Balcony killer Simon Gittany lodges appeal against conviction for murder of Lisa Harnum
CONVICTED killer Simon Gittany has lodged an appeal more than two years after he was found guilty of throwing his fiancee Lisa Harnum off the 15th storey balcony of their CBD apartment.
BALCONY killer Simon Gittany has lodged his appeal against his conviction for the murder of his fiancee Lisa Harnum.
More than two years after Gittany, 42, was found guilty of throwing Ms Harnum off the 15th storey balcony of their CBD apartment, the appeal will have its first mention in the Court of Criminal Appeal next Thursday.
It is expected a hearing date will be fixed for later this year.
Gittany was sentenced to a minimum of 18 years in jail for the 2011 murder, with a total jail term of 26 years fixed.
The Supreme Court heard Gittany threw 30-year-old Ms Harnum, a Canadian native, off the balcony in “a fit of rage” after discovering her plans to leave him and return to her family on Toronto’s outskirts.
When sentencing Gittany in February 2014, Justice Lucy McCallum said she considered his prospects for rehabilitation “an arid prospect.”
The court heard Gittany monitored Ms Harnum’s text messages and controlled almost all aspects of her life, from her clothing and hair to who she associated with outside the luxury apartment.
CCTV cameras, installed by Gittany, recorded him grabbing Ms Harnum and dragging her back inside the apartment 69 seconds before she fell to her death.
An eye witness in the case, Joshua Rathmell, gave crucial evidence of seeing a shirtless man “unload” an object from the balcony as he walked to work through Hyde Park.
The verdict in the high profile trial in 2013 was not determined by a jury, with Justice McCallum finding him guilty in a comprehensive written judgment that took more than four hours to read aloud.
Unlike with juries, reasons for a verdict are given in judge alone trials and this made the appeal lodging process more difficult for Gittany, as he has been unable to speculate on how the conviction was determined.
Gittany was granted a number of extensions to lodge his appeal grounds, and has received legal aid funding.
The case will be heard in the appeal call-over list before Registrar Alanna Van der Veen.
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