Director of Public Prosecutions v Chalmers (Sentence)
[2023] VSC 764
•18 December 2023
| IN THE SUPREME COURT OF VICTORIA | Not Restricted |
AT MELBOURNE
CRIMINAL DIVISION
S ECR 2023 0183
| DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS |
| v |
| DARREN CHALMERS |
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JUDGE: | TINNEY J |
WHERE HELD: | Melbourne |
DATE OF HEARING: | 29 November 2023 |
DATE OF SENTENCE: | 18 December 2023 |
CASE MAY BE CITED AS: | DPP v Chalmers (Sentence) |
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION: | [2023] VSC 764 |
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CRIMINAL LAW – Sentence – Murder – Strangulation murder of female in Geelong in 1992 – Case went unsolved for many years – Subsequent strangulation murder of a female in Perth in 2019 – Involvement of accused in both crimes revealed by admissions of accused to undercover police operatives – Sentenced to life imprisonment with a non-parole period of 20 years by Supreme Court of Western Australia on 28 January 2021 – Transferred to Victoria to be dealt with for Geelong murder – Plea of guilty – Whether any Worboyes discount – Whether head sentence of life imprisonment appropriate - No remorse – Serious violent offender – Protection of community – Just punishment – Denunciation – General deterrence – Specific deterrence – Head sentence of life imprisonment – New single non-parole period of 36 years.
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APPEARANCES: | Counsel | Solicitors |
| For the Crown | Ms K Judd KC, the Director of Public Prosecutions, with Ms S Lenthall | Abbey Hogan, Solicitor for Public Prosecutions |
| For the Accused | Ms A Brennan and Mr N Goodenough | Victoria Legal Aid |
HIS HONOUR:
Introduction
Darren Chalmers, you have pleaded guilty to the murder of Annette Steward in Geelong on 16 March 1992. You killed Ms Steward, an entirely blameless and defenceless woman who had shown you nothing but kindness, by striking her repeatedly to the head and body with an iron as she slept in her bed, and then strangling her with an extension cord until she was dead.
In so doing, you took away the life of a young person who had her whole life before her, and removed from the lives of her two young children a mother whom they loved.
For many years, your guilt of this crime remained unknown or at least, unable to be proven.
On 12 May 2019, you murdered another blameless and defenceless woman who had shown you nothing but kindness. Your victim on this occasion was a 60 year old woman named Dianne Barrett. She was a neighbour of yours where you lived in Perth. You killed her by jumping on her and choking her with your hands, and then holding an iron bar forcefully against her throat, until she was dead.
On 28 January 2021, you were sentenced for this later crime in the Supreme Court of Western Australia to life imprisonment with a non-parole period of 20 years.[1]
[1]The State of Western Australia v Chalmers [2021] WASC 3 (Hall J).
You had what was by no means a substantial criminal history at the time of your murder of Ms Steward. However, your criminal inclinations by then were established, to the extent that you had received a number of terms of imprisonment. In the many years that followed, you were in frequent trouble with the authorities both in Victoria and Western Australia. Your lawlessness culminated in a second senseless murder of a female, showing that your murder of Ms Steward all those years before was not an isolated foray into serious and inexplicable criminality, but rather, the conduct of a troubled and very dangerous individual, which you remain to this day.
Your murder of Ms Steward was an exceptionally serious crime which, in spite of the matters in mitigation which were raised on your behalf, clearly warrants condign punishment.
Facts
Background
Ms Steward was 29 years of age at the time of her death. She lived alone in Hope Street, Geelong West. She had two children, Jacinta aged 13, and Aaron, aged 10, who lived with their maternal grandparents. She worked at the Winchester ammunition factory in Geelong.
On Monday 16 March 1992, Keith Pengally (‘Pengally’), a friend of Ms Steward who was in an intimate relationship with her, visited her in her home, in the company of Shane Reed (‘Reed’), Kenneth Smith, and you. You and the other men stayed at the house for about 45 minutes. When you were all leaving, Ms Steward told Pengally she would like to see him the next afternoon at 5.00pm.
Reed drove you and the others to Pengally’s house. At about 8.30pm, you were driven by Pengally in Reed’s vehicle to your sister’s house.
Your crime
Later that night, you returned to Ms Steward’s home, knocked on her door, and told her that it was your birthday and that you had no one to celebrate it with. Ms Steward was kind enough to invite you inside her home, and then permit you to sleep on the couch at your request as she retired to bed.
After about an hour, you got up and walked to Ms Steward’s bedroom. You claimed to police that you saw her lying on her bed, naked and asleep. You went to the living room and found some gloves and a rechargeable iron on the ironing board. You put on the gloves and picked up the iron, returning to the bedroom. You admitted to police that at the time when you entered the bedroom, you intended to kill Ms Steward. You struck Ms Steward a number of times to the head with the iron, rendering her unconscious. You then wrapped an electrical cord tightly around her throat and proceeded to strangle her. You applied tight pressure with the ligature around the neck of Ms Steward for about three minutes until she stopped breathing and died.
You left Ms Steward lying diagonally across the bed with the cord around her neck, and the ends of the cord wedged between the mattress and base to keep the cord tight. You left the premises, leaving the broken iron on the floor of the bedroom, and taking the gloves with you. You disposed of those in a nearby rubbish bin.
Aftermath and commencement of police investigation
On the ensuing days, Pengally and a former housemate of Ms Steward, David Grant attended at the house but were unable to contact Ms Steward. Mr Grant entered the house on 18 March using the key which he had retained. He found the body of Ms Steward in her bedroom and immediately alerted the police.
Detectives and crime scene personnel attended at the house and located Ms Steward’s naked body lying on the bed with her legs spread. Her head was resting against the wooden frame at the side of the bed. There were obvious injuries to Ms Steward’s neck, face and head, and blood staining on her body and the bed. The damaged electric iron was found on the floor nearby.
The crime scene was photographed and filmed. Numerous items found within the bedroom were seized. Lose hairs which were found on the body of Ms Steward were collected for examination. Latent fingerprints were developed on various items in the house. Your fingerprints were located on an ashtray in the lounge room.
Pengally was spoken to by police and provided a statement detailing his interactions with Ms Steward on 16 March 1992. He said she always slept naked or in a negligee.
In the course of the investigation into the murder, the police spoke to you and you provided a statement in which you detailed your attendance at Ms Steward’s home with Pengally and others. You made no mention of your subsequent return to the premises.
Autopsy
Forensic pathologist Professor Stephen Cordner carried out a post-mortem examination of the body of Ms Steward. He observed marked congestion of the face and petechial haemorrhages scattered over the forehead and face, as well as on all aspects of the conjunctivae of both eyes. He considered these as general signs of asphyxia.
He also found specific signs of compression of Ms Steward’s neck, including abrasions on the front of the neck and a 0.8cm wide ligature impression around the neck, rising to a point approximately 1cm beneath the right angle of the mandible. A fainter impression continued vertically up the right cheek, corresponding to the extension of the ligature over the face to the foot of the bed. The main ligature mark was apparent at the back of the neck, and indeed, all around the neck. Internal examination revealed a fractured cricoid cartilage[2] and bruising to the strap muscles of the neck. Professor Cordner was of the view that the fractured cricoid cartilage was very suggestive of a blow to the front of the neck with an object such as a fist or side of the hand.
[2]A ring shaped cartilage of the larynx.
Professor Cordner noted a number of injuries to the head, arms and back of Ms Steward, including:
To the head
a. A 3.5cm curved laceration to the outer left eyebrow, with irregular and somewhat abraded margins, embedded with two fragments of white plastic material;
b. Superior and slightly lateral to the first wound, a 3.1cm incised defect with a very acute angle medially, which merged with a more gaping defect;
c. A mild to moderate left periorbital haematoma associated with wounds a. and b.;
d. Two abrasions lateral to the left angle of the mouth;
To the back
e. Two shallow incised wounds to the back of the right shoulder;
f. Three abrasions over the right upper back, measuring 0.6cm to 1.5cm;
To the arms
g. Areas of blistering over the inner right aspect of the right upper arm measuring 8 by 5cm and over the right side of the chest measuring 1 by 2.5cm;
h. A tiny incised type defect with bruising on the left third finger;
To the scalp
i. A 5.5cm wound to the right posterior temporal region, with a 0.6cm extension anteriorly in the upper third of the wound. The margins of the wound were abraded.
A number of additional bruises were noted upon dissection, including extensive subcutaneous bruising involving the two incised wounds to the deceased’s back.
According to Professor Cordner, the injuries to Ms Steward’s head, arms and back were indicative of an assault and manhandling of more than just some seconds’ duration.
There were no injuries to the genitalia. No drugs or alcohol were detected in the post-mortem samples taken.
Professor Cordner found the cause of death to be compression of the neck. He noted that it is normally expected that at least 15-30 seconds of compression of the neck is required to cause petechial haemorrhages.
Ongoing police investigation
Although a thorough investigation was undertaken in 1992, no charges were laid and the case remained unsolved.
In 2019, Edward Rollo supplied further information to police. He told police that in 2002/2003, your brother Jamie Chalmers told him that you had admitted to killing a female in Geelong in 1992. Mr Rollo was aware of the murder in Hope Street. He also knew you and knew that you had been spoken to by police in the course of their investigation at the time. Sadly, Mr Rollo did not report this information at the time, not wanting to get involved, and believing that he would be identified as the source of any information he shared with police.
As a result of the information provided by Mr Rollo, Homicide Squad Cold Case detectives commenced an investigation into you.
By 2019, you were residing in Western Australia. A check of the national DNA database revealed that your DNA was recorded in Western Australia. A profile was provided to Victorian investigators who compared the profile with DNA extracted from original exhibits seized from the crime scene in 1992. One of the crime scene findings was mitochondrial DNA from the hair fibres collected from Ms Steward’s body. The results of the DNA analysis undertaken indicated that a hair collected from Ms Steward’s body could have originated from you or a maternal relative.
Covert operation
At the time, you were also a person of interest in relation to an unrelated investigation in Western Australia concerning a missing person, Dianne Barrett. Following a joint briefing involving Victorian and Western Australian detectives, a covert operation targeting you in relation to both investigations was launched on 6 September 2019.
The covert operation continued over the course of four months and culminated in you making detailed admissions to the murder of Ms Steward. You did so hoping to secure a significant financial benefit for yourself, but not realising that you were making admissions to undercover police officers.
The admissions, which were made on 5 January 2020, were recorded and later transcribed. In the admissions to the covert operatives, you described the events on 16 March 1992. You said that you attended Ms Steward’s home with Keith Pengally and two other men. You had never met Ms Steward before. You and the others helped her with her television before leaving after less than an hour. You returned later that evening with a Darwin Stubby which your sister had given you. You said that you knocked on the door and told Ms Steward that it was your birthday.[3] She let you in and you sat with her in the lounge room where you both had a drink. You asked if you could ‘crash’ there, and she gave you permission. She went to bed and you stayed in the loungeroom. You claimed that later you saw her bedroom door wide open and observed Ms Steward lying naked on the bed. You took an iron into the bedroom and struck her to the head two or three times. You wrapped the iron cord around her neck and choked her. You slipped the cord under the bed so that it would be tight. You then washed your hands and let yourself out the back door. You dumped the gloves in a nearby rubbish bin. You walked to a nearby railway track where you smashed the Darwin Stubby on the tracks. You went back to your brother’s house and placed your bloodstained clothes in the laundry trough. You said you had never told anyone about the murder.
[3]You later acknowledged in the police interview that it was 16 March 1992, the day after your birthday.
During the course of the conversations with the undercover police, you also admitted having murdered Dianne Barrett. You later took undercover police to the location where the body of Ms Barrett was recovered in Byford, Western Australia.
Police interview
You were arrested and taken into custody. You were interviewed by Victorian detectives at the Western Australian Homicide Squad office later that afternoon. You repeated your earlier admissions to killing Ms Steward. Amongst other things, you told police that when you knocked on the door, you told Ms Steward that it was your birthday and you had nobody to celebrate with. She invited you in in that context. After she agreed to your request to be permitted to sleep on the couch, she got you a blanket. You lay awake for an hour or so after she had gone to bed. You repeated your claim that her bedroom door was open, and that you saw her lying on her bed, naked. For some unknown reason, as you put it, you grabbed an iron which you saw on an ironing board, and having first put on some gloves which you had found on the ironing board to ensure you did not leave DNA or fingerprints at the scene, you entered her bedroom, intending to kill her. You hit her three times to the head with the iron. She was asleep when you hit her the first time. She woke up crying out in pain, and you struck her two further times, rendering her unconscious. You placed an electrical cord around her neck and strangled her for four minutes or so until she stopped breathing. You tied the cord in a knot around her neck before pulling it and tucking the cord under the bed while you were choking Ms Steward. You were uncertain where the cord came from, at one point claiming it was attached to the iron, but later saying that it might have come from a lamp. After killing Ms Steward, you washed your hands and left the house, disposing of the gloves in a rubbish bin nearby. You later put your bloodstained T-shirt in the laundry trough at your brother’s house. You made it clear that at no point that evening had there been any discussion concerning sex. When pressed further about your reason for murdering Ms Steward, you repeatedly claimed not to know why you did it. It ‘just happened’, and was a ‘stupid, unlawful killing’ that shouldn’t have happened. There had been no argument of any sort between you and Ms Steward.
You were charged with the murder of Dianne Barrett by Western Australian Police. You subsequently pleaded guilty to that murder and were sentenced in the Supreme Court of Western Australia on 28 January 2021 to life imprisonment with a non-parole period of 20 years.
In March 2023, you were transferred to Victoria pursuant to an inter-jurisdictional transfer order[4] and charged with the murder of Ms Steward. You pleaded guilty to this murder before Judicial Registrar Freeman on 6 September 2023.
[4]Prisoners (Interstate Transfer) Act 1983, ss 27, 28.
Personal background
Your personal background was set out in some detail in the written and oral submissions of Ms Brennan, who appeared on your behalf with Mr Goodenough, and in the psychological report of Dr Mathew Barth[5] to which I will later turn.
[5]Exhibit 3.
You are now 56 years old, having been born on 15 March 1967. Dr Barth summarised your childhood, as described to him by you, as ‘unstable and characterised by abandonment and abuse’.[6] Your mother Beverly carried out home duties. Your father David Chalmers was a Commonwealth Policeman who worked for a time at Avalon Airfield. He later worked as a labourer after suffering a heart attack in 1984. You have one older sister and three younger brothers. You apparently displayed oppositional behaviour towards your parents from a young age, causing tension in the family. Your parents separated when you were about 13. Your mother having moved out of the matrimonial home, you and your siblings lived with your father for a time. He provided little in the way of supervision and discipline. Your sister was forced to leave school in order to manage the family home. You describe yourself as being uncontrollable, and you commenced to commit criminal offences from quite a young age. Your behaviour brought the family under the notice of child protective services. You were removed from the family home and made a ward of the state at 13, being placed initially in St Augustine’s Boys’ Home (‘St Augustine’s’) with leave on weekends and holidays. You remained at St Augustine’s from August 1980 to January 1981. After your parents’ separation, you had little contact with your mother due to her living arrangements. You spent some time living between boys’ homes and youth detention facilities. You resided at Bayswater Boys’ Home (‘Bayswater’) for a number of periods between September 1982 and January 1985. While at Bayswater, you were sexually abused by a supervisor who on one occasion invited you to go home with him and masturbated himself while in bed with you. The supervisor also introduced you to a female foster carer with whom you spent a number of weekends. During those visits, the carer sexually abused you. In 2014, you gave evidence before the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. You were awarded a sum of compensation in recognition of the abuse and neglect from which you suffered. In the years between 1980 and 1985, you also spent periods of time at Turana, Langi Kal Kal and Malmsbury, and at Lismore House Hostel. A pre-sentence report prepared in 1984 noted that you and your siblings had witnessed a drawn-out breakdown in your parents’ marriage which had affected you all deeply. Your offending history was considered to be the direct result of emotional disturbance created by the family dysfunction and marriage breakdown. At the same time, a Summary of Institutional Record noted you to already appear to be institutionalised. Your somewhat chaotic childhood significantly disrupted your educational development. You had difficulty developing basic literacy and numeracy skills. Your secondary education occurred in the context of institutional care and was marred by bullying of you by other students. You left school at the end of year 9, and even now, your literacy skills are poor. You were unemployed for significant periods of time after you left school, in the context of your worsening drug abuse and unstable accommodation. You have had a patchy history of employment, due to your lifestyle. You have worked in wool scouring, at Ford in Geelong, as a removalist, at a car wrecker’s yard, and then later on, in a lawn mowing business which you set up with the money you had received in compensation from the Royal Commission. The business failed. You also worked at Carers’ Leave Australia Network doing administrative duties. You were unemployed at the time of your arrest in Western Australia in January 2020.
[6]Ibid [11].
You have had three main intimate relationships in your life. You had two children from the first of these and one child from the second. Drug abuse and conflict characterised all the relationships, and you now have no contact with any of your former partners or your children. You have expressed a desire to reconcile with the children.
You have reported an extensive history of drug abuse. You commenced to abuse alcohol and cannabis when you were 13. You started using methylamphetamine (‘ice’) and other stimulants when you were 18, and report that you have abused ice in particular for most of your adult life to date, with the main periods of abstinence being during custodial sentences. Your ice and cannabis use remained severe up to the time of your arrest. You also abused heroin for a period in your 20s and 30s. You acknowledge that your behaviour became increasingly reckless due to your drug use, which caused difficulties in maintaining employment and developing pro-social relationships.
Criminal history
You have a very substantial criminal history, only a small part of which is contained in the criminal record filed against you, which of course only contains those matters of which you had been convicted before the date of the present offence in 1992. The criminal record contains convictions flowing from four court appearances at Geelong and Ringwood Magistrates’ Courts for matters of dishonesty, driving, bail, and escaping offences. On each occasion you were imprisoned or ordered to be detained in a youth training centre, indicating the seriousness of the matters. Having said that, you had no prior convictions for offences of violence at the time you carried out this murder.
Having murdered Ms Steward, and no doubt thinking for many years that you had got away with the crime, your criminal activity continued unabated over the ensuing years, as set out in a document filed in the Court by the Crown. You accrued convictions for 29 offences from 14 separate court appearances for crimes of dishonesty, drugs, driving, violence, and repeated breaches of intervention orders in Victoria and their equivalent in Western Australia, as well as breaches of community based orders. The record of your subsequent convictions would suggest that you moved to Western Australia in 2012, and that you continued to offend.
Murder of Dianne Barrett
Most significantly, as mentioned earlier, you were convicted of the murder of Dianne Barrett on 29 January 2021. This, like the current crime, was a terrible one. It bears some very concerning similarities with the murder of Ms Steward 27 years earlier.
In May 2019, you lived at a house in Ridley Way, Medina, a suburb of Perth. Ms Barrett lived nearby. She was a friendly and hospitable neighbour, and as such, you came to know her and be on friendly terms with her. In the context of that connection, Ms Barrett invited you to share a meal with her in her home on 12 May 2019. After the meal, she then agreed to accompany you to your house for a cup of tea. Sometime after she came inside, in the absence of any provocation or previous animosity at all, you jumped on her, forcing her to the ground. You strangled her with your hands, and then placed an iron bar across her throat, pressing down on it with your knees and hands. She gasped for air and you continued to apply pressure for about three minutes until she stopped breathing and went limp. You were sentenced on the basis that you intended to kill Ms Barrett during the attack. Having achieved your aim, you put a towel and blanket over her body and a plastic bag over her head to prevent blood from being spread in your house. You then used a trolley to move her to your utility. You drove up into the hills near Perth in order to find a place to dispose of the body. On the way, you disposed of some personal items of Ms Barrett. At a location adjacent to a dirt track in Byford, you unloaded the body of Ms Barrett onto the ground, covered it with vegetation, and then left the scene. You cleaned up your house to remove any trace of Ms Barrett, including placing a number of your items of furniture and other possessions on the roadside to be collected by the council. You used a vacuum cleaner, pressure washer, and bleach to clean the floors of the house.
In the course of the police investigation which followed the disappearance of Ms Barrett, you lied to the police, claiming no knowledge of the circumstances of her disappearance.
Notwithstanding your denials, you remained a suspect in the eyes of the police. In due course, as mentioned earlier, a covert operation involving Victorian and Western Australian police was commenced, and, in the hope of securing a significant financial benefit for yourself, you made admissions to this crime to undercover operatives. You led the operatives to the body of Ms Barrett on 4 January 2020. She had been missing since 12 May 2019. Her body was in an advanced state of decomposition.
You were arrested, interviewed and charged with murder the following day.
Relevance of your subsequent convictions and prospects of rehabilitation
There is no doubt that your subsequent convictions are relevant in a number of respects. As conceded by your counsel, they are relevant to an assessment of your prospects of rehabilitation, to negate the credit which might otherwise have flowed to you had you lived the intervening years without offending, and to enliven the serious offender provisions under the Act.
In terms of your prospects of rehabilitation, Ms Brennan did not submit they are good, or indeed, characterise them in any particular way, other than to say that I should not find that you have no prospects. She did note that you will be of advanced years by the time you would become eligible for a grant of parole, even considering the Western Australian sentence. You have not thus far been subject to a significant term of imprisonment, and nor have you engaged in a violent offender program such as you will be likely to encounter in prison.
The prosecution submitted that your prospects of rehabilitation are poor. You have a criminal history extending over many years, and your subsequent conviction for the murder of Dianne Barrett indicates that your propensity to kill has not diminished with time. Your long-term problems with illicit substances have remained unresolved for most of your life, and your insight into your substance abuse is limited.
In my view, your subsequent criminal history after your commission of the current crime, and in particular, your murder of Dianne Barrett in Perth 27 years after you first committed murder, are important matters which cast clear light on your prospects of rehabilitation. Were it not for subsequent events, and in particular, had you lived the ensuing years following your senseless and seemingly motiveless murder of Ms Steward in a law-abiding fashion, that crime might have been viewed as an isolated, albeit very serious, one-off event. Even then, there would have been real concerns about your rehabilitative prospects. The later murder of Dianne Barrett, however, removes any doubt. Your murder of Ms Steward, far from being an isolated, one-off event, was the act of a dangerous young man who by his subsequent actions, showed himself years later to remain a violent and dangerous person who places no value on the life of another. Your murder of Dianne Barrett in 2019 would tend to indicate that even 27 years after the murder of Ms Steward, and with all of that time to ponder your crime, you had failed to gain any insight into the enormity of your conduct. You were perfectly content to repeat that depraved conduct against another defenceless and innocent woman.
You were, in 1992, and remain to this day, a grave danger to the community. Furthermore, your prospects of rehabilitation are exceedingly dim, if not entirely non-existent.
Psychological material
The report of Dr Barth set out the details of your personal background, including your mental health history. You apparently reported periods of depression and anxiety dating back to your early teenage years. You told him that you frequently felt rejected and resentful due to what you saw as your abandonment by your family. You claimed that the physical and sexual abuse to which you were subjected while in care contributed to intense distress and anger. You said that it ‘destroyed’ you. Your learning difficulties at school contributed to significant issues with your self-esteem. Your periods of mood disturbance continued throughout your adult life due to your turbulent lifestyle, unstable intimate relationships, and ongoing memories of abuse. You experienced regular periods of suicidal ideation. Your coping mechanism for emotional distress was to abuse drugs and alcohol. You have consulted various mental health professionals over the years and have been prescribed antidepressants.
In respect of your crime, you told Dr Barth that you were drunk at the time. You were unable to explain your motivation for the killing. In response to direct questioning, you denied that you felt any sense of anger or resentment towards Ms Steward. You had no argument with her, and were adamant that your conduct was not in response to having been sexually rebuffed by her. You told him, ‘I was drunk and a bad thing happened’. Dr Barth said that you expressed remorse for your offending. You apparently stated:
I’m a monster, only a monster would do what I did. I need to live with what I did. I will suffer (from) the consequences. I’m ashamed. For the family that I destroyed, I should get as much time as possible. I took her away from her family.[7]
[7]Exhibit 3 [36].
Dr Barth considered you to meet the DSM-5 criteria for the diagnosis of major depressive disorder – with anxious distress – recurrent episodes of moderate severity.
A previous assessment of you using the Weschler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence – 2nd Edition, showed discrepancies between your scores on the subtests, such that the full-scale score did not provide a reliable measure of your overall intellectual ability. Dr Barth assessed you to be an unsophisticated man of below average intelligence. There were, however, no indications of any form of thought disorder or psychosis.
In terms of your personality and behavioural adjustment, Dr Barth considered you to have entrenched personality and behavioural problems which have been present since childhood and have had a significant impact on the trajectory of your life. The genesis of your difficulties can be traced to your childhood experiences. Due to the childhood abuse you suffered, you have tended to view the world as a cold and unforgiving place, and thus, have endorsed the attitude that only the strong survive. This attitude has exacerbated your propensity for reckless decision making and aggressive behaviour during emotionally challenging situations. Your personality and behavioural issues go well beyond normal limits. They are sufficiently severe to warrant the diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder.
People with that disorder, he opined, tend to be poor decision makers, and prone to very black and white thinking. This increases their propensity for impulsive and reckless behaviour. The impacts of this disorder, however, would not have been sufficiently severe to have obscured your ability to form the requisite intent to commit this crime or prevent you from fully understanding the likely consequences of your conduct.
Dr Barth carried out a violence risk assessment of you using the HCR-20 Version 3, a widely used actuarial measure of the risk of violence recidivism. In connection with one of the items in the historical domain of the measure, Dr Barth noted, ‘His offending clearly indicates a violent attitude towards women’.
Your results on the measure led Dr Barth to assess you as posing a high risk of violent re-offending. Reflecting the nature of your current and previous offending, your future risk would be most relevant with regard to the perpetration of violence against a known female victim.
Dr Barth outlined the intensive treatment required in your case to deal with your personality disorder, your mental health issues, and your drug abuse issues. Without the comprehensive and integrated treatment he described, he considers your rehabilitative prospects to be poor.
Verdins issues
Ms Brennan placed no reliance on the principles in R v Verdins & Ors[8]. She submitted, however, that Dr Barth’s diagnoses and opinions about the significant impact that your long standing personality disorder has had in every area of your life is relevant to show who you are and where you have come from.
[8](2007) 16 VR 269 (‘Verdins’).
I do take into account the evidence of Dr Barth in the way urged upon me by Ms Brennan. Having said that, it is clear that nothing about your psychological history, your personality disorder, or the other conditions with which you have been diagnosed would indicate in any way that you would not have had a full appreciation at the time of your offending of the seriousness and horrendous consequences of your crime.
Bugmy issues
Ms Brennan relied upon your unstable and unsatisfactory childhood, and in particular, the abuse and maltreatment which you suffered while in State care, as enlivening the principles in Bugmy v The Queen.[9] She relied upon Dr Barth’s opinion that your personality and behavioural adjustment have been markedly disturbed since your turbulent and abusive childhood, which culminated in significant psychosocial problems leading to difficulties developing healthy attachments and prosocial pursuits, alienating you from mainstream society since your teenage years.
[9](2013) 249 CLR 571 (‘Bugmy’).
Ms Brennan acknowledged that this is not a case in which there was a relevant causal nexus between your deprived background and your crime. However, the general approach enunciated in Bugmy should mean that your moral culpability for your crime is reduced notwithstanding the absence of a causal connection. Ms Brennan conceded, however, that your moral culpability would remain high.
The prosecution did not challenge the applicability of the general principle in Bugmy, but contended that even with the resulting reduction in your moral culpability, it would remain ‘very high’.[10]
[10]Prosecution outline [4].
I accept that your moral culpability for this crime is reduced to some extent by your past history, consistent with the general principle in Bugmy. That reduction, however, would not be of the order required in such cases as Bugmy itself, reflecting the fact that the tribulations of your prior history were of nowhere near the same order. It seems to me that even taking into account some reduction in moral culpability flowing from the application of the Bugmy principles, your moral culpability for this crime remains very high.
Victim impact statements
The two children of Ms Steward, Jacinta Martin and Aaron Steward, jointly made a victim impact statement outlining the very considerable effect the loss of their mother has had on their lives. Ms Martin very courageously read the statement aloud in Court. In very poignant terms, the statement describes the kind, caring, fun loving, outspoken, considerate and fiercely loyal mother who was taken from them when they were only very young. They recall the very strong level of involvement of Ms Steward in every aspect of their lives, and mourn all that was lost to them in the years since her tragic death through her absence. They speak of the years of anxiety and depression caused to them by your actions, and the feelings they had as young children of being a burden on their families. They describe the overwhelming feeling of anxiety which comes upon them as the anniversary of their mother’s death approaches each March. The effect of your admission of responsibility and plea of guilty has been to end a chapter in their lives which remained unanswered for so long.
The joint victim impact statement of the children of Annette Steward bears eloquent testimony to the loss, pain and suffering your murder of their mother has caused to her children in all of the many years since this occurred, and will always cause. I take the statement into account in arriving at the appropriate sentence to pass upon you.
Offence gravity
The prosecution, in its written outline and oral submissions, emphasised the considerable gravity of your crime. At the outset it was noted that the Court of Appeal has repeatedly emphasised that ‘male violence against women is a scourge of our society’[11] and has expressed its grave concern about the prevalence of such offending.[12] The Crown submitted that whilst your crime cannot be characterised as intimate partner violence, the Court’s comments about male violence against women generally still have application. You killed Ms Steward in her own home and her own bed, where she was entitled to feel safe. She was vulnerable and of a small physical size relative to you. You made a deliberate and calculated decision to initiate an entirely unprovoked attack upon her, the motive for the attack remaining unclear. Ms Steward had shown you nothing but kindness. You used gloves to conceal your involvement, showing a level of premeditation, later disposing of the gloves. Your attack was a sustained one, involving manual strangulation, a mechanism of murder requiring persistent effort by you and involving suffering on the part of your victim. On your own account, it took minutes for her to die. You used adapted household items, namely the iron and the power cord, as weapons to kill Ms Steward. You took the deliberate step of slipping the cord under the bed to maximise its effectiveness in bringing about death. In summary, Ms Judd KC, the Director of Public Prosecutions, who appeared with Ms Lenthall for the prosecution, described your attack as deliberate, calculated, unprovoked, aggressive, incredibly violent, and sustained.
[11]Smith v The Queen [2020] VSCA 159, [7].
[12]Freeburn v The Queen [No 2] [2020] VSCA 176, [45].
Ms Brennan did not take issue with any of the above contentions, acknowledging that the objective features of your crime render it a ‘dreadful’ one.[13] She did point to the absence of a number of features in this crime often observed in grave instances of the crime of murder, such as a past history of violence by you towards your victim, forced entry into the premises, a sustained verbal or physical assault or period of deprivation of liberty preceding the death, and desecration or dismemberment of the body.
[13]Transcript 32.
Ms Brennan submitted that this crime is distinguishable from the recent cases in which this Court has imposed a life sentence for the charge of murder. She submitted that this is not a case which can be seen to be in the worst category of murder such that a sentence of life imprisonment should be imposed. I will return to the topic of the appropriate head sentence later in these reasons.
Not much time was spent on the question whether this murder can be said to fall into the worst category of that crime. And for good reason. The authorities would question whether there is actually much utility in seeking to divide up crimes of murder into a number of well-defined categories. As was said by the Court of Criminal Appeal in R v Dumas[14] as long ago as 1988, at a time not long after the removal of life imprisonment as the mandatory sentence for murder:
The crime of murder is a crime of the utmost gravity. In our opinion, it does not admit of categorising each offence into degrees of gravity. While the new legislation will permit courts to sentence persons convicted of murder to terms of years and even to fix relatively low minimum terms in appropriate cases having regard to various facts which may be taken into account in mitigation of penalty, nevertheless, the sentence of life imprisonment will still be appropriate for a wide variety of deliberate criminal killings.[15]
[14][1988] VR 65 (‘Dumas’) .
[15]Ibid 71.
In The Queen v Debs & Roberts,[16] Vincent JA, in whose judgment the other members of the Court agreed, reiterated, citing Dumas in support, that it is inappropriate to approach the sentencing task in a given case by reference to categories of murder.
[16][2005] VSCA 66.
If there truly is a useful category which could be described as the worst category where the crime of murder is concerned, its boundaries would be difficult, if not impossible, to define or describe.
The requirement, of course, is for me to take into account all of the circumstances of your crime in determining the nature and gravity of the offence, one of the matters to which I am required by law to have regard.[17] An appreciation of the nature and gravity of your crime is not really advanced by a decision as to which category of murder this particular murder may fall within.
[17]The Act, s 5(2)(c).
For now, in circumstances where Ms Brennan has conceded that your crime was a dreadful one, it would, I believe, be entirely uncontroversial for me to indicate that in my view, your murder of Ms Steward in 1992 was a crime at the high end of the range of seriousness of crimes of murder. There were many aggravating features of this crime, and the absence of some of the aggravating features present in some other serious crimes does nothing at all to detract from its seriousness. In my view, in seeking to ascertain where in the spectrum of offending a particular crime falls, little if anything is to be gained by considering the features which are missing from the crime. What is important is the features which are present. In this case, the many aggravating features as detailed by the prosecution and not disputed on your behalf make it perfectly plain that the prosecution’s characterisation of your crime, and Ms Brennan’s concession as to its dreadful quality, are correct.
That conclusion, of course, would not compel a decision one way or another on the question whether a sentence of life imprisonment should be imposed. I will turn to that matter shortly.
Serious offender provisions and protection of the community
Because of your conviction and sentence for the murder of Ms Barrett in Western Australia, you are required to be sentenced as a serious violent offender for the charge of murder before this Court.
Section 6D of the Sentencing Act 1991 (‘the Act’) dictates that in sentencing you on this charge, I am required to regard protection of the community from you as the principal purpose for which the sentence is imposed. I may, in order to achieve that purpose, impose a sentence longer than that which is proportionate to the gravity of the offence considered in light of its objective circumstances. I note that quite properly, the Crown do not seek the imposition of a disproportionate sentence.
In the circumstances of this case, s 6E, a provision requiring the cumulation of sentences in certain circumstances, is of no application. The head sentence to which you are subject is determined by the sentence of life imprisonment the Supreme Court of Western Australia imposed upon you for the murder of Ms Barrett. No sentence I pass on you, whether a sentence of life imprisonment as sought by the prosecution, or a sentence in terms of years as sought by your counsel, can be cumulated on the sentence of life imprisonment which you are already serving.
Even were it not required of me by s 6D of the Act to regard protection of the community from you as the principal purpose for which sentence is to be imposed upon you, I would have considered it to be a critically important matter. Your senseless murder of Ms Steward was, as your counsel frankly acknowledged, a dreadful crime, which as I have already said falls at the high end of the range of seriousness of the crime of murder. You were only 25 years of age at the time, and as your prior convictions indicated, had already shown a lack of respect for the law. In the years which followed, and with the secret knowledge you had of the terrible murder you had committed, you continued along a criminal path which culminated in another shocking murder which shared disturbing features with the current crime. You currently pose a real and substantial threat to the safety of the community. The sentence I pass upon you must be designed, as far as possible, to protect the community from any future acts of violence by you.
Your plea of guilty and the question of remorse
You pleaded guilty at the earliest opportunity in this case. Your counsel submitted, the prosecution acknowledged, and I accept, that your plea entitles you to the utilitarian benefit flowing from that plea. The overwhelming strength of the prosecution case in no way diminishes the utilitarian value of your plea of guilty.
Ms Brennan submitted, however, that your plea is also indicative of your remorse and acceptance of responsibility following your arrest on this matter, and she relied upon further evidence said to be indicative of remorse. She pointed to some statements made by you in your police interview, to what was said to be the frank and detailed account you gave in the interview of your crime, the apology you made to the family of Ms Steward in the interview, and statements made to Dr Barth describing yourself as a monster and referring to your shame and acknowledgment of the need to be punished. She also relied upon a letter you wrote and provided to your solicitors to be provided in turn to the Court outlining your contrition.[18]
[18]Exhibit 2.
In that letter, you purported to apologise to the family and friends of Ms Steward for what you described as your act of evil. You indicated that you had instructed your legal team to push for a sentence of life imprisonment with no minimum, or at least, a minimum of no less than 40 years. I make the observation that your legal representatives did no such thing, so it can only be concluded that your instructions to them by the time of the plea hearing were not as you had indicated in the letter. I make no criticism of your or your legal representatives in this regard.
Ms Brennan submitted that although your contrition emerged only after a successful covert operation, the veracity of your remorse is demonstrated by your desire to be punished with a longer, rather than a shorter sentence.
Ms Judd urged me to bear a number of matters in mind when considering whether or not you are remorseful. They were:
· the considerable strength of the prosecution case against you, including the extensive and detailed admissions you had made to undercover police;
· the fact that your apology to the family of Ms Steward in your police interview took place after the extensive admissions to undercover police referred to above. Your account of the murder given to the covert officers was in no way indicative of remorse, and was only given in the hope of obtaining a significant financial benefit;
· the fact that you went on to murder another woman in somewhat similar circumstances as recently as 2019, which detracts from your claim of true remorse and contrition for the murder of Ms Steward.
It was submitted that for similar reasons, I should place little weight on the letter you provided to the Court, and your expressions of remorse to Dr Barth.
A consideration of the entirety of the circumstances of your case, in my view, would not warrant a conclusion that you are truly remorseful for your murder of Ms Steward. Having carried out this dreadful crime, you lied to the police and concealed your involvement, and then went about your life in the ensuing years displaying a continuing and cavalier disregard for the law. Having carried with you for 27 years the awful knowledge of what you had done, you murdered again. Your continuing criminality in the years following your murder of Ms Steward, and in particular, your commission of another murder of a female many years later, is conduct inconsistent with your ever having felt remorseful for the Geelong murder.
Remorse can, of course, develop over time, but I am not satisfied that any of the things you have said or done in more recent times indicate any true remorse. The admissions you made to the undercover operatives in Western Australia were made solely to obtain a financial benefit for yourself. And they were made in very callous terms, commencing with your describing yourself as ‘just a stupid mad cunt’, and then saying, ‘Oh, just fucking knocked a chick over there’, referring to the Geelong murder. You continued, ‘I fucking knocked her, I just bashed her, fucking knocked her, strangled her and [indistinct] gone. And I was out of there, I was shitting myself cause that was the first time that had ever happened’.[19]
[19]Depositions 166.897.
Once you had made the admissions to the undercover police, and realised that they had been recorded and could be used against you, your admissions in the police interview were entirely unsurprising, but there was nothing about the tone or the content of your admissions which was indicative of remorse. And the apology you expressed to the family of Ms Steward was entirely hollow.
So, too, are the contents of your letter of apology to the family of Ms Steward provided by you solicitors to the Court self-serving, hollow and unconvincing.
All in all, bearing in mind that the existence of remorse on your part may be a mitigating feature, and hence, would need to be proved by you on the balance of probabilities, I am entirely unconvinced that you actually feel any genuine remorse for your crime. Indeed, I believe you are lacking in any real remorse. This may be explained by the personality disorder from which you suffer.
Having said that, the absence of remorse, I should make clear, is not a circumstance of aggravation, but simply represents the absence of something which might have been a mitigating feature.
I note, however, that in the circumstances of this case, in view of the nature of your crime, the seriousness of your subsequent offending and the very long period of time following your crime during which you clearly felt no remorse at all, even if there had been the very late development of some remorse, it would hardly have been an important matter in mitigation. Genuine remorse may be an important element of sentencing in some cases as it may enhance the offender’s prospects of rehabilitation and reduce the need for specific deterrence and protection of the community. Even had there been evidence of genuine remorse in this case, it could have had no such effect on those important sentencing considerations.
Current sentencing practices
I am required to have regard, in sentencing you, to current sentencing practices. To assist me in that regard, the prosecution provided a table of comparative cases. I have had regard to the decisions contained in that table, to sentencing practices more generally, and of course to the applicable sentencing principles.
The prosecution pointed out that each of the cases referred to in the table involved their own circumstances of offending and matters personal to the offender, and none of the cases was identical to this case. It is important to remember that sentences passed in other cases are not precedents to be applied or distinguished in the present case, but may provide assistance only.
Question whether term of life imprisonment open and appropriate
The Crown submitted that the circumstances of this case, including the gravity of your crime, your high moral culpability, your status as a serious violent offender, and the absence of much in the way of mitigation, call for the imposition of a life sentence.
Whilst Ms Brennan, in her written outline, submitted that your crime is not an instance of murder which calls for a sentence of life imprisonment with no minimum, she broadened that contention in her oral submissions to a submission that your crime does not call for the imposition of a sentence of life imprisonment as a head sentence, even with the fixing of a non-parole period. She distinguished your case from a number of other cases in which sentences of life imprisonment have been imposed, submitting that this is not a case in the worst category of murder which should attract a life sentence, even with a non-parole period. As I have already noted, she mentioned a number of possible aggravating features present in some cases that were not present in your murder of Ms Steward. Ms Brennan did not expressly submit that a head sentence of life imprisonment would be outside the range of available sentences, but rather, submitted that a sentence in terms of years would be open, and should be imposed by me.
A sentence of life imprisonment has not-infrequently been described as a dreadful sentence reserved for dreadful cases. In The Queen v DJH,[20] Brooking JA, with whose judgment the other members of the Court agreed, noted, ‘The sentence of life imprisonment, even if a non-parole period is fixed, is a dreadful one and one which will be passed only after the most anxious consideration’.[21] Having set out a passage from Dumas to which I earlier referred, his Honour stated:
It seems to me, if I may say so, that on occasions sentencing judges have not given sufficient weight to the observation that the sentence of life imprisonment will still be appropriate for a wide variety of deliberate criminal killings.[22]
[20][1998] VSCA 108 (‘DJH’).
[21]Ibid [13].
[22]Ibid [14].
It is obvious that any sentencing judge would think long and hard before passing a sentence of life imprisonment upon any offender. Having reflected carefully upon all of the circumstances which apply to you, and paying due regard to all of the matters to which I am required by law to have regard, I am moved clearly to the view that a sentence of life imprisonment for the murder of Annette Steward is both appropriate and necessary. In my view, this crime cannot be properly met with a sentence other than life imprisonment. I am driven to that conclusion by a consideration of the enormity of your offending, the extremely high level of the objective gravity of your crime, your substantial subjective culpability, and the relevant purposes for which sentence must be passed in your case. Yours was a senseless and vicious crime committed against an entirely innocent and defenceless young woman, for no apparent motive. Your actions years later in Western Australia give colour to your earlier offending, and your dangerous inclinations which clearly have persisted throughout the years. You are a dangerous person, and protection of the community from you is of critical importance. Nothing less than a sentence of life imprisonment would meet the needs of justice in this case.
Should a non-parole period be fixed
There has been a very live issue in my mind whether it would be appropriate to fix a non-parole period in your case. The prosecution submitted that it would be open to me to fix a non-parole period, but that a sentence of life without parole would also be within the range. Indeed, Ms Judd made submissions as to a number of factors which would tell against the fixing of a non-parole period.
As I have already noted, Ms Brennan’s central position on sentence was that a head sentence of life imprisonment should not be imposed. She submitted that if a head sentence of life imprisonment was imposed, I should certainly fix a non-parole period. Ms Brennan did acknowledge that were I to find that you have no prospects of rehabilitation, that would be a finding which would have a bearing on whether it would be appropriate to set a non-parole period. Of course, she urged me not to make that finding, and in any event, submitted that I should fix a non-parole period in this case.
Section 11(1) of the Act requires me to fix a non-parole period unless I consider ‘that the nature of the offence or the past history of the offender make the fixing of such a period inappropriate’.
Although a somewhat narrow interpretation of that requirement was seemingly taken before me, it is clearly the case that the ‘past history of the offender’ referred to in that provision includes offences committed after the offence for which the offender is being sentenced.[23] In those circumstances, I am permitted and required to have regard not only to the serious nature of your crime but the totality of your past history, including the later murder committed in Western Australia, in determining whether to fix a non-parole period.
[23]R v Coulston [1997] 2 VR 446, 459.
The High Court in Power v The Queen,[24] explained the purpose of parole as:
to provide for mitigation of the punishment of the prisoner in favour of his rehabilitation through conditional freedom, when appropriate, once the prisoner has served the minimum time that a judge determines justice requires that he must serve having regard to all the circumstances of his offence.[25]
[24](1974) 131 CLR 623.
[25]Ibid, 629 (Barwick CJ, Menzies, Stephen and Mason JJ).
As Winneke P explained in R v Mulvale:[26]
The fixing of a minimum period is no sinecure but requires discrete consideration of those factors which exist in the material before the court which bear upon the question of when the prisoner should be eligible for mitigation of confinement and, in turn, rehabilitated under conditional supervision.
[26]Unreported, Court of Appeal, Winneke P, 20 February 1996.
The prosecution drew my attention to a number of cases in which sentences of life imprisonment with no non-parole period have been imposed upon offenders who have pleaded guilty to a charge of murder. In each of those cases, the offender had a prior conviction for murder for which he had already served a term of imprisonment at the time of the offence under consideration. Ms Brennan distinguished those cases from this case on the basis that you had not committed the second murder until many years after the first, and that it is only now, for the first time, that you have been imprisoned for murder.
In this case, I have given anxious consideration to whether a non-parole period should be fixed. In light of the very serious nature of your crime, the horrendous nature of your later murder, the disturbing features it shares with the case before me, the real danger you present to the community, your age now, and the dim prospects of rehabilitation, there would be a strong argument in favour of a conclusion that the fixing of a non-parole period would be inappropriate.
Having said that, a consideration of the authorities makes it perfectly plain that a plea of guilty will almost always be an important mitigating feature, and that it would only be in a very rare case that a person pleading guilty to murder would not receive the benefit of a non-parole period.
In the end, I have decided to fix a non-parole period for you, which is a course I would not have taken had you not pleaded guilty to this crime. Of course, I sentence you on the basis that you may be required to serve every day of the remainder of your life in custody under the head sentence. The non-parole period, like the head sentence, must pay due regard to, and adequately reflect, the purposes for which you are to be sentenced for these crimes. It is obvious, therefore, that the non-parole period must itself be very lengthy.
Having decided to fix a non-parole period, I am required by s 14 of the Act to fix a new single non-parole period in respect of both murder sentences. The assessment of the length of a non-parole period will depend on all of the circumstances of each case. In this case, I will fix as the new single non-parole period the shortest term of imprisonment which, in my view, would meet the needs of justice in this case, bearing in mind that the non-parole period will apply to sentence in respect of the two murders of which you have been convicted. In arriving at that period, I have taken into account the principle of totality as was urged upon me by Ms Brennan.
I acknowledge that the length of the new single non-parole period I will fix will mean that there would be every chance that you will die in custody, and at the very least, that you will be very elderly before you would be entitled to apply for parole. That is an unavoidable consequence of the extreme gravity of your crime, your past history including the second murder you committed, and your age now that you come to be sentenced for the murder of Annette Steward.
Worboyes issue
During the plea hearing, the prosecution and the defence took up opposing positions in respect of the question whether your plea of guilty should attract the enhanced benefit of a plea of guilty as considered in Worboyes v The Queen.[27] The Crown argued that in light of the fact that the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the criminal justice system have substantially resolved, there is no longer a basis to conclude that a guilty plea entered at the current time carries a higher than usual utilitarian value and should attract a greater sentencing discount. On the other hand, it was submitted on your behalf that whilst the point will in future be reached when an additional reduction consonant with the principle in Worboyes will no longer be applicable, that point has not been reached yet. It was not argued that this issue would warrant great weight in your case, but rather, some weight.
[27][2021] VSCA 169 (‘Worboyes’).
In this case, as I have already said, your plea of guilty is an important mitigating feature. As the s 6AAA declaration I will shortly make will indicate, your plea of guilty was the difference between a sentence of life with no minimum and life with the non-parole period I will specify. It is the utilitarian value of the plea of guilty that will be recognised in that regard.
In the context of this case, bearing in mind the undeniably significant utilitarian value of your plea in any event, the complete or at least very substantial recovery in the position of the criminal justice system from the backlogs of the COVID-19 days, and the other surrounding circumstances of this case, I do not believe that any additional reduction on account of the Worboyes principle would have any appreciable bearing on sentence.
I do not believe that it is necessary for me to decide the issue agitated by the parties, and I decline to do so.
Important sentencing principles
As indicated already, I am required to regard protection of the community as being the principal purpose for which sentence is to be imposed upon you. That statutorily dictated requirement accords very well with the conclusion I would in any event have reached in your case. Subsequent events show that at the time you murdered Annette Steward, you were a dangerous person. You have remained so throughout the many years since that time, as clearly demonstrated by your murder of Dianne Barrett. You represent a serious danger to the community, in particular to women, and I am sure you will continue to do so for many years, if not for the remainder of your life. The community must be protected from you. I take that strongly into account.
Other very important sentencing purposes are just punishment, denunciation, general deterrence and specific deterrence.
The punishment meted out to you must reflect the very substantial seriousness of your offending, and represent an appropriate response to it. In an entirely heartless and callous fashion, and for reasons you either cannot or will not explain, you took away the life of an entirely blameless and innocent young woman. She had so much to live for, not least of which was the life she would have shared with her two children, which was denied her, and denied them. This was an unforgiveable and terrible crime and is deserving of condign punishment.
As far as denunciation is concerned, the sentence of this Court must unambiguously demonstrate this Court’s condemnation and abhorrence on behalf of the community of the type of violent criminality in which you engaged in this case, through which you cut short the life of an innocent and defenceless young woman who had done you no harm and shown you nothing but kindness. Male violence towards females is at the heart of so many crimes which come before this Court, and is a very disturbing part of the fabric or our society. An important purpose of this sentence is to strongly condemn your conduct.
Turning to general deterrence, the sentence I pass on you must be such as to clearly bring it home to any male who might be inclined to perpetrate murderous violence upon a defenceless female victim that such conduct will be met with very strong punishment.
As for specific deterrence, the sentence must also serve to effectively deter you from any repetition of violent offending in future.
Sentence
Darren John Chalmers, for the murder of Annette Steward, you are sentenced to be imprisoned for life.
By operation of law, this sentence will be served concurrently with the sentence imposed upon you in the Supreme Court of Western Australia on 28 January 2021.
The total effective sentence is life imprisonment.
I fix a new single period of 36 years during which you will not be eligible to be released on parole in respect of this murder and the murder of Dianne Barrett for which you were sentenced in the Supreme Court of Western Australia on 28 January 2021.
For the avoidance of doubt, I indicate that the new single non-parole period I have just announced will commence today, 18 December 2023. In arriving at that new single non-parole period, I have taken into account and made an allowance for the fact that you have been in custody since your arrest on 5 January 2020 and your sentence in Western Australia was backdated to commence on that date.
There is no pre-sentence detention referable to this matter, and therefore, no declaration to be made in that regard pursuant to s 18(4) of the Sentencing Act 1991.
I indicate pursuant to s 6AAA of the Sentencing Act 1991 that, but for your plea of guilty, I would have sentenced you to be imprisoned for life with no non-parole period.
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