Eden Waugh killer's jail term cut by more than 10 years on appeal

Eden Waugh, who was shot and killed in his Watson home in 2016. Picture: Supplied

The "callous" man who murdered Canberra drug dealer Eden Waugh has had his sentence quashed and replaced by a new maximum jail term that is more than 10 years shorter.

In 2019, Justice Michael Elkaim jailed Peter Forster-Jones for more than 40 years and set a non-parole period of 25 years.

The sentence was comprised of penalties for eight offences, which Forster-Jones committed in two violent 2016 home invasions.

In the first incident, Forster-Jones was part of a group that broke into Waugh's home in Watson. Armed with a gun, a machete and a metal pole, the group assaulted and threatened the people inside, including Waugh, while demanding drugs and money. One of the unit's occupants was so terrified he jumped from a third-storey window to escape and fractured his spine.

Six weeks later, the offenders returned to the scene. Forster-Jones wanted to rob Waugh and scare him so he would not co-operate with a police investigation into the first incident. But when the offenders arrived and could not get into the unit, Forster-Jones shot and killed Waugh through the front door. He then forced entry and stepped over Waugh's body, in an act described as "callous", on his way inside to rob Waugh's partner.

Forster-Jones recently challenged his sentence and it became clear last month that the killer would almost certainly be re-sentenced.

His barrister, Ken Archer, told the ACT Court of Appeal that Justice Elkaim had made a number of errors in calculating the length of what was a complicated sentence.

ACT Director of Public Prosecutions Shane Drumgold SC conceded a particular error, which was that Justice Elkaim had failed to assess the objective seriousness of the aggravated robbery committed as part of the second incident.

The result was that the sentencing process, having miscarried, needed to be undertaken again.

A full bench of the ACT Court of Appeal on Friday re-sentenced Forster-Jones on all eight charges, arriving at a new total effective sentence of 30 years behind bars.

Chief Justice Helen Murrell, Acting Justice Robert Crowe and Acting Justice Peter Berman ordered that Forster-Jones serve a new non-parole period of 18 years.

With time already served, Forster-Jones will now be eligible to apply for release in February 2036.