A long string of murder cases, a death in custody and distraught families left searching for answers marked a grim year in Canberra's courts.
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The beginnings of justice was meted out for a cluster of untimely deaths, many with alleged links to domestic violence, which had rocked the capital in 2015.
Those homicides ended the year with one hung jury, two jail terms for convicted killers, a man found not guilty due to mental impairment and multiple defendants awaiting their fate.
The year also brought significant changes to the benches of the ACT's Magistrates and Supreme Courts, including the arrival of a long-awaited fifth resident judge, and all while a massive revamp of the Knowles Place justice precinct got under way.
Here's a look back at some of the major cases, and a glimpse of what's to come in 2017.
Jail time for tragic killings
Body-in-the-boot murderer Josaia Vosikata, 29, was sentenced to 22 years imprisonment after he pleaded guilty to fatally strangling his former partner, Daniela D'Addario, 35, and violating her dead body before fleeing to the south coast last April.
Jeffrey David Lee, 47, will spend 13 years behind bars after he admitted to fatally bashing his stepfather, Neal Keith Wilkinson, 61, and fleeing with $53,000 cash last March.
Prosecutors are appealing his sentence on grounds it was "manifestly inadequate".
In the first murder trial of 2016, a jury found Danny Klobucar, 27, not guilty due to mental impairment for the bashing death of grandfather Miodrag Gajic on New Year's day in 2014. His case is now before the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal.
Awaiting justice
Gabrielle Woutersz's month-long trial for the alleged murder of her mother in Dunlop ended the year with a rare deadlocked jury after almost three weeks of deliberations.
Woutersz, 25, is now set to face a jury for the second time next August after jurors failed to reach a verdict in the matricide case, which hinged on the accused's mental state at the time.
Axe killer Marcus Rappel still awaits news of his fate for the brutal slaying of his former partner, mother-of-three Tara Costigan, 28, in Calwell in March 2015.
Emotions ran high in court as prosecutors urged a life sentence for Rappel's "heinous, callous, pitiless slaughter" of Ms Costigan, while his defence team said his remorse was genuine as they called for a lesser jail term.
He's expected to be sentenced in the new year.
Meanwhile, four other men are before the courts fighting murder charges.
Yemen-born man Maged Mohommed Ahmed Al-Harazi, 34, is accused of stabbing his wife, Sabah Al-Mdwali, 28, to death in Gordon last March.
Graham Stuart Dillon, 37, pleaded not guilty to the murder and assault of his eight-year-old son, Bradyn, at Jacka in February.
A trial will run for Milan Urlich, 28, accused of killing Andrew Carville, 52, whose badly decomposed body was dumped on defence land at Majura last November.
Death in custody
The death of Indigenous remandee Steven Freeman, 25, in his cell at the Alexander Maconochie Centre in May - the ACT's first Aboriginal death in custody - sparked an independent inquiry and a coronial inquest.
Lawyers for his family have told the ACT Coroner's Court they will look into the role an untreated brain injury, sustained when he was viciously bashed at the prison months earlier, played in his death before an inquest in February.
His mother Narelle King has vowed to pursue her son's "inadequate" treatment "to the fullest possible extent".
Case dropped over worksite death
The devastated mother of Ben Catanzariti, 21, warned there would be "another death in the ACT" after prosecutors in May suddenly dropped their case against two companies charged over his 2012 worksite death.
Kay Catanzariti wore the jumper her son died in as she carried his ashes to court. "This is my son, I don't get that back," she said.
Catanzariti was killed when a faulty concrete pump boom collapsed on him at a construction site on the Kingston Foreshore.
An inquest into his death is set to reopen next year.
Path again cleared for Eastman retrial
David Harold Eastman vowed he would continue to protest his innocence after losing his latest bid to block a second murder trial for the assassination of senior AFP officer Colin Stanley Winchester in 1989.
Eastman appeared in court for the first time since he was released from prison after his murder conviction for the killing was quashed in 2014.
He was there to challenge the Court of Appeal's decision to dismiss his application for a permanent stay of proceedings after a fresh trial was ordered.
His appeal was dismissed after a three-day hearing, meaning Eastman will likely face a planned six-month retrial set down for July.
Civil stoushes
Michael Jones' bitter and protracted legal battle, one of the most high-profile cases to hit the courts in 2016, began with allegations the University of Canberra pressured the Brumbies board to stand him down as chief executive.
It ended five months later with a confidential late night settlement and Mr Jones' frustration at the "broken" legal process.
The trigger, he claimed, had been his decision to raise serious questions about a land deal involving its former Griffith headquarters and a new site at the university.
Mr Jones used the territory's whistleblower laws to allege he had been unfairly treated after disclosing serious irregularities with the deal.
The KPMG report at the centre of the dispute remains suppressed by the court.
In August, a woman whose identity was stolen by overseas scammers who then secretly sold her Canberra house and pocketed the money won a $540,000 payout from the ACT government.
International fraudsters profited by $430,000 in the sophisticated property scam that spanned South Africa, Australia and Indonesia.
Shuffles to the bench
The appointment of former NSW District Court judge Michael Elkaim to the Supreme Court was the culmination of a lengthy campaign waged by Canberra's legal community for a fifth resident judge.
Associate Justice David Mossop will become the court's newest resident judge, to replace Justice Richard Refshauge when he retires in May, clearing the path for a new judge to be appointed in 2017.
Magistrate Peter Dingwall retired after more than 25 years on the bench of the lower court. He was replaced by former counter-terrorism prosecutor and barrister Glenn Theakston.
Former ACT Bar Association president Shane Gill joined the Family Court as a judge, while barrister Amanda Tonkin was appointed to the Federal Circuit Court.
