A former Victorian Supreme Court justice will preside over David Eastman's planned six-month retrial for the 1989 shooting death of police chief Colin Winchester.
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Murray Kellam, QC, has been appointed an acting judge of the ACT Supreme Court from 2017 and is set to oversee the fresh trial, which has been pushed back to July, if Mr Eastman loses his attempt to avoid being tried by a jury for the second time.
Mr Eastman's murder conviction was quashed and he was released from Canberra's prison in 2014 after nearly 19 years behind bars for the alleged killing of Mr Winchester, who was a senior AFP officer at the time.
Prosecutors have since pushed for him to be retried, prompting him to launch a legal bid to permanently stave off a second trial.
Acting Justice David Ashley in April threw out Mr Eastman's application for a permanent stay of proceedings, but kept his reasons secret as he didn't want to jeopardise the fairness of the retrial.
Three judges who heard Mr Eastman appeal against that ruling and three judges who heard the case in October are expected to hand down their decision on Friday.
Lawyers and the prosecution continued to prepare for a retrial and the court in September tentatively set a start date for May 2017.
The matter returned to court on Thursday, when Mr Eastman's new barrister George Georgiou said he had only just taken on the case and would need more time.
A revised trial date was tentatively set for eight weeks later, which would mean the trial would begin on July 17, and would hinge on the Court of Appeal's decision.
The court heard a new judge had been selected.
Justice Kellam was a judge in the Victorian County Court before he was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1998.
He retired from the Victorian Court of Appeal in 2009 and spent five years as Tasmania's chief integrity commissioner.
