3 All four were subsequently committed for trial on that charge. The committal proceedings, too, attracted a deal of local media interest and comment.
4 Following upon the committal for trial of the four accused persons, one of them pleaded guilty to the charge of murder, and is at present awaiting sentence.
5 Mr Brewer was granted, in circumstances and for reasons which are not at present material, a separate trial. The other two of the four men originally charged pleaded not guilty; were put, accordingly, upon their trial before Bell J of this Court and a jury; and were found guilty as charged upon the verdicts of the jury. That trial, also, attracted a great deal of local media interest and comment.
6 Mr Brewer's trial is set to commence on Monday next before her Honour Bell J and a jury at Griffith. On 24 October last Mr Brewer applied to her Honour to change the venue of the trial from Griffith to Sydney. In a judgment delivered on 27 October last her Honour refused that application. It is that refusal that is the subject of the present application pursuant to s 5F.
7 Four particular grounds have been notified and argued in support of the application for leave. They are as follows:
"1. Her Honour erred in allowing an irrelevant or extraneous matter to guide or affect the exercise of her discretion in that she took into consideration the possibility that to direct a change of venue for the reason of the appellant being kept at police cells at Griffith alone might produce the result that criminal trials were no longer held at Griffith.
2. Her Honour erred in the manner in which the observations of the High Court in Glennon 1992 173 CLR 592 were applied to the circumstances of this case.
3. Her Honour erred in that the result is so unreasonable or so plainly unjust that her Honour must have failed to properly exercise that discretion in relation to the first ground of the application for a change of venue.