A Perth man wrongly convicted over the hit-and-run...

A Perth man wrongly convicted over the hit-and-run manslaughter of his girlfriend almost 40 years ago won the battle to clear his name in one of Western Australia's most controversial justice cases.
In an historic judgment, the WA Court of Criminal Appeal ruled the then 19-year-old John Button did not kill his 17-year-old sweetheart Rosemary Anderson on the night of February 9, 1963.Acquitted of wilful murder but convicted of manslaughter, Button served five years of a 10-year prison term.
Quashing Button's conviction, the three judges found there was such doubt over the case that no reasonable jury could have found him guilty had all the evidence come to light at his 1963 trial.
The historic appeal by the 57-year-old bricklayer was directly associated with the city's most notorious serial killer Eric Edgar Cooke, who was the last person in WA to be hanged.
Cooke was hanged in 1964 for the murder of a student, but not before confessing several times to murdering Anderson and another young woman, 22-year-old Jillian Brewer, in December 1959.