NT: Former NT DPP to return for Murdoch appeal

AAP General News (Australia)
02-02-2006
NT: Former NT DPP to return for Murdoch appeal

DARWIN, Feb 2 AAP - Former Northern Territory director of public prosecutions (DPP)
Rex Wild, QC, will return to the office to help fight an appeal by convicted murderer
Bradley John Murdoch.

Murdoch, a 47-year-old former mechanic, last month launched an appeal against his conviction
over the 2001 shooting murder of British backpacker Peter Falconio.

Mr Wild led the prosecution team in Murdoch's high profile eight week trial last year
and retired from the DPP after 10 years in the job this week.

"I won't tell you what I think about the appeal, but I have been asked to be involved
in it," Mr Wild told ABC Radio.

"A big case like that, you have some intimate knowledge of it, for someone else to
get that knowledge would be quite difficult.

"The people that I work with, of course, have the knowledge but we will all need to
work on it again, I suspect."

In the next step of the appeal process, the DPP this week filed papers urging the appeal
be rejected.

A judge will determine whether the appeal should be heard by the Court of Criminal Appeal.

Mr Wild said the trial - which heard from 85 witnesses and involved more than 300 exhibits
- consumed his life.

"That particular case ... was quite different to anything else," he said.

"I was warned a couple of days before Mr Murdoch was extradited to the territory that
nothing like it will have happened here before, and there would be immense public interest
and that was proved to be correct.

"... you don't have much spare time in a case like that."

In December, a jury found Murdoch guilty of murdering Mr Falconio beside the outback
Stuart Highway in July 2001, and of assaulting and depriving Falconio's girlfriend Joanne
Lees of her liberty.

Murdoch was sentenced to mandatory life imprisonment, with a non-parole period of 28
years, backdated to when he was first taken into NT police custody two years ago.

AAP km/cjh/de

KEYWORD: MURDOCH

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