Qld man gets life for execution

A man has been sentenced to life behind bars for the "cold-blooded" execution-style killing of a Brisbane rugby league referee.

Tony McGrath was shot dead in the garage of his Woolloongabba home in May 2013.

His relatives and friends cried and embraced one another as Tyson John Taylor was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment for the 57-year-old's murder on Tuesday afternoon.

The Brisbane Supreme Court jury also found Taylor, 41, guilty of attempting to murder Mr McGrath in a fire at his house in October 2012.

Mr McGrath's sister, Carmel Waugh, said outside court the fire was barbaric and it was only the firefighters and neighbours who saved him.

"Then he was hunted down and killed in cold blood," she said.

Earlier, she described how the senseless murder had a profound impact on her life in her victim impact statement to the court.

Mrs Waugh said Mr McGrath had been there for her on her wedding day, when they lost their parents and when she lost her husband.

"Tony was my brother, confidant, friend, financial advisor and he believed in me," she said.

Mrs Waugh said Taylor had killed a man whose only crime was falling in love with the wrong woman.

"Tony has been deprived of life and I have been deprived of my brother," she said.

But she told Taylor the crime also impacted on his family as well.

"I pray for your little girl," she said.

The Crown had alleged Taylor was in love with a prostitute, to whom Mr McGrath was supposedly engaged, when he tried to kill the retiree in the house fire and shot him seven months later.

The trial heard Mr McGrath gifted the woman more than $550,000 before he died.

Before the jury retired on Monday morning, the court heard a key consideration would be whether the jury would find so-called confessions Taylor made to covert police posing as gangsters were genuine or made out of fear or desperation.

Taylor took the stand to profess his innocence in the trial, saying he feared for his life if he didn't tell the "gangsters" he did the crimes.

In sentencing, Justice Martin Burns said Mr McGrath had led a simple, blameless life until he had the misfortune of coming under Taylor's radar.

"It was, as the prosecutor submitted to the jury, a cold-blooded execution. It was carried out by a man who was bereft of any shred of human decency," he said.

Taylor will have to serve 22 years behind bars before being eligible for parole.

Outside court, Mrs Waugh said justice had been done.

But defence lawyer Joe Wicking said Taylor was disappointed by the jury's verdict and had instructed him to consider avenues of appeal.