A man who allegedly torched a Monash home on Wednesday, causing about $300,000 damage, faced trial just months ago for helping to plan a shooting behind the Hughes shops in 2010.
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A fire tore through a home on Griffin Place in Monash early on Wednesday morning, destroying much of the property.
No one was inside the house at the time, according to police.
Police treated the blaze as suspicious, and their investigations led to the arrest of Todd Elphick, 27, later that afternoon.
He was charged with arson and with contravening a protection order.
Elphick faced the ACT Magistrates Court on Thursday afternoon, pleading not guilty, and making an application for bail.
But Elphick first had to prove there were special or exceptional circumstances that would allow the court to hear his bid for release.
Elphick faced that hurdle because, at the time of the alleged arson, he was already on bail for conspiring to commit grievous bodily harm in 2010.
Those charges relate to an alleged plan to help Kai Yuen, 28, shoot Brendan Scott Welsh, also 28, in the foot in May 2010.
Mr Welsh was later ambushed and murdered by Yuen outside the Hughes shops.
A jury was unable to reach a verdict on Elphick's role in the plan, and he was expected to face a re-trial at a later date.
But the ACT Magistrates Court heard on Thursday that Elphick's defence team had negotiated a less serious charge relating to the shooting, to which he planned to plead guilty.
His lawyer Sarah Boxall argued this was a special circumstance that should allow Elphick to apply for bail on the arson charges.
But Magistrate Karen Fryar rejected that argument, and a second one, and denied Elphick the opportunity to have his bail application heard.
The matter will be back before the ACT Magistrates Court on August 7.
