Australia, July 2 -- New South Wales Land and Environment Court issued text of the following judgement:

1. HIS HONOUR: The accused, Clinton Wrigley, is on trial on four counts. The first is a count of murder, namely, that on or about 23 January 2023, near Nyngan, he murdered Joel Carter (the deceased). The other three counts on the indictment, involve the theft and/or disposal of property that was allegedly taken from the deceased's residence, at about the time of his death.

2. The jury retired to deliberate on its verdicts on Thursday 15 May 2025. On Friday 16 May, I discharged a juror for misconduct and on Monday 19 May, I determined that the trial would continue with a jury of 11. These are my reasons for those determinations.

3. Relevant background for the purposes of this judgment is that a key Crown witness who is subject to a non-publication order, and who I will refer to for that reason as witness A, gave evidence of some of the accused's movements in the hours immediately prior to and after the time frame within which the four offences were likely committed. Evidence before the jury included information that, at the time, witness A had two brothers who had served or were still serving lengthy prison sentences for offences involving the supply of prohibited drugs. The jury were not informed that witness A had another sibling who at the time of the murder had a senior oversight role with regards to the New South Wales Police Force.

4. A central plank of the case for the defence involved an attack on witness A's credibility and the contention that he had a motive to have committed or organised the murder himself. The defence relied upon the forensic identification of witness A's DNA that was located on a curtain that was in close proximity to the deceased's body, following its discovery; in other words, what was submitted to be an alternative reasonable hypothesis for at least the murder count. The presence of witness A's DNA in that location had an innocent explanation in the Crown case.

5. The jury was empanelled on 3 April 2025. The trial before the jury commenced on Tuesday 8 April, following, in all, six days of the hearing of pre-trial issues. The jury retired to consider their verdict at 9.30am on Thursday 15 May. The following day at about 11am, by which time they had been deliberating for 6 hours and 51 minutes over the two days, the jury forwarded two notes simultaneously, which I marked for identification as MFI 102 and MFI 103.

*Rest of the document can be viewed at: (https://www.caselaw.nsw.gov.au/decision/19709be4761c198001d7a486)

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