A teenager who broke into the home of Emma Lovell, alongside another teen who stabbed her to death, has been found not guilty of murder in a case that shocked Queensland in December 2022.
In a Brisbane court on Thursday, the now 18-year-old – who cannot be named for legal reasons as he was 17 on the night Lovell was killed – was also found not guilty of manslaughter and not guilty of malicious act with intent.
He was found guilty of one count of burglary by break in the night in company, and one count of assault occasioning bodily harm in company.
Lovell was murdered by the teenager’s companion on the lawn outside her North Lakes home, north of Brisbane’s CBD, on 27 December 2022.
Her husband, Lee Lovell, was also stabbed twice in the back and kicked in the head in the attempted robbery.
The teenager is being remanded in custody while a pre-sentencing report is prepared by the Queensland youth justice department and will be sentenced by Justice Michael Copley on 4 December.
Last month he pleaded not guilty to four charges, including murder and assault occasioning bodily harm.
Due to the high-profile nature of the case, the murder trial was held before a judge rather than a jury, with Justice Copley alone determining the man’s fate.
In May, his partner in the home invasion was found guilty and sentenced to 14 years in prison for the “particularly heinous” murder of Emma Lovell in Brisbane in 2022. He was 17 at the time of the murder.
In court on Thursday the accused teen, dressed in a pressed white button-up shirt and grey pants, did not speak and kept his emotions contained as the judge delivered his verdict.
Lee Lovell, who was largely composed throughout last month’s trial, was visibly distressed after the verdict, which he said robbed his late wife of justice.
“You can’t appeal a judge-only trial, so I’ve just got to suck it up,” he told reporters outside court.
Lovell, who testified and was present throughout the trial, was asked if he would return for the sentencing.
“I feel like I’m slightly wasting my time coming along for a burglary charge,” he said.
Lovell said families were “the ones having to live with this afterwards and they [perpetrators of crime] get to carry on doing whatever they are doing”.
“We’re the ones with the life sentence,” he said.
No reasons have yet been given for the latest verdict.
However, during the trial last month, the defence barrister Laura Reece argued that CCTV footage did not prove beyond reasonable doubt that her client knew his companion was carrying a knife throughout the evening in which they roamed the streets of Brisbane’s outer northern suburbs with at least two others.
The crown prosecutor David Nardone himself had conceded a murder conviction rested entirely upon the fact that the accused knew his companion was armed.
He told the court that CCTV footage showed it was “unavoidable” that the accused saw his companion’s blade and, given the two teenagers had already formed a common purpose to steal from the Lovell home, he was therefore “jointly liable for possession of the knife”.
But Reece argued during the trial that the infrared footage used as evidence against her client did not show him looking in the direction of the blade held by his companion and did not accurately reflect the gloom.
She also argued that, even if he did know his companion was armed, audio and video captured of the violent melee showed her client exhorting him to stop his violence and flee the scene.
