Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time.A trial is always about what happens in the court, not what happened at the crime scene. Which means a jury of six men and six women in the Supreme Court spent seven days deciding what happened 346 kilometres away and 1558 days earlier.
A strong case can be based on independent eyewitnesses , crime scene evidence, pathology reports and admissions from the accused. The defence said Lynn was present when they died, panicked, then destroyed evidence and hid the bodies because he believed police wouldhe was a murder. This scenario goes against all of Lynn’s training. All flight staff are taught to self report any possible mistakes. “It is drilled into us,” says one experienced flight staff.
Realising Clay was dead, Hill attacked Lynn with a knife, fell on his blade, causing a fatal chest wound. The defence considered calling character witnesses to show that Lynn was a good egg. But the Crown would have wanted to call rebuttal witnesses including the parents of his first wife, Lisa.
But human nature is not a predictable science. Calm people panic, brave people run away, timid people fight if cornered and smart people do dumb things.The defence said the prosecution produced nothing to disprove Lynn’s testimony, but the jury would have wrestled with a number of questions. The jurors may have asked why Hill would take such drastic action that was likely to involve police intervention, exposing. And how could Lynn see the “flashing” steel of the knife Hill used to attack him in the dark?
Later Lynn, who walked around the bush in camouflage gear as if about to go on safari, was buzzed by Hill’s hovering drone. “Pilots hate drones,” a detective said.There were three twists of fate that led to Lynn being charged and the remains being found. Once police knew he was the only suspect, they began a media campaign to put pressure on Lynn.