A man who was accused of killing a fellow Canberra nursing home resident has broken down with relief after being acquitted.
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Mario Amato hugged a woman and cried in a courthouse corridor on Friday morning after being found not guilty of the manslaughter of Sheila Marie Capper, 89.
The 61-year-old was also cleared of an alternative charge of causing grievous bodily harm following a judge-alone trial in the ACT Supreme Court.
During the trial, Crown prosecutor Rebecca Christensen alleged Mr Amato had "propelled" Mrs Capper out of a laundry at the Southern Cross Care facility in Campbell in November 2018.
Her case was that this alleged push had left Mrs Capper with a fractured hip that accelerated the woman's death in hospital some three weeks later.
She called evidence from a nursing home carer, Melissa O'Dowd, who said Mrs Capper had told her while on the floor outside the laundry that "he pushed me". There were no men in sight at that stage.
But another staff member, cleaner Patricia Jordan, told the court the 89-year-old also exclaimed: "That man. He did it. He did it."
Ms Jordan said Mr Amato was coming out of the laundry at this time.
When the cleaner asked him what had happened, Mr Amato replied: "She fell."
But Ms Christensen argued in her closing address that there was "clearly a push".
She relied upon the words spoken by Mrs Capper prior to the 89-year-old's death, together with evidence including CCTV footage that shows the hallway outside the laundry.
While it does not capture events inside the room, the prosecutor said it "paints a thousand words".
Ms Christensen told the court the speed at which Mrs Capper came "hurtling out" the door made what had happened inside obvious to anyone with common sense.
But Mr Amato, the only other person who was in the laundry when Mrs Capper fell through the door into the corridor, denied pushing her.
His barrister, Jon White SC, argued Mrs Capper had been deemed "a high falls risk", and could therefore have fallen over at any time and without any independent cause.
Mr White also told the court the elderly woman's statements about being pushed were unreliable because she was "in a very confusing situation" and already had cognitive deficits and impaired short-term memory.
The trial judge, Justice Michael Elkaim, agreed with this.
He also said that while the CCTV footage appeared to show Mrs Capper "coming rapidly out of the laundry room", the video had "some drawbacks".
These included that it was not shot in real time, and had "a degree of stutter" and distortion to it.
"The fall did not actually occur as viewed on the footage," he wrote in his judgment.
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Ultimately, Justice Elkaim found the Crown had not proven beyond reasonable doubt that Mrs Capper was pushed in the manner alleged.
He noted that he would have cleared Mr Amato of the manslaughter charge even if he was satisfied the shove described by Ms Christensen had occurred.
This was because of uncertainty about whether complications arising from Mrs Capper's fractured hip were a substantial or significant cause of her death.
A medical expert, Professor Johan Duflou, said during the trial that the elderly woman had a number of pre-existing conditions and he would not have been surprised if she had not fallen but still died a day after she did.
Taking this and other medical evidence into account, Justice Elkaim said he could not find the fall was a substantial or significant contributor.
"The possibilities for the cause of death are varied, the unknowns are too numerous and the suppositions in favour of a link to the fall are too tenuous," he said.
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