A decision to drop all charges in the middle of a shooting and robbery trial, only to revive them four months later, will come with a hefty legal bill.
In September of 2020 truckie Leith Carstairs was allegedly set upon by five men in Mount Lambie west of Sydney, detained and shot before the group got away with $550,000 in cash.
Mark Anthony Horne, Ricky Kevin Lefoe, Jordan Wakeham, Sam Elomari and Joshua Thompson were all set for a judge-alone trial starting on November 7 last year.
About two weeks before the trial, Horne allegedly cut off his monitoring device and got into a vehicle in Riverwood, sparking a nationwide search.
He was eventually discovered hiding in a yacht hull moored at Darwin's Cullen Bay Marina in January this year and extradited back to NSW.
During the trial, which proceeded for the remaining four co-accused, issues arose about Mr Carstairs' evidence, including that he did not want to incriminate himself through anything he said.
Ten days after the trial started and with numerous adjournments, prosecutors informed the court there would be no further proceedings against Lefoe, Wakeham, Elomari and Thompson.
In a judgment published on November 18 last year, Judge Mark Buscombe found it was "almost a certainty" that the crown's case would have failed without evidence from Mr Carstairs.
The decision to halt the proceedings was a "tactical decision" by prosecutors to deny the four co-accused an acquittal, the judge said.
The cases then remained buried until March this year when a second indictment was proposed with similar charges.
On Thursday in Parramatta District Court, Judge Buscombe ordered that the cases against Lefoe and Thompson be stayed until the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions paid for their legal costs of the failed trial.
Both Lefoe and Thompson paid for private lawyers out of their own pockets and are owed $131,000 and $75,000 respectively.
The judge declined to stay the cases for Wakeham and Elomari given they used Legal Aid lawyers and did not incur any personal expense.
Horne, who was allegedly on the run during the trial, was not offered recompense for his legal costs.
Under the second indictment, all accused have been charged with robbing Mr Carstairs and inflicting grievous bodily harm, plus detaining the truck driver without consent for the purpose of committing a serious indictable offence.
Thompson faces a third charge of dealing with the proceeds of crime after he allegedly purchased a Mazda BT50 for $17,000 in stolen cash.
The matters will next come before the court on September 8.
