The girlfriend of a man who killed a home intruder with a samurai sword has been acquitted of helping him evade police after appealing her conviction.
Hannah Quinn was found guilty of being an accessory after the fact to the manslaughter of Jett McKee in Sydney in August 2018.
She was sentenced to a two-year community corrections order over the conviction in 2021.
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Her boyfriend and co-offender, Blake Davis, was convicted of manslaughter by excessive self-defence.
He became eligible for parole last month.
Quinn appealed her conviction on two grounds, arguing a miscarriage of justice arose as a result of the Crown’s reliance on consciousness of guilt reasoning in its closing address and that the jury’s verdict was unreasonable.
In a decision handed down on Friday in the Court of Criminal Appeal, the conviction was quashed.
Chief Justice Andrew Bell said the case was “most unusual”.
“Having carefully reviewed the record of the trial … I have concluded that the jury ought nonetheless to have entertained a reasonable doubt as to proof of the Applicant’s (Quinn’s) guilt, and that the jury’s verdict in respect of the Appellant was unreasonable,” Bell said.
McKee died after Davis struck him once to the head using a samurai sword after the victim broke into Davis’s Forest Lodge home while high on ice.
The couple were small-time drug dealers and McKee attempted a home invasion to steal their drug money to secure funds for his unborn child after he gambled all his own money away.
After entering the property, McKee threatened the couple with a pistol before punching Davis in the face with a set of knuckledusters.
McKee then fled the premises and was chased by Quinn and Davis, who was carrying the sword.
The couple eventually caught up to McKee and Davis struck him once with the sword, killing him.
Quinn and Davis fled the scene, then spent the next three days booking into various hotels around Sydney before handing themselves into police.
Davis and Quinn were both initially charged with murder, accused of being part of a joint criminal enterprise.
Quinn was also charged with accessory after the fact in relation to the actions in the days following McKee’s death.
They were both acquitted of the murder charge.