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December 20th, 2011 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda A man found guilty of murdering his housemate whose body he then chopped up with a hacksaw and disposed of, has had his murder conviction quashed, after the Victorian Court of Appeal today ruled that he may not have intended to kill his victim.
Lawrence Alexander Butler, now 47, was convicted of killing and cutting up Trevor Tascas’s body in the bathroom of a Whittington house, near Geelong, between October 5 and 12, 2005.
A jury was satisfied that he had also burned the body parts in a back yard incinerator before he disposed of the remains in garbage bags with the rubbish.
Mr Tascas, 27, has never been seen or heard of since.
Butler was subsequently jailed in 2009 for 23 years with a non-parole period of 20 years.
But in a majority decision handed down today, Court of Appeal judges Justices David Ashley, Chris Maxwell and Iain Ross set aside Butler’s murder conviction and ordered he be remitted for retrial on a count of manslaughter instead of murder.
Justice Ashley, with whom Justice Ross agreed, said although it was open for the jury to reach such a conclusion, Butler might not have had “murderous intent” at the time of the killing.
He added that while the jury had obviously believed the testimony of the chief Crown witness about how Mr Tascas’s body was disposed of, there was a lack of evidence on critical matters including the relationship between the two men, and the place, time and circumstances of the killing.
But Justice Maxwell, who is the president of the Court of Appeal, disagreed with his colleagues, explaining that he believed it was open to the jury, on all of the evidence, to be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that Butler had killed Mr Tascas with the intent, at the least, of causing him very serious injury.
He added that Butler’s own defence lawyer had never suggested his client might have killed his victim by accident.
He said the case called for explanation or contradiction in the form of evidence from the accused, who did not take the stand in his defence.
Justice Maxwell also said that the majority decision also went against High Court precedent.
“The failure of an accused to give evidence in a circumstantial case such as this means that hypotheses consistent with innocence may cease to be rational or reasonable in the absence of evidence to support them when that evidence, if it exists at all, must be within the knowledge of the accused,” he said.
Butler was remanded in custody pending the new trial.
He will reappear in the Supreme Court for mention on January 20.
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