Jason Roberts found not guilty of the murders of two Victoria police officers in 1998
Silk and Miller were ambushed and killed in the early hours of 16 August 1998 while staking out robbery targets.Roberts was convicted alongside Debs and jailed for a minimum of 35 years in 2003., Ibac.
After hearing months of evidence from dozens of witnesses in a Victorian supreme court trial, jurors returned their not guilty verdict on Monday. They had been staying together at an undisclosed location to keep them away from any outside influence while they made their decision.Justice Stephen Kaye said the trial was one of the hardest he had seen a jury consider, given the length and density of evidence.
“I knew what [Debs] had done and I didn’t want to be dragged into it,” he told jurors. “I lied because Ben killed two police officers. That’s not a small thing.”He said he got up during the night and saw Debs with a gun, listening to a police scanner.Debs also gave evidence at the trial, claiming Roberts was with him at the Silky Emperor and it was Roberts who had fired the first fatal shot at Silk when their car was pulled over in Cochranes Road in Moorabbin.
Debs was labelled a “vile and evil person, a psychopath and liar” by Roberts’s barrister David Hallowes, who told jurors the evidence could not be trusted.Sign up to receive an email with the top stories from Guardian Australia every morning
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