A man who brutally bashed a small, "jockey-sized" public servant to death in his Belconnen unit in 2010 is fighting to overturn his conviction.
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Corey James Martin, 40, launched a vicious assault against Andre Le Dinh, 26, during a drug robbery at the victim's Belconnen unit in 2010.
Martin was found guilty of punching and kicking Mr Le Dinh repeatedly in the head, after gaining access to the secure apartment complex and knocking on the victim's door.
The victim, who weighed only 48 kilograms and stood 165 centimetres tall, was left choking on his own blood, with severe skull fractures.
Martin stole drugs and money from the cannabis dealer's apartment and left.
But the larger man - who was 110 kilograms and 189 centimetres tall - maintained his innocence, saying that Mr Le Dinh had attacked him.
Martin claimed he had gotten the better of the smaller man, winning the fight.
But he said that Mr Le Dinh was alive and still standing when he left the apartment.
A jury convicted Martin of murder last year, and he was later sentenced to 22 years, with a non-parole period of 17 years and six months.
But Martin appealed his conviction on Wednesday.
His barristers, Shane Gill and Anthony Hopkins, raised seven separate grounds of appeal against the conviction.
The first was that the judge, Acting Justice John Nield, should have discharged the jury after a witness unexpectedly referred to Martin being in prison, which they say prejudiced their client and was the "straw that broke the camel's back" in terms of his credibility.
Mr Gill argued that parts of telephone intercept recordings, in which Martin discussed his plans to commit other robberies, should not have been allowed in as evidence.
Similarly, Martin's defence say that tendency evidence suggesting Mr Le Dinh was non-aggressive was problematic.
Martin's defence also argued that the showing of graphic photographs of the murder to the jury caused horror and instilled an "instinct to punish", which they say was not justified by the probative value of the images.
Mr Gill also said there were issues with the way bugs were placed in Martin's home by police, and with the way the Crown gave unjustified significance to blood spatter evidence.
"Each of these grounds represents a legal error in relation to the running of the trial," Mr Gill said.
The errors, he said, combined to undermine Martin's credibility unfairly and impermissibly.
The appeal is continuing on Wednesday afternoon before a full bench of the ACT Court of Appeal.
