Murder case scheduled for retrial

THE violent death of a family man at Coominya will go before a jury again, after the man convicted of murder was granted a retrial.

Jamie Rex Teichmann, 38, at sentence, was given mandatory life imprisonment for the “brutal attack” on Michael Desmond Manson, 48, late on December 8, 2010, or the early hours of the next day.

The court had heard how Mr Teichmann told two people similar versions of how he beat the “crap” out of Mr Manson and “stomped all over him” before enlisting friends to help dump the body.

Justice Peter Applegarth described how the men shoved Mr Manson on top of a ladder and other trade equipment in his own ute, leaving his feet hanging out of the hard cover, before abandoning it on a bush track near Atkinsons Dam where a horse rider found it two days later.

Mr Teichmann, in the Queensland Court of Appeal, had argued the verdict was unreasonable because the critical evidence against him, from two other men, was unreliable.

He also argued there was a failure to leave a provocation defence to the jury.

Justice Catherine Holmes said while there were reasons for the jury to approach the evidence from those men with considerable caution, there were adequate directions and she did not believe the verdict was unreasonable.

But, after much debate on the provocation defence, she set aside the guilty verdict and ordered a retrial.

“There was no evidence that anything said or done to the appellant caused him anger, fear or loss of control; his own evidence was to the contrary,” she said.

“Nor was there evidence of anything that could cause an ordinary person to lose self-control and act as (Teichmann) did.

“It is possible, in my view, that if they accepted the possibility Mr Manson had moved to assault (Teichmann), the jury might have viewed a response of retaliating with intent at least to do grievous bodily harm.”