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Court of Criminal Appeal 14 November 2025

ZT v R

[2025] NSWCCA 193

Homicide
CRIME APPEALS APPEAL AGAINST CONVICTION UNREASONABLE VERDICT MURDER INVESTIGATED NINE YEARS LATER

Citation: ZT v R [2025] NSWCCA 193
Court: NSW Court of Criminal Appeal
Date: 14 November 2025
Judges: Bell CJ (dissenting); Dhanji J; Yehia J (agreeing with additional reasons)

Background

In 2010, a 25-year-old man was murdered at a rural property in Gerogery, New South Wales. The actual killing was carried out by another person (PW), who was separately convicted of the murder. No report was made at the time, and no investigation was launched until 2017, when PW confessed the crime to a fellow inmate while incarcerated.

The applicant, who was 16 years old at the time of the murder and was living at the property, was arrested and charged with murder. The Crown prosecuted on the basis that the applicant was complicit in the murder through a joint criminal enterprise or extended joint criminal enterprise with PW. It was common ground that the applicant was present at the time of the killing and that he subsequently assisted in burning and disposing of the body.

The applicant was convicted after a jury trial in late 2021. A majority of the Court of Criminal Appeal allowed his first appeal in September 2023, but the High Court unanimously allowed the Crown's appeal and remitted the matter for redetermination. The present decision is the Court's redetermination of the applicant's appeal on the sole ground that the verdict was unreasonable.

  • Whether the jury's verdict of guilty of murder was unreasonable or could not be supported having regard to the evidence, within the meaning of s 6 of the Criminal Appeal Act 1912 (NSW).
  • Whether the applicant's multiple and often conflicting admissions were sufficiently reliable to establish his guilt of murder beyond reasonable doubt, either on a joint criminal enterprise or extended joint criminal enterprise basis.
  • Whether any advantage held by the jury, from seeing and hearing the witnesses and recorded material, was capable of resolving the doubt experienced by the appellate court on its independent review of the evidence.

Decision

The majority (Dhanji J, with Yehia J agreeing) allowed the appeal and quashed the conviction. The central problem identified by the majority was the reliability of the applicant's admissions, which were indispensable to the Crown's case given the limited evidence available after the nine-year delay before investigation.

The applicant gave numerous versions of events, including denying any knowledge of the deceased, claiming he was inside the house at the time of the murder, claiming he held the deceased down while PW stabbed him, claiming he himself cut the deceased's throat, and asserting he acted under duress. These accounts were frequently inconsistent with each other and with objective evidence. Some versions implausibly elevated the applicant's role beyond what the Crown's own case alleged, including suggestions that he committed the killing alone.

Dhanji J concluded that reasoning from those admissions to guilt beyond reasonable doubt required guesswork rather than the rational drawing of inferences from the available evidence. The jury's advantage in seeing and hearing the evidence, including the intercepted telephone calls and police interviews, was not capable of resolving the doubt arising from the deep inconsistencies in the admissions and the circumstantial evidence more broadly.

Yehia J agreed, adding that several of the applicant's versions were entirely implausible and that his admissions in some instances used language inconsistent with the prosecution case itself. Bell CJ dissented, taking the view that the series of admissions, made in circumstances where the applicant had no cause or incentive to lie, combined with false alibis reflecting consciousness of guilt, left it open to the jury to be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt of the applicant's guilt.

Orders Made

• Leave to appeal is granted.
• The appeal is allowed.
• The applicant's conviction is quashed and a verdict of acquittal is entered in its place.

Key Takeaways

  • On a remitter from the High Court, the Court of Criminal Appeal conducted a fresh independent assessment of whether the conviction was unreasonable under s 6 of the Criminal Appeal Act 1912 (NSW), reviewing recorded telephone intercepts and police interviews as well as the transcript evidence.
  • Where admissions are central to a Crown case, a conviction cannot stand if those admissions are so internally inconsistent, implausible, and at odds with objective evidence that they do not support guilt to the requisite standard of beyond reasonable doubt.
  • Attempting to reason to guilt from a "litany of lies" and contradictory accounts constitutes guesswork rather than the rational drawing of inferences, and this falls short of what a guilty verdict requires.
  • The jury's advantage in observing demeanour and hearing recordings is not unlimited. That advantage cannot resolve doubt when the core weakness in the evidence is the logical and factual inconsistency of the admissions themselves, rather than a question of witness credibility that demeanour could illuminate.
  • The decision arose in a procedurally unusual context: a second Court of Criminal Appeal hearing following a High Court remitter, with the court reviewing the same ground (unreasonable verdict) that had divided the court on the first appeal.

Legislation and Cases Referenced

Legislation:
- Criminal Appeal Act 1912 (NSW), ss 6, 7

Cases:
- The King v ZT [2025] HCA 9; (2025) 99 ALJR 676
- ZT v R [2023] NSWCCA 241
- Pell v The Queen (2020) 268 CLR 123; [2020] HCA 12
- M v The Queen (1994) 181 CLR 487; [1994] HCA 63
- MFA v The Queen (2002) 213 CLR 606; [2002] HCA 53
- Dansie v The Queen (2022) 274 CLR 651; [2022] HCA 25
- Mitchell v The Queen (2023) 276 CLR 299; [2023] HCA 5
- AK v Western Australia (2008) 232 CLR 438; [2008] HCA 8
- Em v The Queen (2007) 232 CLR 67; [2007] HCA 46
- Osland v The Queen (1998) 197 CLR 316; [1998] HCA 75
- Morris v The Queen (1987) 163 CLR 454; [1987] HCA 50
- Gerakiteys v The Queen (1984) 153 CLR 317; [1984] HCA 8
- McKay v The King (1935) 54 CLR 1; [1935] HCA 70
- Edwards v R (2022) 107 NSWLR 301; [2022] NSWCCA 22
- Lane v R [2013] NSWCCA 317; (2013) 241 A Crim R 321
- Kim v R [2020] NSWCCA 288
- R v Stephen; R v Tadrosse (No 4) [2025] NSWSC 824
- R v Norton [2001] WASC 84; (2001) 121 A Crim R 103
- R v McConnell (1977) 1 NSWLR 714
- R v Warickshall (1783) 1 Leach 263; (1783) 168 ER 234