. So initially in this
Speaker 2: trial there was fifteen jurism paneled. One of them became
Speaker 2: sick halfway through the trial, so she was excused and
Speaker 2: then we had fourteen left at the end of the trial.
Speaker 2: But of course only twelve can return a verdict, so
Speaker 2: as part of this process, two of them were randomly
Speaker 2: balloted off. And the way this works is that all
Speaker 2: the juris have a number. It's put in a little box,
Speaker 2: and then some of the associates, so the people who
Speaker 2: help out the judge, they pulled out two numbers and
Speaker 2: those two people were excused from the jury.
Speaker 1: Two men. Yeah, So justices are very scientific and painstaking process,
Speaker 1: and yet ultimately a jury verdict could be swayed by
Speaker 1: which name came out of the box, because if two
Speaker 1: of them came out who were red hot on one
Speaker 1: answer or the other, they could sway the entire jury.
Speaker 1: It's just luck of the drawer, that's right.
Speaker 2: The verdicts have to be unanimous, so all it takes
Speaker 2: is one person whose mind has been made up can't
Speaker 2: be talked around, and that could result in a deadlock,
Speaker 2: which would result in a hung jury and a new
Speaker 2: trial if it came to.
Speaker 1: That, which no one wants, not at all.
Speaker 2: Last time we spoke on Tuesday, Defense Barrister Dermot Dan
Speaker 2: was still delivering his closing address yep. So that continued
Speaker 2: on Wednesday, and he had a real go at the prossution.
Speaker 2: I think we spoke about this last time. He said
Speaker 2: there was seventeen low lights of their case. Well, he
Speaker 2: continued last Wednesday, saying there was no evidence to prove
Speaker 2: the charges against his client. He said the jury were
Speaker 2: being asked to find a man guilty of murder on
Speaker 2: a case that had no factual basis, no factual foundation,
Speaker 2: and zero motive. He continued on about some of these
Speaker 2: failures of the prosecution case and that included things that
Speaker 2: was said in Daniel Portrait of the Crown Prosecutor's closing
Speaker 2: address that weren't put to mister Lynd during cross examination.
Speaker 2: So mister Dan said this broke rules of fairness and
Speaker 2: it essentially boils down to mister PORTRADEU said some things
Speaker 2: that I guess allegations that he never gave mister Line
Speaker 2: an opportunity to do to respond to, and so a
Speaker 2: lot of mister Dan's criticism was around.
Speaker 1: That, around the actual verbal tactics employed by the prosecution.
Speaker 2: Parent failure to put things to mister Lynd during cross examined,
Speaker 2: so he had a chance to respond.
Speaker 1: To as an experience court reporter, do you feel that
Speaker 1: the prosecution has been outgunned?
Speaker 2: Well, the judge in his charge actually made a point
Speaker 2: about this and said there were failures in the prosecution
Speaker 2: case to not put some of these allegations or things
Speaker 2: they've said in their closing address to mister Lyne during
Speaker 2: cross examination. The judge during his charge made a point
Speaker 2: of this and noted that the prosecutor had failed to
Speaker 2: put some of these things to mister Lynn, and he
Speaker 2: did give some legal directions about that.
Speaker 1: So miles way too from here, what's happening.
Speaker 2: Look, it's just a waiting game at this point. We
Speaker 2: don't really know what's going to happen next. We don't
Speaker 2: know how long the jury will take to reach a verdict.
Speaker 2: But the way it works for us is we hang
Speaker 2: around the court, we get notified that has been reached
Speaker 2: and we usually don't have much time to get to
Speaker 2: the courtroom, but we're just hanging out waiting for that.
Speaker 2: When that comes through, that message comes through, we will
Speaker 2: race straight to the court and take our seats. And
Speaker 2: there's others as well who were who hang around the court.
Speaker 2: Some of the police officers involved in the case, they've
Speaker 2: been around. We have an office in the Supreme Court,
Speaker 2: so we're just in them working on other things. I
Speaker 2: have been covering other cases as well, but it's just
Speaker 2: a matter of having your emails open and making sure
Speaker 2: you're ready to go.
Speaker 1: So it's all by email. It is. Yep, you wouldn't
Speaker 1: want to get forgetful. Well, thanks for coming all the
Speaker 1: way back to the office, to this office, to the
Speaker 1: soundproof room in the cone of silence to talk to us.
Speaker 2: Thanks Andrew. The next time we speak will probably be
Speaker 2: whenever it it has been reached.
Speaker 1: That will be perfect. I look forward to it. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening. Life in Crimes is a Sunday Herald Sun
Speaker 1: production for True Crime Australia. Our producer is Johnty Burton.
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