Jason Roberts appeal over the Silk-Miller double police murder will be heard next week
Silk-Miller double police murderer Jason Roberts will make his bid for freedom as fresh material regarding police corruption and the fabrication of evidence is tested. Here’s when the appeal begins.
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The appeal of jailed for life prisoner Jason Roberts over the Silk-Miller double police murder will be heard next week.
Roberts’ bid for freedom will test fresh material that police conspired to fabricate evidence during their investigation into the shootings of Sgt Gary Silk and Senior Constable Rodney Miller before the trial in 2002.
Both Bandali Debs and the younger Jason Roberts, a robbery team, were found guilty of the killings.
But an extraordinary corruption investigation into police manipulating evidence in the case led the Court of Appeal granting Roberts a final appeal.
The decision, in March, was based primarily on the falsification of a police statement made by officer Glenn Pullin, who was among a group of first responders to find the dying Sen Constable Miller.
Mr Pullin’s original statement, buried for 19-years until uncovered by the Herald Su n, was replaced by a new statement and backdated to the morning of the murders. It contained evidence that corroborated other officers’ accounts that Sen Constable Miller had declared there were multiple gunmen.
There was no mention of gunmen in Mr Pullin’s original statement made on the morning of the murders on August 16, 1998.
Evidence from anti-corruption body IBAC reveals the falsified second statement was made 10 months after the shootings on Cochranes Rd, Moorabbin.
An officer in the vicinity of Sen Constable Miller, Senior Constable Colin Clarke, however, radioed out to responding police members to the shooting that there were ‘’two offenders’’ on foot.
Other officers also stated they heard Sen Constable Miller say ‘’two’’ offenders while at least one first responder heard the wounded Miller say there was one gunman.
At the heart of Roberts’ appeal will be the conduct of the Lorimer taskforce, which failed to disclose original statements to the defence and the court.
Questions will also be raised over other statement taking practices, including the destruction of evidence relating to the “dying declaration” of Sen Constable Miller.
The Court of Appeal has already identified several areas of concern regarding police misconduct, including;
EVIDENCE that police at the scene were told to omit evidence relating to Senior Constable Miller’s dying declarations from their original statements;
POLICE under oath concealing changing their statements from those made on the night of the murders;
A PRACTICE of shredding and revising statements,
MISSING statements of three officers who arrived at the scene to attend to Sen Constable Miller.
Roberts has always denied killing officers Silk and Miller or being at the scene of the crime, claiming he was with his then girlfriend, Nicole Debs, at the time. She corroborated his alibi after police approached her in 2013.
But in 2000 Roberts also denied being part of a robbery duo with Bandali Debs – the father of his then girlfriend.
In 2013, Roberts was reinterviewed as part of a specially formed taskforce dubbed Rainmaker, which probed his claims.
Roberts confessed in a lengthy statement that he committed 10 armed robberies with Bandali Debs and was an accessory to the murders of Silk and Miller after the fact.
He admitted to not only disposing of evidence, including hiding two guns used to kill the officers, but to also fixing damage to a Hyundai Excel damaged during the shootout on Cochranes Rd, Moorabbin.
The full bench of the Court of Appeal will decide whether to dismiss Roberts’ appeal, order a retrial or acquit him.
Roberts, who was sentenced to a minimum 35-years in prison, is serving a life with no-parole sentence under new laws created by the Andrews Government.
The appeal begins on June 23.
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