Cop Timothy Baker has been found not guilty of murdering criminal Vlado Micetic
A POLICE officer accused of gunning down a violent criminal in cold blood has been found not guilty, with a jury taking just hours to determine his innocence.
Law & Order
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POLICEMAN Timothy Baker has been found not guilty of murdering career criminal Vlado Micetic.
The jury took just hours to determine Mr Baker was not guilty of the murder.
Mr Baker, who was a Leading Sen-Constable with 24 years on the job, claimed he shot Mr Micetic after he pulled a flick knife on him while attempting to arrest him for driving with stolen numberplates on August 25, 2013.
A Supreme Court jury today found him not guilty of the crime following a month-long trial which saw the officer branded a cold-blooded killer.
The verdict brings to an end four years of misery for the officer, who lived every cop’s nightmare when he was jailed for two weeks on remand alongside common criminals like Micetic.
The 44-year old criminal already had 99 convictions when Mr Baker put three bullets into him.
Mr Baker was charged with murder after an audio expert working for Victoria Police identified the sound of a flick-knife opening 14 and a half seconds after the officer fired his first shot.
The jury heard Micetic had an extensive criminal history for violence, dishonesty and weapons possession offences when an unsuspecting Mr Baker pulled him over.
Micetic had a .014 blood alcohol content and traces of methamphetamine in his system, which he had used that day.
Audio of the incident on Union St, Windsor was captured by a recording device worn by Mr Baker, with video from a dash cam in his car capturing the lead-up to the shooting, which was obscured by Micetic’s car.
When told he was under arrest, Micetic warned the officer he was making a mistake.
He asked the officer if he knew who he was and told him to talk to another officer.
“Do as you’re told. I don’t wanna use force,” Mr Baker responded.
Micetic continued to complain and refused to put his hands behind his back to be cuffed.
“Put your hands behind your back. You’ve done this before,” Mr Baker warned.
“Why are you doing this?” Mr Micetic responded.
The argument continued at the rear of Micetic’s car before he struggled to break free and yelled at his passenger — a junkie with a warrant out for her arrest — to “just go”.
He fell to the ground and again the officer yelled at him to put his hands behind his back.
The video showed the men move out-of-view to the front of the car where Micetic was heard warning the officer again that he would use his police connections to have him sacked.
“You’re gonna lose your job. I’m telling you now, you will.”
Mr Baker put three bullets into him a second later.
Back-up arrived almost immediately and the seasoned officer told them, and everyone else who asked, that he fired in self-defence.
When police searched Micetic’s car they found a boxcutter and another knife within reach of his position in the driver’s seat and another three knives stashed around the car.
A search of his home found a large knife stashed above the front door and a sawed-off shotgun with ammo.
Family members later told police they believed Micetic had a flick knife at his home.
His older sister Mera Gelencir claimed her brother — a paranoid schizophrenic — believed he was going to die and had booby-trapped his home.
His house mate Faik Gasovic told the jury Mr Micetic had not been himself and was filled with paranoid ideas leading up to his death.
“He thought that Hitler had escaped the gates at the South Pole,” he told detectives.
But police were adamant the cop had murdered Micetic on a whim and planted the knife at the scene.
Victoria Police Senior forensic officer Paul Tierney told the jury a sound he identified 14½ seconds after the first shot was fired was almost certainly a flick knife opening.
It was a sound never fully explained away by Mr Baker’s defence.
But it was the identification of another sound that turned the trial in Mr Baker’s favour.
The sound, captured 2.2 seconds before Mr Baker fired his first shot, was identified by an independent audio expert as also matching the sound of a flick knife.
Queensland Police senior forensic recording analyst Tim Woodcock brought the sound to the attention of Victorian investigators after being asked to provide a technical review of its analyst’s work.
Mr Woodcock told the jury the sound shared a similar length and waveform to a field test recording of an officer deploying the flick knife found at the crime scene.
He refused to tick off on his review until the sound was addressed by Mr Tierney.
But Mr Tierney told Mr Woodcock he didn’t believe it was the sound of the knife, and that his job was to simply review his work and not carry out his own investigation.
Associate Professor Dr Neil McLachlan, who was the only defence witness called by Mr Baker, agreed the sound’s wave form shared a close match to those of police test recordings of a flick knife being deployed.
He said his technique of using a computer to examine the sounds was more accurate than what the human ear could process.
Unlike Mr Tierney, who relied predominantly on the actual sound, Dr McLachlan relied on mathematical data compiled by his computer analysis.
Mr Baker’s barrister, Ian Hill QC, said his client had no reason to shoot Micetic — a man he had never met before.
“We know that he had no motive. We know from everything we can see and hear that his intention was only to effect a lawful arrest,” he said.
Mr Hill said there was no evidence his client had possession of the knife at any stage of his shift and that any inconsistencies in his defence were simple mistakes.
“The prosecution really don’t have a case here and they’re trying to have you believe he tells lies,” he said.
Mr Hill called on the jury to apply “common sense, fairness and decency” to reach its decision.
“If he didn’t bring that knife, it’s the end of it,” he said.