A security guard who acted as the inside man in a $124,000 robbery of the Weston Labor Club has lost a bid to have his conviction overturned.
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Adam John Street, 35, was working a shift as a guard at the club late one night in February 2008.
Two robbers - later discovered to be his acquaintances - entered through an unlocked door as staff were in the process of closing.
The offenders' faces were covered with balaclavas, and they were armed with a baseball bat and a rifle.
Street played the victim through the heist, and complied with the men as they used cable ties to tie up a bartender, the club's duty manager, and then Street himself.
The robbers had entered the club as the manager counted the day's takings, meaning the safe was still open.
That allowed the robbers to take $124,000.
The pair took the manager's car keys, and fled through an exit that had been left open for staff members leaving at closing time.
Street continued the act, breaking free of the cable ties, pressing the duress alarm, calling triple-0, and then staying to give a statement to police after the crime.
That's despite evidence that later emerged suggesting Street had known the pair for years.
Phone records, later shown to the court, proved he had spoken with the robbers 15 minutes before the crime.
The Crown alleged Street had been the mastermind of the heist.
They said he had given the robbers inside information, including on which doors to use, how to secure the getaway car and what time to rob the club.
It was also alleged Street gave one of the men the rifle.
The trio, the Crown said, had then split the money three ways.
Street was found guilty by a jury in August of aiding and abetting the aggravated robbery and was later handed a six-year prison sentence.
But he appealed against his conviction earlier this year, arguing the prosecutor had made unsupported claims about Street's guilt in his closing submission to the jury.
His barrister Richard Thomas argued that, by doing so, the Crown had denied Street any chance of an acquittal.
Mr Thomas said the conviction constituted a miscarriage of justice, because Street had not been given the chance for a fair hearing.
But the full bench of the ACT Court of Appeal, which delivered judgment on Friday morning, said the appellant had failed to properly make out any unfairness in the prosecutor's closing submission.
"Consequently, the basis for the allegation that there was a miscarriage of justice falls away," the full bench wrote.
The court found that even if faults with the prosecutor's address had been established, no substantial miscarriage of justice would actually have occurred.
"The Crown case was overwhelming," the judges wrote.
"[One of the robbers] gave evidence that the appellant organised the robbery."
"The phone calls within the hour before the robbery, the evidence of [Street's colleague] that the appellant admitted that he organised the robbery, and the CCTV footage made the verdict unassailable."
They also said Mr Thomas had not raised any objections during the trial.
The appeal was dismissed by Justice Hilary Penfold, Acting Justice John Nield, and Justice Anthony North.
