A man who bashed his "prostrate and defenceless" victim to death over a pair of fake Apple earphones has failed to convince an appeals court he did not have the intention of killing him.
Ross Houllis died in hospital from catastrophic injuries to the brain and lungs after being brutally beaten in suburban Sydney by Abdul Karaali and Sami Hamdach in February 2020.
Karaali was sentenced to 28 years' jail with a non-parole period of 21 years after a NSW Supreme Court jury found him guilty of murder.
Hamdach pleaded guilty to the murder and is serving a sentence of 16 years and two months with a non-parole period of 12 years.
On Monday, a panel of three Supreme Court justices upheld Karaali's sentence on appeal, after he failed to convince them he had not intended to kill Mr Houllis.
Karaali's barrister John Stratton SC argued earlier it was not open for Justice Stephen Campbell, who presided over the original case, to find either Karaali or Hamdach intended to kill Mr Houllis.
Mr Stratton told the court it was conceded Karaali kicked and stomped on Mr Houllis, with the brutal attack caught on CCTV, but said he was doing so under Hamdach's instruction.
The panel of justices found the intention to kill was demonstrated by Karaali continuing to stomp on Mr Houllis after he had already been beaten unconscious.
"Irrespective of whether the applicant was acting under the instruction of Mr Hamdach, he cannot have failed to be aware that Mr Houllis was (and had been for some time) lying prostrate and defenceless when the applicant administered some of the more significant blows," the judgment stated.
Hamdach had bought the pair of purported Apple AirPods from Mr Houllis on Facebook Marketplace the day before the attack but formed the view they were not genuine.
His partner, Loubna Kawtharani, arranged for Mr Houllis to meet at Wakeley Shopping Centre car park and sell another pair, at which point the 28-year-old was ambushed by Hamdach and Karaali.
The justices noted Mr Houllis' death occurred as retribution for a relatively minor offence.
"It was senseless in the extreme," they said.
For her role in the murder, Ms Kawtharani pleaded guilty to being an accessory before the fact and was sentenced to an Intensive Corrections Order for two years.
