Jurors in the double murder trial of alleged camper killer Greg Lynn have been sent out to consider their verdicts.
But with trials only sitting for half a day on Fridays — and not at all on weekends — the first full day of deliberations will not take place until next week.
As he finalised his instructions on Friday, Justice Michael Croucher told jurors the circumstances of the case meant there was “one narrow path to a unanimous verdict of guilty, but any number of paths to a unanimous verdict of not guilty”.
Two jurors were balloted off before the remaining 12 were sent to consider their verdicts.
“Take as little or as much time as you need,” the judge said.
Jury to consider weeks of evidence and testimony
The high-profile case heard from nearly 50 witnesses as the prosecution and defence fleshed out their accounts of the deaths of campers Russell Hill and Carol Clay over four weeks.
Counsel for both parties, as well as the judge, spent a fifth week delivering thorough closing addresses.
Prosecutors allege Mr Lynn killed the pair at the campsite they shared in Victoria’s Wonnangatta Valley in March 2020 with murderous intent.
From the outset of the trial, prosecutors said they did not know the motive or precise circumstances of the septuagenarians’ deaths, other than that Mrs Clay was shot in the head.
However, they argued the steps Mr Lynn took to cover up his involvement afterwards — including setting fire to the retirees’ campsite, moving their bodies, then later burning and scattering their remains — were undertaken because Mr Lynn he believed he murdered them.
Defence lawyers argued the prosecution case had “bumbled and stumbled” into a state of hopelessness, while their case had become stronger and stronger.
They argued that Mr Lynn’s account of the two accidental deaths — resulting from separate struggles over a knife and Mr Lynn’s 12-gauge shotgun — matched the evidence in the trial.
Barrister Dermot Dann KC argued to the jurors that they could not convict Mr Lynn in the “factual vacuum” of the prosecution case.
Jurors must reach a unanimous verdict to convict or acquit Mr Lynn.
“You may all get to the same verdict on the charge but by reliance on different parts of the evidence,” Justice Michael Croucher told the panel.
They were instructed on the four elements that comprise a charge of murder.
The 12 people in whose hands Mr Lynn’s fate rests will consider whether those elements have been met from Monday.