Australia’s highest court has allowed a man found guilty of murdering his wife by pushing her wheelchair into a pond to appeal against his conviction.
Key points:
- The High Court has allowed Peter Dansie a chance to overturn his murder conviction
- Helen Dansie drowned in an Adelaide pond in 2017
- The appeal will be heard in SA Supreme Court
Peter Rex Dansie, 73, was sentenced to life in prison for killing his wife, Helen Dansie, in Adelaide’s southern parklands.
Mrs Dansie drowned in a pond in Veale Gardens in April 2017.
Dansie lost a bid to appeal his conviction in South Australia’s Court of Criminal Appeal two years ago.
Today, two High Court judges dismissed Dansie’s application to appeal, but Justice Kevin Nicholson said he would have quashed the conviction as the evidence did not rule out the possibility that Mrs Dansie might have accidentally drowned.
“It would be dangerous in all the circumstances to allow the verdict of guilty of murder to stand,” Justice Nicholson said.
The High Court then granted Dansie’s application for special leave to appeal the majority decision of South Australia’s appeal court.
The High Court unanimously found South Australia’s Court of Criminal Appeal misapplied the law and has allowed Dansie to appeal against his conviction.
The matter will be remitted to the South Australian Supreme Court for rehearing.
In allowing the appeal, the High Court said the Supreme Court needed “more than mere satisfaction” to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt.
“The appellant argues that the majority (of the Court of Criminal Appeal) misinterpreted and misapplied the approach required to be taken,” the judgment said.
“The appellant’s argument is well founded.
“The appeal must be allowed.
“What each member of the Court of Criminal Appeal needed to do in order to apply the test … was to ask whether he was independently satisfied as a result of his own assessment of the whole of the evidence added at the trial that the only rational inference available on that evidence was that the appellant deliberately pushed the wheelchair into the pond with intent to drown his wife.”
Mrs Dansie’s son Grant said he was “massively disappointed” the appeal had been granted.
“It’s like a never-ending story,” he said.
Dansie previously lost appeal
When Dansie was sentenced to a non-parole period of 25 years two years ago, Justice David Lovell said Mrs Dansie’s murder was the “ultimate act of domestic violence” and described it as an “evil and despicable act”.
“This was a chilling, planned murder of a person whose only mistake was to trust you,” he said.
During the trial, prosecutors alleged Dansie murdered his wife because he regarded her as a cost burden.
Mrs Dansie, a former microbiologist, suffered a stroke in the 1990s that left her with long-term disabilities.
The court at the time heard she was on an indexed pension for life, a large portion of which Mr Dansie was entitled to as her full-time carer.
Justice Lovell established a “dual motive” for the murder—a deterioration in Dansie’s feelings for his wife and an interest in pursuing a sexual relationship with another woman overseas.
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