Gerard Baden-Clay appeal: High Court to hand down decision

THE High Court will this morning hand down its decision on whether Gerard Baden-Clay’s murder conviction should be reinstated.

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THE High Court will this morning hand down its decision on whether Gerard Baden-Clay’s murder conviction should be reinstated.

Just over a month after a Brisbane hearing and more than four years after he was charged with his wife Allison’s murder, the decision will be delivered in Canberra shortly after 10.15am.

If the High Court allows the Crown’s appeal then Baden-Clay’s murder conviction will be reinstated and the case will be over for the legal system, with the former real estate agent to serve a life sentence.

If the court dismisses the appeal, the Court of Appeal will re-sentence him for manslaughter in the coming weeks.

However Allison’s family has also been told of a third possible option which would extend their ordeal, with the High Court able to allow the appeal but refer it back to the Court of Appeal for review.

The High Court is due to publish reasons along with a media summary within minutes of its decision.

A small number of Allison’s friends are expected to be in court in Canberra to hear the decision, while family members will gather in Brisbane.

Baden-Clay reported his wife Allison missing from Brookfield, in Brisbane’s west, in April 2012 and she was found dead 10 days later under a bridge 14km from home.

A jury convicted him of murder, but the Queensland Court of Appeal downgraded his conviction to manslaughter, finding it could not be excluded that he had accidentally killed his wife during an argument and then panicked.

If the High Court lets the manslaughter conviction stand, submissions from prosecutors and the defence on an appropriate sentence are due to be filed in the Court of Appeal within weeks.

Baden-Clay could seek a parole release date in the near future for time already served, after being in prison since June 2012.

Baden-Clay’s fate is in the hands of five High Court judges including Chief Justice Robert French.

In front of a public gallery packed with more than 100 people, the judges were told the former real estate agent had come to find life with his wife “intolerable”.

Justice Patrick Keane noted Baden-Clay’s own evidence at his trial was ‘inconsistent with any notion at all that there was an unintended killing by him”.

“In this case, your client’s evidence is inconsistent with the hypothesis of innocence of murder,” he said.