Accused police killer Jason Roberts seeks bail for retrial
After his conviction for the murders of police officers Gary Silk and Rod Miller was quashed — and after more than 20 years in prison — Jason Roberts is set to fight for bail.
Police & Courts
Don't miss out on the headlines from Police & Courts. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Accused police killer Jason Roberts will argue in court this week he should be granted bail after more than two decades in prison.
Roberts’ lawyers flagged the 40-year-old would apply for bail after the Court of Appeal quashed his convictions on November 10 over the 1998 murders of police officers Gary Silk and Rod Miller, and ordered a retrial.
The discovery of tainted police evidence in 2017 — which formed part of the prosecution case in 2002, that two offenders shot at officers Silk and Miller — led to Roberts successfully appealing his convictions.
The Supreme Court will hear his bail application on Thursday. Murder accused are granted bail only in exceptional circumstances.
Roberts’s retrial is likely to be next year.
Roberts has been a prisoner since August 2000 following his arrest by the Lorimer task-force, which investigated the Silk-Miller murders. He was found guilty of the fatal shootings by a jury in 2002 after a four-month trial — along with co-accused Bandali Debs.
Roberts, who is serving a life sentence at the state’s highest security jail, Barwon Prison, is being held in the highly restrictive Acacia Unit and is in lockdown 21 hours a day.
He has been in solitary confinement for eight years.
Debs, whose guilt over the Silk-Miller murders is not in question, is a serial killer who was subsequently found guilty of fatally shooting two women prior to firing upon police in Cochranes Road, Moorabbin.
Debs is serving a life term in Goulburn Prison, NSW.
The Herald Sun understands Victoria Police has been reinvestigating the Silk-Miller case for more than a year in preparation for a second prosecution of Roberts, focusing on bugged conversations it recorded from November 1999 to August 2000.
Officers Silk and Miller were on a stake-out operation on August 16, 1998, when they were ambushed. A massive police operation later found the car the police officers pulled over before being shot.
A retrial is set to focus on whether the officers were ambushed by one or two gunmen trying to evade arrest over a series of armed robberies.
Roberts has always denied he was present at the scene of the shooting.
WHY VICPOL IS SEARCHING FOR OLDER RECRUITS
Woman charged after dozens of vehicles allegedly stolen from Port Melb car yard
Police have released shocking footage of two men and two women allegedly stealing more than $2m worth of new vehicles from a Port Melbourne car yard.
Read more
Claim Pesutto defamed Deeming for own ‘political expediency’
Ousted Liberal MP Moira Deeming’s lawyer has told a court in her high-profile defamation trial against Victorian party leader, John Pesutto, he gave “dishonest evidence” over the circulation of a dossier to journalists.
Read more