Child sex offender Aaron James Holliday hatched a plot from behind the walls of the Alexander Maconochie Centre: to have another inmate get people on the outside to kidnap witnesses in his trial.
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The plan, the prosecution said, was to force the witnesses to retract the damning elements of their statement, film them saying a new statement – authored by Holliday – and then kill them.
But the inmate he had recruited to help had instead dobbed him in.
Holliday was, at the time of the plotting in 2010, in jail awaiting sentence for abusing boys. He was later given eight years.
But he then faced trial for charges relating to the jailhouse plan.
A jury found Holliday, 30, guilty in 2014 of attempting to pervert the course of justice and two counts of inciting to commit kidnapping. It acquitted him of inciting to commit murder.
On Friday, the ACT Supreme Court of Appeal set aside the jury's decision on the kidnapping, entering instead a verdict of not guilty.
It upheld the verdict of guilty for perverting the course of justice.
The key question for the judges was whether or not it was a crime to incite someone to procure a third person to commit an offence.
Acting Justice Michael Wigney said it was.
But he said a person could not be convicted of incitement in this situation, where the third party doesn't actually commit the offence.
"The offence incited (procuring the commission of the principal offence) is subject to a limitation or qualification: the principal offence must be committed by the third person for the procurer to be liable for that offence," Acting Justice Wigney said.
"Because [the fellow inmate] did not successfully procure anyone to kidnap, and nobody was kidnapped, not only did [the inmate] not commit an offence, but Mr Holliday also could not be convicted of inciting [the inmate]."
Chief Justice Helen Murrell differed from Acting Justice Wigney, saying there was no such crime of inciting someone to procure a third person to commit an offence.
But her conclusion had the same result: that Holliday's verdict of guilty be overturned.
On the matter of attempting to pervert the course of justice:
"The only ground of appeal pursued by Mr Holliday relating to his conviction for attempting to pervert the course of justice was that the trial judge erred in not dismissing that count," Acting Justice Wigney said.
"There is no merit in Mr Holliday's contention that there was some defect in the evidence that compelled the trial judge to direct an acquittal or otherwise dismiss this count."
Holliday remains in jail on the earlier offences of abuse.
