Peter Dupas will be retried on April 7 2010 for the murder of Mersina Halvagis, according to media reports last week. The trial is expected to last eight weeks.
Mersina Halvagis was stabbed to death in 1998 while visiting her grandmother’s grave at Fawkner Cemetery.
Peter Dupas, 56, had been convicted of the murder in 2007. His lawyers, however, filed an appeal on the grounds that certain identification evidence should never have been presented to the jury and additionally the judge should have instructed the jury differently on other issues.
The Court of Appeals granted last month the motion for a new trial. Mr Dupas’ defence team appealed in the High Court for a permanent stay of the case due to the publicity it has received.
The father of Mersina, George Halvagis who had spoken to Neos Kosmos English Edition on the day of the announcement of the Court of Appeals decision had expressed his devastation and said: “At this moment I can not express how I feel, the only thing I can say is that the system is putting us on trial and nobody else.”