Emerald Wardle: Jordan Miller files notice of intention to appeal murder conviction

The university student found guilty of murdering his teenage girlfriend during a drug-induced psychosis has lodged a notice of intention to appeal his conviction.

​

Killer Jordan Miller has lodged a notice of intention to appeal the murder conviction which has seen him sentenced to a maximum 20 years’ jail for strangling his teenage girlfriend Emmy Wardle during a drug-induced psychosis.

Miller, now aged 22, was last week sentenced to a non-parole period of 13 years – due to expire in 2033 with time already served – after a jury found him guilty of murdering Ms Wardle in their Metford home in 2020.

But the NSW Supreme Court confirmed on Tuesday that the former University of Newcastle surveying student had lodged a notice of intention to appeal.

Emmy Wardle and Jordan Miller, Supplied

It is understood Miller’s intention is to appeal the conviction following the two-week trial in July where he unsuccessfully argued the psychosis he was experiencing at the time of Ms Wardle’s death was due to an undiagnosed mental illness such as schizophrenia.

Instead, the jury agreed with prosecutors that the psychosis was drug induced – brought on by a daily cannabis-smoking habit and taking LSD “trips”.

Emmy Wardle. Source: Facebook.

Miller had always admitted to killing Ms Wardle in the early hours of June 20, 2020 with the court hearing he believed the 18-year-old was a demon who was “sucking the life out of him”.

But it was the contention of what “induced” the psychosis Miller was experiencing that was at the centre of the trial’s arguments.

Miller also wrote a letter to the court before his initial sentence hearing in August, which read in part: “I often contemplate how different things may have been if I was aware of the mental health issues at the time’’.

His notice of intention to appeal means Miller now has 12 months to formally lodge a conviction appeal and comes just days after Ms Wardle’s mother, Tania Simshauser, said she was happy the justice process had ended.

Police at the crime scene at Metford in 2020. Picture: Peter Lorimer,

“It‘s not closure or anything for me and I’m not happy about the sentence. Not at all, but I don’t have to look at him again,” Ms Simshauser told The Newcastle Newsin her only interview.

“And that’s big, because he has taken up so much time and my thoughts and I don’t have to do that anymore. I can just think about Emmy and although nothing will ever bring it back, I believe that my daughter would not want me to sit in a corner and rock.

“She would want me to keep going. And that‘s what I will do.”