Gordon Wood to appeal judge decision on alleged police malice
Gordon Wood has lodged an appeal against a judge’s ruling that police and prosecutors did not act out of malice when he was tried for the murder of his model girlfriend.
NSW
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Gordon Wood has lodged an appeal against a judge’s ruling that police and prosecutors did not act out of malice when he was tried for the murder of his model girlfriend.
The appeal puts on hold the estimated $4 million bill that the former chauffeur to celebrity stockbroker Rene Rivkin was ordered to pay in costs after losing his $21 million case against the State of NSW.
It also postpones the repayment of at least $100,000 of the $682,589 of taxpayers’ funds that Legal Aid spent on his trial and his appeal.
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Mr Wood had intended to repay that sum after the outcome of his malicious prosecution case, the Supreme Court had been told.
The 56-year-old had sued the State of NSW claiming he was “stitched up” over the death of his former girlfriend Caroline Byrne, 24, whose body was found on rocks at the bottom of The Gap in 1995. Mr Wood spent more than three years behind bars after being convicted of her murder.
His conviction was overturned in 2012 by the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal.
In August, Justice Elizabeth Fullerton in the Supreme Court rejected his claim that his prosecution was malicious and ordered Mr Wood to pay the costs of the State of NSW.
The judge criticised the former Senior Crown Prosecutor Mark Tedeschi’s “questionable” tactics, labelling them flawed and grossly unfair but not malicious.
Mr Wood lodged his appeal on Friday just before a three-month deadline expired. His grounds of appeal include that the judge was wrong in her findings.
The appeal will be mentioned on December 12 in the Court of Appeal.