In 2021, Andrew John Cobby was convicted of assaulting and strangling his estranged wife, Kym, 51, outside her home in the Gold Coast hinterland in November 2017.
Today, Justice Thomas Bradley delivered the appeal verdict along with two other judges, concluding that there was no substantial chance of an innocent man being found guilty.
Justice Mullins remarked, “(Cobby) has not proven that the new DNA evidence from recent testing would have led to a probable acquittal if it had been presented during the trial.”
Cobby, then aged 59, was sentenced to life imprisonment for what trial Justice Peter Callaghan said was a clearly premeditated and sickening crime.
He admitted being present during the attack on the woman he had married more than three decades earlier – although they mostly lived apart from 2003 – but denied being responsible.
Instead, Cobby told police an unknown assailant was behind the killing, ambushing his wife as he was about to get into a red Chrysler he had borrowed.
Philip McCarthy KC for the prosecution told the appeal justices in 2024 that the new DNA results for the hammer were not materially different from what was presented at trial.
“The hammer is one strand amid 13 strands of evidence, one of which being that Cobby’s clothing was saturated with the blood of his wife,” McCarthy said.
