Ron Medich appeal: Prosecutors call to keep Sydney developer locked up
Prosecutors say a jury did the right thing finding property tycoon Ron Medich guilty of murdering Michael McGurk and the intimidation of his victim’s wife.
Police & Courts
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Sydney property kingpin Ron Medich belongs behind bars, prosecutors say, and a jury was right to put him there for allegedly murdering his nemesis Michael McGurk and intimidating the dead man’s wife.
Medich is appealing against his conviction and 30-year sentence for the 2009 contract killing of his former friend Mr McGurk and the intimidation of his wife Kimberley.
Part of Medich’s appeal is that the jury could have concluded he was guilty of intimidating Mrs McGurk and therefore likely guilty of murdering her husband.
His legal team say the original trial may have caused a “miscarriage of justice” and the jury needed to be told they couldn’t use that logic.
Crown prosecutor Tanya Smith SC, on Wednesday, told the Court of Criminal Appeal that Medich’s lawyers had never raised these issues at trial.
“All of these grounds of appeal are being raised for the first time before this court,” she said.
Prosecutors say the original case against the tycoon was clear – the murder and intimidation were part of the same “continued state of mind” for Medich as he worked toward his brutal goal.
“They were clearly, on the crown case, both directed at achieving the same outcome – namely to bring the disputes with (Mr McGurk) to an end and get back the millions of dollars (Medich) believed had been stolen from him,” Ms Smith said.
“The murder alone does not accomplish that outcome, that’s why it’s clear … they were a connected series of events.”
Further, prosecutors say, Medich had chosen to defend himself saying he was not involved in any part of the scheme to have his rival shot dead outside his Cremorne home or the intimidation.
“(Medich argued) not guilty on both, no involvement with this single criminal enterprise driven by this one outcome – not involved,” she said.
Ms Smith said Medich’s motivation continued from March 2009 through the murder in September that year and until the intimidation was completed in 2010.
MAY 20: MEDICH JURY ‘FOOLED BY LIAR’, COURT TOLD
A NSW jury was fooled by a liar who threw Sydney property tycoon Ron Medich under the bus and he should be acquitted of murder, his lawyer says.
The millionaire developer is appealing his conviction for the 2009 contract killing of his business enemy Michael McGurk.
Dressed in prison greens, the 72-year-old fronted his NSW Court of Criminal Appeal hearing via video link from Lithgow jail on Tuesday.
Medich’s barrister Bret Walker SC represented Cardinal George Pell earlier this year when the High Court overturned his historical child sex abuse convictions on appeal.
The high-profile silk argued the Crown’s “excessive conduct” caused a miscarriage of justice for Medich, and a star prosecution witness was so unreliable “the jury must have felt doubt.”
Medich was jailed for at least 30 years for orchestrating the murder of his former friend Mr McGurk and the subsequent intimidation of his wife Kimberley.
“These verdicts were unsafe and unsatisfactory,” Mr Walker said.
“There was no ‘Mr Big’.”
In 2018 the jury found Medich had ordered the hit on McGurk, 45, who was executed in front of his nine-year-old son outside their Cremorne home on Sydney’s lower north shore in September 2009.
Mr Walker said the jurors “must have felt a relevant doubt about our client’s guilt on both counts” based on the contradictory evidence given by Medich’s close confidant – one-time boxer and Qantas steward – Fortunato “Lucky” Gattellari.
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Medich was brought down by his ex-business partner Gattellari, who was given a reduced jail sentence of seven and-a-half years for his role in the killing, in return for testifying against Medich.
“The jury had, from Gattellari’s mouth himself, a demonstration of his unreliability and very flawed credibility,” Mr Walker said.
The court heard Gattellari was “evocatively vague” about conversations in which Medich commissioned the crimes and gave “highly obscure, tenaciously confused evidence of the payment of money.”
“He was required to accept that a version he’d sworn previously, concerning the supposed passing on of large sums of cash was simply wrong. He calls it a mistake,” Mr Walker said.
He said there was no corroboration or proof supporting Gattellari’s story that money was funnelled into a series of companies that were allegedly “operating by what would have been the world’s biggest petty cash tin.”
During the trial the court heard Medich ordered McGurk’s death because the pair was embroiled in several costly legal disputes and Medich thought he was “the laughing stock of the eastern suburbs” because he was owed millions of dollars.
A court has found Hassaim Safetli was the likely shooter and served a seven-year sentence, but he has always maintained it was Christopher “The Kid” Estephan.
In 2018 his brother Bassam Safetli was given a nine-month suspended sentence after he pleaded guilty to two counts of concealing an indictable offence.
Mr Walker said the jury couldn’t have eliminated all reasonable doubt because neither man gave evidence at Medich’s trial.
He added the failure to discharge the jury following the re-examination of Gattellari’s driver, Senad Kaminic, was a miscarriage of justice.
Kaminic, who has been sentenced for being an accessory after the fact to murder, testified that he overheard Medich talking about McGurk saying: “If I had a gun I would kill him.”
Last year Gattellari was sentenced to at least two years in prison for trying to extort up to $50 million from Medich after he refused to pay his legal fees.
Mr Walker labelled him “a liar of a very bad kind indeed.”
With time already served, Gattellari was released in December.
The appeal continues.