Gordon Wood’s second bid to sue Mark Tedeschi rejected

Gordon Wood has failed in his second bid to sue former NSW prosecutor Mark Tedeschi.

Gordon Wood outside the Supreme Court of NSW in Sydney in November. Picture: Justin Lloyd

Gordon Wood, the Sydney man wrongly convicted of murdering his model girlfriend, Caroline Byrne, in 1995, has failed in his second bid to sue former NSW prosecutor Mark Tedeschi SC for malicious prosecution.

Mr Wood, 57, spent more than three years in jail for the murder of his 24-year-old girlfriend before his acquittal in February 2012 after the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal found the guilty verdict against him had been unsafe and “unreasonable”.

In 2017, the former chauffeur of the late Sydney stockbroker Rene Rivkin launched a lawsuit against the state of NSW for mal­icious prosecution, seeking millions of dollars in damages.

Supreme Court judge Elizabeth Fullerton was highly critical of Mr Tedeschi, concluding Mr Wood had been prosecuted “without reasonable and probable cause”, but dismissed the case with a finding there was no clear evidence of malice.

Mr Wood appealed against the decision, returning to the Court of Criminal Appeal.

In a decision on Friday, three judges threw out his appeal and ordered him to pay costs.

The court found Justice Fullerton’s “painstaking” and “forensic” assessment of the evidence had correctly concluded “there were insufficient grounds to make a finding of malice”, despite her “numerous findings about the conduct of Mr Tedeschi ... which were damning of his judgment, competence and (in some respects) discharge of ethical obligations”.

The judges observed the state of NSW had not challenged “any of those findings, nor the conclusion that the prosecution lacked reasonable and probable cause”.

Mr Wood declined a request to speak to The Weekend ­Australian.