Justice panel deliberating on Toyah murderer's appeal
Supreme Court
A trio of Brisbane Supreme Court judges could take weeks to decide the fate of convicted murderer Rajwinder Singh after he this week appealed his sentence for killing former Paws and Claws volunteer Toyah Cordingley at Wangetti Beach.
Mr Singh, who was sentenced late last year to life imprisonment with a non-parole period of 25 years for the 2018 murder, has based his appeal on several issues relating to the trial, as well as his legal team arguing the sentence was "manifestly excessive".
Singh’s lawyer Saul Holt KC told the court one issue was the dismissal by judge Lincoln Crowley of a member of the jury partway through the trial, referred to as “juror five”.
Mr Holt speculated whether all of the jury should have been dismissed, rather than just one.
Queensland's Director of Public Prosecutions Todd Fuller KC told the court there was "no irregularity on the part of the judge” in relation to the dismissal of juror five.
As part of the appeal, the defence team also argued the jurors should not have been separated from each other during a visit to Wangetti Beach because they may have heard different information during the excursion.
But Mr Fuller argued the jurors were “always in the control of the court" during the outing.
The defence team also brought into question an instruction to the jury by Justice Crowley to discount Ms Cordingley’s partner Marco Heidenreich as a murder suspect if they believed photos of him in a different place had not been digitally manipulated.
In terms of the sentence, Mr Holt argued setting the minimum non-parole period at five years longer than the compulsory minimum was unjustified.
“This was a single homicide without other associated offending,” he said.
