A Melbourne man who mowed down pedestrians outside Flinders Street Station in a premeditated pre-Christmas attack won't get a shot at appealing his life sentence.
Saeed Noori killed 83-year-old Antonio Crocaris and injured 16 others in a 2017 premeditated killing, described by top Victorian judges as the worst kind of murder.
Three Court of Appeal judges on Wednesday knocked back his attempt to overturn the life sentence he was handed for his crime, along with an order he serve at least 30 years before he is eligible for parole.
They said it was necessary to avoid a visceral approach to his offending and to put emotions to one side in considering his application to appeal.
"By any measure, however, his offending was horrifying. It was utterly cowardly and sickeningly callous," they said.
"The sentence imposed needed adequately to punish the applicant for his appalling crimes, and to protect the community for him."
While Noori had struggled to stay awake during a hearing in the court last week, his barrister Dermot Dann QC struggled to find support for his argument that a life sentence should never have been imposed.
He said Noori had severe mental illness and was acting, at the time of the crime, in response to a message he said he received from Allah in a dream.
Noori drove into the CBD and stopped behind two other cars at a red light at the Flinders and Elizabeth Street intersection just before 5pm on December 21.
He waited seven seconds, watching as more than 70 pedestrians poured into the busy intersection, before pulling onto the tram tracks and accelerating.
He reached about 50km/h before he hit the first of more than a dozen people. The whole thing lasted just 20 seconds.
Noori was immediately arrested by an off-duty policeman who witnessed the attack.
He told homicide investigators he had been commanded in a dream to carry out the attack.
Noori had earlier researched similar car attacks in London, Charlottesville and Barcelona.
Sentencing judge Elizabeth Hollingworth took into account Noori's psychiatric conditions when handing down her sentence, finding that it had a "moderate" effect.
The appeal judges backed her decision.
"The enormity of the applicant's crime, when considered against the limited mitigation to be found in his mental condition and guilty plea, well justified life imprisonment," they said.
