Convicted killer Katia Pyliotis, jailed for 19 years last year for the murder of widower Elia Abdelmessih, won an appeal to have her conviction quashed on Wednesday.
Victoria’s Court of Appeal overturned the conviction which means that she will have to face trial again.
She had already faced three failed trials before being convicted in the fourth, and the three judges have ruled that it “will be a matter for the Director of Public Prosecutions whether the applicant faces trial for a fifth time.”
Ms Pyliotis claims she was denied a fair trial after Justice Paul Coghlan labelled her lawyer’s questions “boring”.
Her lawyer Richard Edney was interrupted while questioning a witness by Justice Coghlan’s interjection to tell him that “this is even more boring than other parts of your cross-examination”. He made other remarks in front of the jury which were “negative and scathing”. He said the jury would “still be here 13 years later” hearing crime scene evidence and that he’d have to “start answering these questions” himself.
The judge also called her murder defence a “red herring calculated to mislead” and said that’s what he’d tell the jury.
She was jailed for the murder of Mr Abdelmessih whose bludgeoned body was found in 2005, lying dead alongside a tin of mangoes and a Virgin Mary statue in 2005.
Ms Pyliotis barrister Dermot Dann QC had asked for the court to overturn her conviction following the judge’s “negative and scathing assessment of the defence case.”