Lawyers for convicted "one-punch" attacker Levi Freeman-Quay say enlarged CCTV footage shows another man could have delivered the offending blow to Matt Pridham's head.
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Freeman-Quay was found guilty for the assault on Mr Pridham in 2013 and sentenced to nine months in prison last year.
But he returned to the ACT Supreme Court on Monday, appealing his conviction before a full bench of judges. He has been out on bail since late last year, until the appeal was heard.
Mr Pridham spent weeks in hospital after the drunken brawl on Bunda Street, while doctors tried to ease the swelling around his brain, and he spent months re-learning how to write, read and eat. He will live with brain damage for the rest of his life.
The appeal focused on the CCTV footage from Bunda street.
The court watched enlarged CCTV images, which had not been shown in this format in the first trial. Clicking through frame-by-frame, Freeman-Quay's defence barrister David Dalton, SC, said where Freeman-Quay can be seen to throw a punch, Mr Pridham was obstructed by another man.
He said in the enlarged images, you could see both Freeman-Quay and the man in front of him had wound their right arms back, and he argued Freeman-Quay's punch in fact missed Mr Pridham. The other man's arm disappeared in front of his body and you could not see where it landed, he said.
He argued there was not enough evidence to dismiss the possibility the man blocking Mr Pridham had thrown the punch that caused Mr Pridham to fall to the ground.
But Crown prosecutor Margaret Jones said the still images the defence had chosen to rely on were blurry, suggesting movement, and at only five frames a second did not show every part of a movement.
She said Freeman-Quay's punch avoided the other man and landed on Mr Pridham's head and there was a "chronology" in the moments after that flowed from that reading of the images.
As Freeman-Quay's arm drew back and went forward in a punch, Mr Pridham's legs started to tilt sideways, indicating a fall that coincided with contact from Freeman-Quay's fist, she said.
Ms Jones said the court also had to look at all the evidence beyond the CCTV, which included expert evidence and a witness account that had connected Freeman-Quay to the punch.
Justices John Burns, Michael Elkaim and Iain Ross reserved their decision, and will give their judgement at a later date.
