Hannah Quinn to be paid costs in samurai sword kill case after Crown ‘misled the court’

Here is an article by Janet Fife-Yeomans from The Daily Telegraph in relation to our client Hannah Quinn, who was acquitted of Murder in the Supreme Court NSW in December 2020.

On Friday 7 May 2021 the Supreme Court ordered the state pay 70% of her legal costs for the trial. The reason for this is that the Court found that it was not reasonable for the Prosecution to proceed with the charge of Murder against her in the first place.

The article is transcribed below and here is a link to the Judgment that is referred to in the article.

Justice Natalie Adams has ordered the state to pay 70 per cent of the costs of Hannah Quinn’s defence after she was cleared of the murder of an ice-affected balaclava-clad home invader.

A senior Crown prosecutor has been criticised by a judge for misleading the court, misleading a witness and presenting a “fanciful” case in Sydney’s samurai sword “murder”.

Justice Natalie Adams, herself a former prosecutor, has ordered the state pay 70 per cent of the costs of Hannah Quinn’s defence after she was cleared last year on the direction of the judge of the murder of an ice-affected balaclava-clad robber who broke into her boyfriend’s home with an imitation pistol.

Crown prosecutor Christopher Taylor — who has been promoted to a deputy senior Crown prosecutor since the trial of Ms Quinn and her boyfriend Blake Davis — had tried to rely on the “confused” and “unreliable” evidence of a neighbour without revealing she had made three statements, had mental problems and had accused him of making her change her final statement, the judge said.

The woman, whose fourth-floor balcony had a view into the backyard of Davis’ granny flat, had told the prosecutor: “You made me change my freakin statement.”

Justice Adams said it made Mr Taylor’s position as prosecutor difficult.

“Although no doubt Mr Taylor denies this, it was a serious allegation and an important matter that raised the question of whether Mr Taylor could even appear at a trial in which (the woman) was called as a witness,” the judge said.

Both actor Davis, 30, and Ms Quinn were originally charged with the murder of rapper Jett McKee after he broke into David’s Forest Lodge granny flat demanding money before knocking Davis out with knuckledusters in August 2018.

Ms Quinn chased McKee into the street after he grabbed her handbag and Davis followed, grabbing a Samurai sword his brother had bought him.

McKee, who had taken an almost-fatal dose of ice, died after Davis hit him in the head with the sword.

Both pleaded not guilty to murder.

Ms Quinn was acquitted at the direction of the judge. Davis was convicted of manslaughter and Ms Quinn was convicted of being an accessory to manslaughter for temporarily evading police with Davis in the days after the death.

Davis was previously jailed for five years and three months with a non-parole period of two years and nine months and on Friday Quinn was given a two-year corrections order.

“The fact that she ran (from the unit) rather than staying with Mr Davis could never make her a murderer on the relevant facts available to the Crown,” Justice Adams said in her judgment handed down on Friday.

The couple had said Davis was knocked out through the flat’s glass doors by McKee. In her first two statements, the neighbour’s description backed this up, the judge said.

In his opening address to the jury, Mr Taylor relied on the neighbour’s third statement and said she would give evidence of seeing Mr McKee pushed out into the garden.

“He was aware that the witness was mentally ill, that she had made a serious allegation against him, and that it was highly unlikely that she would be able to give evidence at the trial,” Justice Adams said.

When the neighbour had told the prosecutor she didn’t want to give evidence, Mr Taylor told her it was out of his hands because she was under subpoena.

“That was not correct,” the judge said.

The question of who to call as a witness was entirely up to the Crown, she said.

Then when the defence subpoenaed all the conference notes with the witness, Mr Taylor told the court everything had been disclosed.

But the judge said they hadn’t which Mr Taylor later admitted before claiming client privilege over them.

“The Crown Prosecutor misled the Court by stating that there were no documents caught by the subpoena to produce,” the judge said.

“That is very troubling. I will proceed, however, on the basis that this was the result of ignorance on the part of the Crown Prosecutor of relevant subpoena law and practice rather than a deliberate attempt to mislead the Court.”

Midway through the trial and after the neighbour’s mother sent two emails directly to the judge, Mr Taylor said he would not be calling her as a witness.

Ms Quinn and Davis had been small time cannabis dealers and Justice Adams said the Crown “theory” that they had agreed to either kill or inflict grievous bodily harm on Mr McKee “on an inner city street full of onlookers in broad daylight in order to send a message to anyone else who tried to rob their drug empire was fanciful to say the least.”

Ms Quinn‘s solicitor Lauren MacDougall said yesterday: “Despite her acquittal, Hannah will forever have to carry the stigma of being someone who was charged with murder. On Friday the court made it clear that there was never sufficient evidence to charge her with that offence, let alone maintain the charge all the way to trial.

“It is deeply concerning that this occurred.”