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Jayant Patel awaits Court of Appeal judgment on his convictions

FORMER Bundaberg Hospital surgeon Jayant Patel should know his fate tomorrow when the Court of Appeal hands down its judgment in various appeals involving his manslaughter and grievous bodily harm convictions.

Patel is listed as the last of seven Court of Appeal judgments to be handed down at 9.30am before the annual Easter break.

In a three-day hearing in March, Patel appealed both his convictions and seven-year sentence.

The then Attorney General, Cameron Dick, has also cross-appealed Patel's sentence as being inadequate to reflect the gravity of his offending.

In July last year, Patel, 60, was jailed after a jury found him guilty of the manslaughter of Gerry Kemps, 77, James Phillips, 46, and Mervyn Morris, 75, as well as guilty of causing grievous bodily harm to Ian Rodney Vowles, 62, on various dates between March 2003 and April 2005.

He has appealed his conviction on 10 grounds including that the verdicts were unreasonable based on the evidence and a miscarriage of justice was produced by the changing of the Crown case which resulted in a volume of evidence in the trial being rendered irrelevant..

Much of the legal argument in the trial came when the Crown decided to change its case halfway through the trial and after failing to get Justice Byrne's ruling to bring the fresh case under Section 282 of the Queensland Criminal Code, won the right to bring it under Section 288.

However, in the Court of Appeal, Mr Ken Fleming, QC, for Patel, argued Section 288 did not catch the basis on which the Crown brought its "new case."

Mr Fleming said after 39 days of trial evidence it became clear that Patel would not be convicted of causing the deaths as a result of the actual operations which were performed with reasonable care and skill.

However, Ross Martin, SC, for the Director of Public Prosecutions, argued that Justice Byrne's rulings had been correct in law.

He also argued that Patel's seven-year sentence was inadequate in the light of the seriousness of his offending over a lengthy period.


Jayant Patel awaits Court of Appeal judgment on his convictions | Courier Mail