AT first blush, it must have looked like what they call a ''slam dunk" murder case.
An ugly confrontation, the latest in a long-running and bitter family feud, sparks in a suburban street in Belmont South.
Words are said and, depending on who you believe, punches are thrown, prompting 50-year-old Guy McCulloch, behind the wheel of a Nissan 4WD, to twice reverse his car into the front of Justin Fuller's Holden Commodore.
Fuller, now 33, then runs some distance, at least a few blocks, to a home and grabs a backpack containing two large machetes.
He runs back to the scene and brutally stabs Mr McCulloch five times in the chest and stomach as the older man, trapped in his seatbelt, screams for help.
As a magistrate told Fuller during a bail application in March, 2019, on those facts he had left the scene, the threat was gone when he returned with the knives, and the magistrate couldn't see self-defence even properly being made out.
Fuller admitted to killing Mr McCulloch, his half-sister's partner, and had pleaded guilty to manslaughter over the stabbing in Beach Street in December, 2018.
But he pleaded not guilty to murder, denying he had intended to kill or seriously injure Mr McCulloch and raised the partial defence of both excessive self-defence and extreme provocation.
He gave evidence during the trial and told the jury that immediately before the stabbing Mr McCulloch had reversed his car a third time, this time swerving harshly towards him and trying to run him over.
And buried deep in the brief was a piece of scientific evidence that, in a trial featuring differing witness accounts and questions about credibility, bolstered his claims.
During his closing address, Fuller's defence barrister, Winston Terracini, SC, focused on the evidence of a crime scene officer, who said Mr McCulloch's car was travelling approximately 30km/h when he suddenly slammed on the brakes, leaving a 6.4 metre skid mark.
After the stabbing, the skid mark was in front of Mr McCulloch's vehicle, with Mr Terracini saying "the only rational explanation" was that Mr McCulloch had reversed again. "If there is evidence indicating that it was reversed, maybe [Fuller's] account is not all that implausible at all," he told the jury.
The thing about jury trials is that, unlike when a judge delivers a verdict, you don't get an explanation as to what evidence they accepted and how they came to their decision. And in Fuller's case, because he ran two partial defences, there is more than one way he could have been acquitted.
But given the focus Mr Terracini put on it in his closing address, the credibility it seemed to provide Fuller's version, otherwise described as "very, very implausible" by Crown prosecutor John Stanhope, and the question the jury asked the day before reaching their verdict, one could infer that a 6.4 metre skid mark left in Beach Street could have been at the forefront of their minds when they returned to Newcastle Supreme Court on Wednesday and found him not guilty.
Fuller mouthed the words "thank you" after the verdict was delivered as family members of Mr McCulloch responded angrily, storming out of the courtroom.
The proceedings were a re-trial after the first trial was aborted six days into the evidence when two witnesses in the trial, as well as at least one other member of the public who had nothing to do with the matter, posted inflammatory and potentially prejudicial comments on social media.
The proceedings were also the first Supreme Court jury trial in NSW to commence during the COVID-19 restrictions, with jurors socially distanced around the courtroom and spaces in the public gallery limited.
Fuller, who has remained behind bars since December, 2018, will be sentenced for manslaughter in October.
If there is evidence indicating that it was reversed, maybe [Fuller's] account is not all that implausible at all.
Defence barrister Winston Terracini, SC, told the jury in his closing address.
