Aged-care double murderer Garry Steven Davis being driven into Newcastle police station after his arrest in 2014. He was found guilty of two counts of murder and one of attempted murder after a trial in Newcastle Supreme Court in 2016. It was a case that gripped the Hunter; an aged-care nurse convicted of murdering two elderly residents and attempting to murder a third by injecting them with large doses of insulin over a weekend in October, 2013. Garry Steven Davis was found guilty of all counts after a four-week judge alone trial, sentenced to a maximum of 40 years in jail and then had his conviction appeal dismissed in the Court of Criminal Appeal. And now lawyers for Davis are preparing to take the case to the High Court of Australia in a final bid to overturn the convictions or have a new trial ordered. It’s believed the grounds of appeal will be similar to what Davis’s lawyers argued in the Court of Criminal Appeal, that Justice Robert Alan Hulme, who found Davis guilty in 2016, used a process of “backwards reasoning”, reversing the onus of proof and leaving Davis as “the last man standing” after other suspects had been eliminated. But the High Court does not just hear any appeal. Those who wish to have a matter heard in the final court of appeal, must first persuade the court in a preliminary hearing that there are special reasons for the appeal to be heard. If approved, the appeal goes before a full court hearing in Canberra. Davis’s lawyers, spearheaded by solicitor Mark Ramsland, have been granted Legal Aid funding to prepare submissions for a High Court of Australia appeal and have engaged the services of barrister Belinda Rigg, SC.
