Melbourne underworld figure George Marrogi was not the shooter in the daylight murder of a man who was lured into visiting a shopping centre, his lawyers have claimed.
While he may have provided the getaway car or given the killer bullets, Marrogi did not pull the trigger, the Court of Appeal was told on Tuesday.
Marrogi, 34, is serving a 32-year prison sentence for shooting Kadir Ors dead as he sat at a bus stop at Campbellfield shopping plaza in September 2016.
A Supreme Court jury found him guilty of the murder in 2021, at Marrogi's fourth trial over the shooting.
He arrived at an Officeworks car park in a stolen red Holden Commodore on the afternoon of September 26, before he got out of the car and fired 13 shots at Mr Ors, hitting him in the back, leg, hip and buttocks.
Justice Paul Coghlan, who sentenced Marrogi in April 2022 in his final case before retiring, said the attack was "one of the most blatant examples of murder" he had seen.
Marrogi, who is appealing his murder conviction, has maintained his innocence throughout the legal process.
His barrister Peter Morrissey SC pointed to gaps in evidence in the prosecution's case at trial, in what he said was a circumstantial case against his client.
"There is a reasonable possibility that George Marrogi is not the shooter, somebody else was," he told the court.
Other than Marrogi's DNA being found on a piece of cardboard from an ammunition packet left in the Commodore, he said nothing else had placed him inside the getaway car.
"No other piece of evidence says that George Marrogi had to be the shooter," he said.
The stolen Commodore, which was followed by a white Jeep after the shooting, was later found by police on a suburban Broadmeadows street.
Mr Morrissey said it was "ludicrous" that prosecutors claimed Marrogi had ditched the car and ran away through a park.
"It is fanciful that a hunted man would leave a vehicle, that is obviously still able to be driven, on foot immediately," he said.
"He doesn't have safety and doesn't have a lift. The car is a refuge. The idea he would hop out and run, at peril of being captured, shot, run over ... is ludicrous."
The appeal before Justices Phillip Priest, Cameron Macaulay and Kim Hargrave continues.
Marrogi had his minimum jail term increased by five years last month, after admitting to running a drug trafficking operation with his girlfriend while he was behind bars.
