Danny Awad wins High Court appeal in cocaine smuggling case

Mick Gatto says his family is “over the moon” after the High Court made a major call on his son-in-law Danny Awad’s drug trafficking conviction.

The High Court on Thursday sensationally tore up the cocaine trafficking conviction of Mick Gatto’s son-in-law, Danny Awad, and ordered he and his co-accused to be retried.

Mr Gatto told the Herald Sun: “The family is over the moon”.

Awad, who is married to Mr Gatto’s daughter, Sarah, was in 2019 jailed for 15 years, with a 10 year non-parole period, after a jury found him guilty of attempting to possess 22 kilograms of cocaine smuggled into Australia from Mexico in Xerox printers in 2017.

The shipment was intercepted by Australian Federal Police officers when it arrived in Melbourne.

Danny Awad and his wife Sarah Gatto. Picture: Facebook

Mick Gatto told the Herald Sun his family is ‘over the moon’ at the result in the High Court.

At trial, Tambakakis gave evidence he thought it was steroid tablets, not cocaine, hidden inside the printers, and that Awad did not follow through with plans to accompany him in the van he used to pick the consignment up.

He said he “wouldn’t have been involved” with accepting the shipment if he knew there was cocaine hidden inside the printers.

Had jurors accepted Tambakakis’s evidence, both men would have been acquitted.

Awad did not give evidence at trial, but his case has always been that he was never in Tambakakis’s van and therefore never “possessed” the drugs.

Awad will face a retrial. Picture: AFP/County Court of Victoria

Police found more than 20kg of cocaine hidden inside Xerox machines. Picture: AFP/County Court of Victoria

Accused people are not required to give evidence at trial, and Victorian law includes strict limits on what judges can tell jurors about an accused person’s decision to give evidence.

Awad and Tambakakis’s High Court appeal revolved around comments Judge Mark Dean gave to jurors before they began deliberations.

Judge Dean said of evidence Tambakakis gave at trial: “a guilty person might decide to tough out cross-examination in the hope or belief that he will be more likely to be believed and his defence accepted if he takes the risk of giving evidence”.

The High Court, by majority, found Judge Dean’s comments undermined the presumption of innocence and resulted in a “substantial miscarriage of justice”.

Chief Justice Susan Kiefel and Justice Jacqueline Gleeson, who formed part of the majority, said Judge Dean’s comments had the “the real potential both to undermine the presumption (of innocence) and to deflect the jury from their task of determining whether they are satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the accused were guilty of the acts charged.”

The High Court ordered Awad and Tambakakis to face a retrial, the dates for which are likely to be set down in coming months.