A man jailed for stabbing a new friend in the chest and dumping the body near a Melbourne preschool has had his conviction overturned because of a shoe.
Danny Noel Volpe had been serving a maximum 19-year jail term for the stabbing murder of 39-year-old Cameron Harris.
His body was found at a reserve near the Upper Ferntree Gully Preschool on September 17, 2016.
Victoria's Court of Appeal on Friday quashed Volpe's conviction and ordered he be tried again.
It ruled evidence given at his second trial, about imprints near Mr Harris' body linked to a women's running shoe found at Volpe's home, amounted to a miscarriage of justice.
The first jury was discharged before it reached a verdict. It was only the next day that police seized the size 11 shoe.
Three different sources of DNA were on it. Volpe was found 100 billion times more likely to be one of them.
But three appeal judges now say the subsequent jury shouldn't have been told about this.
It risked unfairly prejudicing Volpe and led to a substantial miscarriage of justice.
"The danger that the jury might misuse the shoe evidence is palpable," justices Phillip Priest, Terence Forrest and Mark Weinberg found.
"Any slight probative value that the evidence possessed was outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice.
"It is impossible to conclude that, absent the shoe evidence, the applicant's conviction was inevitable."
Volpe was jailed in 2018 at the age of 59.
He'd only met Mr Harris through a mutual friend a few days before the alleged murder.
Volpe was accused of getting into a fight with Mr Harris at a car park and telling someone: "I want to knock this c***, I've had enough".
He later allegedly confronted Mr Harris at their mutual friend's Montrose property and stabbed him.
"You don't threaten my f****** family and get away with it," Volpe was accused of saying.
He then allegedly drove the man past a hospital several times without stopping before arriving at the preschool car park.
Mr Harris' body was discovered a few minutes later.
