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The former client of Lawyer X, Faruk Orman, announced that he would sue the state of Victoria. He was released after 12 years in prison.
"I've never committed a crime," Orman told ABC radio on Monday after his first weekend as a free man.
"If the state could give me all the gold in the world, it would never replace what I lived."
Orman was released on Friday and is the first, but potentially not the last, client linked to controversial defense lawyer and Victoria Police Informant, Nicola Gobbo – known as Lawyer X – to annul a criminal conviction.
He had been accused of being the driver of the escape during the badbadination of Victor Peirce in 2002 by the murderer Andrew "Benji" Veniamin.
The prosecution case rested on the word of another Gobbo client. Witness Q was represented by Gobbo at the same time as she was acting for Orman.
Gobbo was accused of committing a "serious miscarriage of justice" that put Orman behind bars for a murder of the underworld he had always denied.
"I've always been considered a gang murderer – as if we were shooting ourselves with a crime. If people think we are escaping a crime, they should have given us a fair trial, "he said.
"The reality is that we did not commit a crime. There are people in prison who are innocent. We have nothing, we are at the mercy of the Attorney General [Jill Hennessy] … and thankfully, she had the courage to make the decision she made. "
Orman said that although most of those affected have served their sentences with a term, they should still have the opportunity to make their case heard.
"At the very least, give them a new trial. Give them the equity that they should have had even if they were found guilty, let them be convicted fairly, "he added.
A successful petition of grace drove Orman to the top of the Lawyer X appeals court of former Lawyer X clients, including some of Australia's most famous gangsters, such as drug lord Tony Mokbel.
Victorian Prime Minister Daniel Andrews said that compensation is a matter for the courts and that unfounded convictions should be put to the test.
"If a conviction is dangerous in one way or another, then you have to go and test it," he told reporters on Sunday.
A royal commission is investigating Gobbo's role as an informer for the Victoria Police and the investigation will resume Tuesday.
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