Success At The High Court For Kott Gunning

Kott Gunning recently acted as instructing solicitor for Dlshad Hamad Mahmood in an appeal to the High Court of Australia against conviction of the wilful murder of his wife at their restaurant in Mt Lawley.

Mr Mahmood testified that he had been cleaning when his wife visited the toilet. When she did not return he went to find her. She was found lying in a passageway bleeding from a cut to her throat.

A week later, Mr Mahmood was videotaped by police as he did a walk-through of the day's events. At trial, the prosecutor told the trial jury that in the portion of the video presented to the court Mr Mahmood's reaction and demeanour were "cold-blooded" and "clinical". Mr Mahmood's defence counsel expressed willingness to tender the whole video. The prosecutor did not consent. Defence counsel applied to re-open the defence case to tender additional parts of the video to counter that impression. Justice Lindy Jenkins refused the application and instead told the jury they would be unwise to draw any adverse view of Mr Mahmood's demeanour in the walk-through because they had seen only a small portion of the video.

Mr Mahmood appealed to the High Court over the treatment of the video recording and the court in an unanimous decision allowed the appeal and remitted the matter to the Court of Appeal to consider whether or not there had been a substantial miscarriage of justice.