JAILED Hoddle Street murderer Julian Knight's bid to receive a tentative release date has been thwarted in the Supreme Court today.
The mass murderer was refused parole and told he had no hope of release in "the foreseeable future" in July last year, when the Adult Parole Board said he was still a danger to the community.
This morning Justice Cameron Macaulay told Knight, who appeared via video link from Port Phillip Prison, his application for judicial review of the decision was dismissed.
He said the application was doomed to fail because there was nothing about the board’s refusal to set a tentative release date that the court could change.
“The refusal to give such an indication is of no legal effect or consequence ,” he said.
“The refusal does not prevent Mr Knight from being released on his parole eligibility date,” he said.
Knight, 45, was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum of 27 years for murdering seven people and wounding 19 others in the 1987 massacre.
His earliest eligible date for release on parole was May 8, 2014.
But the Parole Board's decision removed any chance of the killer – who was declared a vexatious litigant by the court in 2004 – being freed that soon.
In dismissing the proceeding, Justice Macaulay said he could not be satisfied the action would not be an abuse of process.
Court documents stated Knight had told prison authorities he planned to "litigate his way to parole".
While waiting for the judge to come into the court, Knight clarified which of his proceedings this morning’s court appearance related to.
He did not react when the judgment was delivered.
THE NIGHT: Keith Moor reconstructs the terrible events (part one)
THE NIGHT: How did Hoddle St massacre unfold? (part two)
THE SCENE: Journalist Geoff Wilkinson on the minutes afterward
PICTURE GALLERY: Melbourne shocked by slaughter
THE INVESTIGATOR: Detective Graham Kent's interview with a killer
OPINION: Why Knight deserves legal protection in Briefed: The Law Blog
Julian Knight's victims (L-R): Tracey Skinner, 23, Robert Mitchell, 27, Gina Papaioannou, 21, Johnny Muscat, 26, Dusan Flajnik, 53, Kenneth Stanton, 21 and Vesna Markovska, 24. Nineteen others were injured in his 46-minute shooting spree. Pictures: HWT library. Source: Herald Sun
Julian Knight's victims (L-R): Tracey Skinner, 23, Robert Mitchell, 27, Gina Papaioannou, 21, Johnny Muscat, 26, Dusan Flajnik, 53, Kenneth Stanton, 21 and Vesna Markovska, 24. Nineteen others were injured in his 46-minute shooting spree. Pictures: HWT library.
The judge published reasons for his decision, but did not read them in court.
Last year, in making their decision not to give the killer a tentative release date, the parole board relied on evidence from forensic psychiatrist Prof Paul Mullen and clinical and forensic psychologist Prof James Ogloff.
The experts found the chances of Knight committing another massacre were remote.
"The combination of youth, immature rage at the world's unfairness, suicidal despair, grandiosity, fixation on weapons, fantasies of self sacrifice are unlikely to be repeated," Prof Mullen wrote.
Prof Ogloff said Knight was "not psychopathic".
He said the severity of Knight's offences place him "in a category that is virtually without peer".
EYE WITNESS: Steve Wight recalls being under fire
THE VICTIMS: A grim roll call of who died on Hoddle St
MULTIMEDIA: Julian Knight, the dossier
THE HEROES: First responders remember a 'warzone'
COP NIGHTMARE: 'The lights went out in my heart'
THE WORST: Vitkovic and Knight are both on Keith Moor's Black List
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