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The Court of Appeal has floated the idea that High Country killer Greg Lynn could be retried for the manslaughter of Russell Hill.
Lynn, 59, is appealing his conviction and 32-year jail sentence over the murder of camper Carol Clay at a remote campsite in the Wonnangatta Valley in March 2020.
Greg Lynn (left) outside the Court of Appeal last Friday.Credit: Jason South
But Lynn’s high-stakes appeal also opens the door for the appeal judges to resentence him or prosecutors to change tactics if he is granted a retrial.
On Thursday, Justice Phillip Priest asked Crown prosecutor Kathryn Hamill if her team would seek to pursue a manslaughter charge over the death of Hill against Lynn if the former pilot was granted a retrial. Lynn was found not guilty of murdering Hill at trial. Manslaughter is a less serious charge than murder, and applicable for an unlawful death without the intention of killing.
“I hadn’t considered that,” Hamill said.
The prosecutor said she was also unaware if the Crown would seek to add a manslaughter charge as an alternative verdict for Clay if the case went back before a jury.
Police searching in 2022 for the remains of Carol Clay (top) and Russell Hill.Credit: Jason Edwards
The Director of Public Prosecutions, Brendan Kissane, KC, was absent from Thursday’s hearing after attending the opening of the Wyndham Law Courts, in Werribee, in the morning.
The appeal judges asked Hamill to liaise with Kissane and advise the court about an answer on the manslaughter charges by the end of the day.
Lynn’s defence is also arguing the killer’s sentence was “manifestly excessive”.
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Hamill contested Lynn’s arguments for resentencing, and argued Lynn’s victim was a 73-year-old stranger who posed no threat to him. The prosecutor said Lynn also used an inherently deadly weapon, a shotgun, and that the removal of the bodies from the valley, before he later returned to burn them at a second location, was also a relevant consideration.
“It’s hard not to have strong adverse visceral reaction to what Mr Lynn did with respect to the bodies,” Priest said.
“He denied Mrs Clay any dignity in death and Mr Hill. Speaking for myself, I regard what he did with the bodies as absolutely despicable, but one must still endeavour to approach that very serious factor objectively and not be motivated by one’s subjective reaction.”
Earlier, defence barrister Dermot Dann, KC, said prosecutors in the 2024 murder trial broke the rules that govern fair conduct of criminal trials “so thick and fast”, he was unable to keep up. In total, the trial judge noted 17 breaches.
These breaches, Dann argued, might have led the Supreme Court jury down an “impermissible pathway” in arriving at an unsafe guilty verdict over Clay’s death.
Lynn was sentenced to 32 years in jail, with a non-parole period of 24 years by Justice Michael Croucher, who said the murder was “violent, brutal and horrific”.
Justices Karin Emerton, Peter Kidd and Priest will hand down a decision on the appeal at a later date.
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