Lloyd Rayney denied access to police review of his wife's murder, court hears.

By Joanna Menagh

West Australian police are refusing to provide Perth barrister Lloyd Rayney with a report on the cold case review into the unsolved murder of his wife, a Supreme Court hearing his defamation action against the state has been told.

Mr Rayney is suing the State of WA for police calling him the “prime” and “only” suspect in his wife’s murder at a packed media conference on September 20, 2007, about six weeks after her body was found.

A court later found him not guilty.

On the third day of Mr Rayney’s multi-million-dollar defamation case, his lawyer Martin Bennett said the results of the review should be handed over, because they could be relevant to the hearing.

The cold case review, named Operation Delve, was completed in June last year, when the Police Commissioner revealed it had failed to come up with sufficient evidence to lay charges against anybody over Mrs Rayney’s death.

Mr Bennett said while the results of the review “may not provide any answers”, it was not “a chain of inquiry that should be shut off” to them.

However, the counsel for the state, Terence Tobin, said police lawyers had advised him they had declined to provide Mr Rayney with any further information than they had already.

Mr Tobin said the review was a cold case investigation into a murder and was not relevant to the defamation case.

“Its purpose was to assess and review all of the evidence, including the evidence from the time and any fresh evidence,” he said.

“It was not its task … to review the basis for any reasonable suspicion police held as at September 20, 2007.”

Mr Bennett has indicated he will make a formal application to the judge for the review to be to made available.

The state is defending the action arguing the comments were reasonable and justified given the evidence police had at the time.

This post originally appeared on ABC News.