Evidence changed, defence claims

VICTORIA Police has been accused of systemically manipulating and concealing evidence in an investigation into the murder of two officers.

Sergeant Gary Silk and Senior Constable Rodney Miller were shot in Melbourne in 1998 while patrolling.

At a 2002 trial, it was argued Bandali Debs and Jason Robert, 22, were the killers. They were convicted and jailed for life.

Roberts has maintained his innocence, and yesterday became the first person in Victoria to have a second appeal heard on the grounds of fresh evidence.

Police are accused of manipulating evidence about the number of offenders at the scene, including in a statement from Senior Constable Glenn Pullin, who noted SenConstable Miller’s dying declarations.

Sen-Constable Pullin claimed the officer said “they were on foot”.

But it was revealed last year his statement from the trial had been made 10 months after the murders and was passed off as the original, made four hours after the killings.

It is said other officers lied about their recollections, that one officer had a practice of suggesting changes to statement and destroying originals.

Roberts’ barrister, Peter Matthews, said the original was deliberately kept from the defence, the court and from prosecutors. He accused the Crown of minimising it as a case of non-disclosure of evidence.

“It’s a lot more than nondisclosure. It’s deliberate and extended an systemic concealment of the manipulation of evidence,” Mr Matthews told Victoria’s Court of Appeal.

“The rest of the trial may have proceeded in a different way in light of this body of fresh evidence.”

It was such an extraordinary case that the judges must acquit Roberts, he said.

But Crown lawyer Ben Ihle argued the dying declaration evidence was part of a larger body of evidence, and had any potentially tainted evidence been excluded the jury would have convicted him anyway.

Mr Ihle pointed to transmissions to police communications at the time, alerting them “there’s two offenders” and to “chilling” listening device evidence.

He said the fresh evidence was not a central plank of the prosecution argument, and with the impugned evidence removed it “does not reduce the overall evidence”.

But Justice Robert Osborn said if judges were to order a retrial, Roberts’ defence would want to include all the evidence.

The judges reserved their decision.