Director of Public Prosecutions v Cook
[2010] VSC 17
•25 February 2010
| IN THE SUPREME COURT OF VICTORIA | Not Restricted | |
AT MELBOURNE
CRIMINAL DIVISION
No. 1741 of 2008
| DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS |
| v |
| CAMERON NEIL COOK |
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JUDGE: | HOLLINGWORTH J | |
WHERE HELD: | Melbourne | |
DATE OF HEARING: | 6 February 2009, 23 November 2009, additional affidavit filed on 14 December 2009 | |
DATE OF SENTENCE: | 25 February 2010 | |
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION: | [2010] VSC 17 | |
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Sentence – Attempted murder of wife – Intentionally causing serious injury – Reckless conduct endangering life – Serious examples of attempted murder and intentionally causing serious injury – Little remorse – Guilty plea – Prior good character – Onerous conditions of imprisonment – Suffering from an “adjustment disorder”– Sentenced to a total effective sentence of 15 years’ imprisonment, with a non-parole period of 12 years’ imprisonment.
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APPEARANCES: | Counsel | Solicitors |
| For the Director | Mr G J C Silbert S.C. | Office of Public Prosecutions |
| For the Accused | Mr J Kelly (6 February 2009) Mr A D Trood (23 November 2009) | Leanne Warren & Associates Slade & Parsons |
HER HONOUR:
Cameron Neil Cook, you have pleaded guilty to one count of attempted murder, one count of intentionally causing serious injury and one count of reckless conduct endangering life.
The offending conduct took place on the night of Friday the 7th, and in the early morning of Saturday the 8th, of September 2007, and arose out of the breakdown of your marriage.
At that time, you had been married to your wife for about 10 years. A serving policeman when you met and married her, you later qualified as a solicitor. There is one child of the marriage, a son, who was aged seven at the time of the offences.
You suffered briefly from depression, for a period of about five weeks after the birth of your son. The marriage then encountered problems a few years later, by which time you had left the police force and were studying law. During this time, you requested a divorce on a number of occasions, but your wife wanted the marriage to continue for the sake of your son. About two years before the offences, you sought marriage counselling.
Your wife supported the family financially during the four years of your law studies. On completing your law degree, you took a job in Morwell for three months, which placed further stresses on your family.
Around July 2007, your wife asked for a divorce. You were reluctant to agree. A few days later, you became aggressive and told her that you would hunt her down and kill her and anyone she got into another relationship with, as well as any children she had with another man. The day after that threat was made, you agreed to the divorce, subject to the two of you attending counselling for 12 weeks.
You took some steps to be a more attentive partner and parent. You both attended counselling from around mid-July to the end of August 2007. The counsellor recalled that your threat to kill your wife and any partner and child of another marriage was mentioned during one of those counselling sessions.
On 5 September, you hired private investigators, because you suspected your wife was having an affair.
Your wife had in fact met a man through work, and had known him for about a year before the offences. However, they had only become intimate about one month after she had requested a divorce, by which time she regarded the marriage as over.
On 7 September, you telephoned one of the private investigators with details of your wife’s proposed movements that morning, and asked for surveillance to be carried out on her, to see whether she met the person with whom you suspected she was having an affair. You remained in regular contact with the private investigators that day, at one stage ringing every 15 minutes or so, seeking updates on the surveillance.
That morning, your wife attended her solicitors’ office, to remove you from her will and to revoke a power of attorney that was made in your favour. She and the man also went to see real estate agents and looked at rental properties.
At about 1:15 pm, one of the private investigators told you he had seen a man and your wife kiss and have a long hug. He said you did not appear angry or agitated when given that news, and you said to him “Good work – keep on it”.
Between 2:10 pm and 5:30 pm that day, you attended an Aussie Disposals store, where you bought handcuffs, and a Winchester knife with a four-inch blade. You also attended a Bunnings store, where you bought padlocks and a length of chain.
Your wife arrived home at around 5:25 pm with your son, who she had picked up from school.
You arrived home around 6:30 pm. You left the house briefly at 7:00 pm, telling your wife that you had to meet a colleague to collect some CCTV footage for work. You returned a few minutes later, saying you would meet with your colleague later.
You left the house again at 8:00 pm, and met with the private investigators at a local supermarket. During this time, you replayed about three times the footage showing your wife and the man kissing. You paid for the surveillance work done to date, and said you might contact them on Sunday to arrange for further surveillance. You then went home.
Around 9:00 pm, your wife put your son to bed and went to your bedroom, as you had said you wanted to watch a show on the internet with her. Your room was the only place that could be done. Before watching the show, you went into your son’s room to say goodnight and gave him one of your sleeping tablets.
Around 10:30 pm, after watching the show, your wife told you she was going to bed. You said you wanted to play a trick and wanted to tie her hands behind her back. She became nervous, said “no, thanks”, and repeated that she was going to bed.
As she tried to get off the bed where you had both been sitting, you punched her two to three times in the chest and armpit. You pinned her to the bed, forced her hands behind her back and bound them with tape. You then placed tape over her mouth and taped her ankles together, so she could not move. While she was tied up and seated on the bed, you punched her at least two times directly to the face, eye and nose area. Your punches caused immediate pain and led to her bleeding profusely, so that she could hardly see, and there was blood in the back of her throat. You continued punching her to the face and chest area for about two minutes, saying that she had betrayed you, and calling her a whore. This conduct constitutes the offence of intentionally causing serious injury.
You then produced a knife with a four-inch blade and got on top of your wife. While kneeling over her, you said that the knife was one of the sharpest knives in the world. Holding the knife to her throat, you told her you would slit her throat if she said anything. You then told her you had drugged your son and would kill him if she screamed. You said you wanted to talk to her, and did not want your son to hear what was going on.
You then apologised to your wife, and said that her actions had brought you to this. You played the footage you had obtained earlier from the private investigators, displaying your wife and her friend. You said, “Look at those two in love”, and asked several offensive questions regarding her relationship with the man. In answer to your questions, your wife told you she loved the man, and had been seeing him for a little over a month.
You talked further with her, then cleaned her injuries and helped her out of her clothes and into new clothing; she could not undress or dress herself because of the injuries sustained from the earlier assault. At some stage, you told her you wanted to kill yourself with the knife and wanted her to watch.
You re-taped her arms, and produced three lengths of chain and padlocks, which were still in their packaging. You took her to the car, and chained her feet to the rear left passenger seat using the padlock and chains. You covered her in a blanket, placed a pillow against the side window, which shielded her face, and secured her with a seat belt.
You went back into the house, and returned with the knife which you had used to threaten her earlier, and additional chains and padlocks, which you placed on the front seat in a box. You told your wife you had restrained her because you did not want her to stop you killing yourself with the knife, as you believed you would take a while to “bleed out”.
Between 2:00 and 3:00 am on the Saturday morning, you attempted to drive to an area of parkland located at the end of a dirt road near the Mordialloc pier. However, a gate permitting access to the area was locked. By this stage, you were not really talking to your wife, and she was unable to speak or escape as a result of being restrained and having tape over her mouth.
You then drove to the Mordialloc pier car park. You got out of the car. Using your wife’s mobile phone, you called your father, Neil Cook. You told him that you had hit your wife once, that you had killed her, and that you had her in the car. Your father asked whether you had called the police. You replied that you were not going to, and that by the time police found you and your wife, you would both be dead.
You returned to the car, and secured a chain around your feet with a padlock. You then turned to your wife and said “I’m sorry …, but I am taking you with me”. She screamed with terror through the tape across her mouth. You then said, “I am not going to let someone like you raise my son.” You drove around the car park at full speed. She was mumbling through the tape, “Don’t do this, don’t do this”.
You drove the car in the direction of the Mordialloc pier at high speed, and off the adjacent rocks, into the water. This constitutes the offence of attempted murder.
Before entering the water, the car struck a steel gate, which was flung off its hinges and flew at high speed in the direction of Stephanos Tsiatsios, who was fishing at Mordialloc Creek at the time. The gate deflected off the steel pole which Mr Tsiatsios was standing behind, before landing in the water. This constitutes the offence of reckless conduct endangering life.
As the car was filling with water, your wife kept yanking the chains attached to the seat. Fortunately for her, something broke, and she managed to free one ankle and escape the car through a rear window. Around 3:30 am, police found her walking along Main Street, Mordialloc, where she was observed to have injuries to her face, and a chain and padlock around her left ankle.
Police attended the pier, where they found you chained to the car, which was submerged in shallow water.
The relevant maximum penalties are:
· attempted murder - 25 years’ imprisonment;
· intentionally causing serious injury - 20 years’ imprisonment; and
· reckless conduct endangering life - 10 years’ imprisonment.
It is common ground that:
· the attempted murder is the most serious of the three offences;
· there should be a fair degree of concurrency for the offence of intentionally causing serious injury; and
· there should be total (or almost total) concurrency for the offence of reckless conduct endangering life.
These are serious examples of the offences of intentionally causing serious injury and attempted murder.
At the time of the offences, your wife was 34 and you were 41 years old. Around 5 feet tall, she only weighed about half as much as you. You bound and gagged her – so that she was unable to defend herself, escape or call for help – before engaging in a cowardly, violent and unprovoked attack on her, causing her considerable pain and fear. Your actions have also left her with permanent injuries.
There was then a period of some 3 or 4 hours before you drove off the pier. After threatening to harm her and your son with the knife, you kept her tied up during that period, while you continued talking to her. You also cleaned her up and changed her clothes, before forcing her to come with you in the car.[1]
[1]I mention this period as part of the context only; I am not sentencing you on the basis of any uncharged act which occurred during this period.
Having restrained and shackled your already-injured wife, in order to prevent her from escaping or calling for help, you attempted to drown her, in what must have been a terrifying ordeal for her. You were well aware that she was still alive as you drove off the pier. It was only by sheer chance that she lived.
Your actions towards your wife that night seem to have been motivated by an inability or unwillingness to accept that the marriage was over, and jealousy because she had found another partner.
It is necessary for me to consider to what extent your actions had been planned or pre-meditated.
As mentioned earlier, when your wife first told you she wanted a divorce, around July 2007, you were angry and threatened to kill her if she began a relationship with another man. The threat was repeated in the presence of the counsellor. However, over the following months, you made some attempts to rebuild the marriage. I cannot be satisfied on the evidence that you formed any relevant intention to kill or harm her at the time of those initial threats.
You bought the knife, padlocks and chains during the afternoon of the 7th of September, after the private investigators confirmed that your suspicions about your wife having found a new partner were true.
You told the police that you had bought those items because you intended to use them to kill yourself. However, your record of interview is riddled with self-serving statements and outright lies, clearly intended to try to minimise your culpability. For example, you described to the police a very different assault to that set out in the statement of agreed facts[2]: an assault in which you only lost it “for a second”, punched your wife no more than three or four times, only tied her up after you had punched her, and didn’t threaten her or your son with a knife. You also repeatedly told the police the same lie that you had told your father, namely, that you believed she was already dead when you drove off the pier.[3] In fact, you must have been well aware that she was very much still alive, as you continued talking to her, and she continued struggling and talking to you, up to the time when you drove off the pier.
[2]Both counsel agreed that, to the extent that there is any difference between the statement of agreed facts and your record of interview or other evidence, I should prefer the agreed facts.
[3]Your record of interview (especially the answer to Q 769) shows an awareness - perhaps from your legal or police training - that you could not be guilty of attempted murder if you believed the victim was already dead at the time you drove off the pier.
Were your record of interview the only evidence of an intention to kill yourself, I would place little weight on it. However, you also made statements to your wife about your intention to kill yourself, and had in fact chained yourself to the car when you drove off the pier. In the circumstances, I cannot be satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that you bought the knife, chains and padlocks with the intention of using them to seriously injure or kill your wife, rather than to kill yourself.
I must therefore sentence you on the basis that your intention to kill your wife was only formed at some stage on the night in question.
As far as the offence of reckless conduct endangering life was concerned, I accept that you were not aware that Mr Tsiatsios was present in the vicinity, as you drove through the gates at the end of the pier. That offence is very much towards the lower end of the relevant scale.
Your actions have resulted in serious and long-lasting physical and psychological injuries to your wife, and to psychological trauma to your son and Mr Tsiatsios.
Your wife’s fractured right eye socket and cheekbone had to be reconstructed with a titanium plate, and her broken nose realigned. For about eight weeks, she could not see properly, and her balance and co-ordination suffered. The initial bruising was so bad that your son did not recognise his own mother, calling her a “black-eyed freaky monster” – a comment which, quite understandably, caused her considerable distress. The bruising to her face took some months to fade. Due to the effect of painkillers, she needed the help of others with bathing for about four weeks after the attack. For months, she suffered a constant throbbing in her head due to nerve damage to the right side of her face. The bruising to her chest rendered her unable to breathe properly for weeks, requiring physiotherapy.
She still has ongoing physical effects of her injuries, including nerve damage to her right iris, which has rendered her hypersensitive to changes in light, and teeth sensitivity. Her eye spasms when she has to concentrate for long periods, which makes it difficult for her to perform her work.
Your wife is still psychologically traumatised by what you did. Both she and your son have had to undergo counselling, to try to come to terms with what happened.
Whilst he suffered no physical injury, the fisherman, Mr Tsiatsios, feared for his life as the car sped past and the gate narrowly missed him. He is constantly reminded of the incident and has bad dreams and panic attacks when he pictures that night.
You were born in 1966 in Port Moresby and are now 44 years old. Your birth mother was about 16 when you were born, and died in an accident when you were five years old. You know nothing of your biological father.
You were adopted by Neil and Helen Cook while still in the hospital, and you have an adopted younger sister. You describe your adoptive family as loving and caring, although you seem to be closer to your father than your mother. Your adoptive parents are both alive and have visited and kept in contact with you in custody.
You completed your primary schooling in Melbourne and Hong Kong, and attended a couple of private secondary schools in Melbourne. You passed year 12 as a significantly above average student, and were accepted into the army at Duntroon Military College.
You left the army after six months, eventually obtained an arts degree, and worked primarily in computing and marketing positions in Melbourne for the next few years. You then moved to Japan, where you lived for nearly three years, studying martial arts and teaching English.
After returning to Melbourne, in 1996 you enrolled at the Police Academy and spent almost five years in the police force. You met your wife through your work as a police officer. You had had a couple of long-term relationships prior to meeting your wife. The work hours put a strain on your marriage, resulting in you transferring to part-time employment with the police force. You reported feeling depressed after commencing work part-time, and left the police force four months later.
After six months of a building apprenticeship, with your wife’s encouragement you enrolled in a full-time law degree from 2002 to 2006. Whilst completing the degree, you worked on weekends at a service station. You were admitted to practise in November 2006, and for the next three months worked for Legal Aid in Morwell. You resigned from that position because the commuting was placing further strain on the family.
Shortly afterwards, you gained employment as a prosecutor for a government department – a position you held until the night in question.
You have no history of misusing alcohol or illicit drugs, or of psychiatric illness.
A report was tendered from Dr Mark Martakis, your GP since 1996. He said you had an unhealthy lifestyle while studying, and gained a lot of weight, which you felt impinged on your marriage. Dr Martakis reported that you were “devastated” after your wife told you she wanted a divorce, “desperate to save the marriage”, “stressed and not sleeping”. He last saw you on 14 July 2007 – about two months before the offences – when he prescribed an appetite suppressant and sleeping pills.
At the initial hearing of the plea, your then counsel urged me to conclude that the principles in Verdins[4] were engaged in this case, relying on a report from the forensic psychologist, Mr Cummins, dated 6 February 2009 (“the first Cummins report”), based on his assessment of you on 31 January 2009.
[4]R v Verdins [2007] VSCA 102.
In the first Cummins report, Mr Cummins noted that since you had been in custody, you had been experiencing ongoing negative thoughts and obsessional thinking about the events leading up to and surrounding the offences, your likely sentence, and how you would cope in custody and with having no contact with your son. You had also started taking an anti-depressant in custody, having demonstrated a high suicide risk.[5]
[5] Shortly after your arrest, you were assessed as a high suicide risk and transferred to the Thomas Embling Hospital, where you remained for almost six weeks.
Mr Cummins described your offending conduct as “situationally motivated”, arising out of your obsession, over a three month period, with the belief that your wife was having an affair.
At the conclusion of the first Cummins report, Mr Cummins expressed the opinion that you were at the time of the offending, and for several months prior, suffering from an “Adjustment Disorder with Mixed Disturbance of Emotions (depression and anxiety) and Conduct”. He opined that the adjustment disorder had been “specifically precipitated” as a result of your wife asking for a divorce and displaying what you perceived to be resistance to participating in marital counselling. Mr Cummins said that in his opinion your mental state was “significantly compromised at the time of offending.” Unfortunately, no further explanation was given, such as would enable the court to adequately consider the application of the relevant legal principles, particularly as to the nature and severity of the adjustment disorder, or the role, if any, which it was said to have played in your offending. Accordingly, I adjourned the plea to give the defence an opportunity to produce further evidence.
At the further hearing of the plea in November 2009, a further report of Mr Cummins, dated 25 February 2009 (“the second Cummins report”) was tendered, and Mr Cummins gave oral evidence. He had not seen you again since January 2009.
In the second Cummins report, Mr Cummins said that he believed your mental state was significantly compromised at the time of offending, because you were not dealing well with your wife’s withdrawal from the marriage, against your history of past losses and traumas. He diagnosed you as being significantly depressed in the period immediately preceding, and at the time of, the offending. In Mr Cummins’ view, it is “invariably” the case that, where a person who is physically healthy decides to commit suicide, the person’s perception, judgment and reasoning is necessarily compromised. Having diagnosed you as suffering from an adjustment disorder “it then follows that it is very probable, if not inevitable, by definition” that your perception, judgment and reasoning would have been compromised.
Mr Cummins noted in the second Cummins report that you had displayed in interview symptoms which could have been consistent with having suffered from a dysthymic disorder, which is a mood disorder or dysfunction one level of severity below that of a major depressive disorder. However, he was not satisfied you had been experiencing the necessary symptoms of that disorder for at least two years, so as to justify such a diagnosis. Although in oral evidence Mr Cummins felt more strongly that you may have been suffering from a dysthymic disorder, as well as an adjustment disorder, he conceded that he could not categorically diagnose a dysthymic disorder.
Mr Cummins agreed in cross-examination that your condition falls short of a major depressive disorder. He also accepted that it was likely that your offending was initiated by jealousy (albeit not “pathological jealousy”), some sort of proprietorial control over your wife, and an inability to accept that the marriage was over.
Even if Mr Cummins’ evidence is accepted at its highest, your mental state at the time of the offences does not lead to a major moderation of my sentencing discretion as far as moral culpability, general and specific deterrence, and just punishment, are concerned.
There is clearly a need for general deterrence in a case such as this. Unfortunately, the story of somebody who attacks or tries to kill their partner, out of jealousy and an inability to accept that the relationship is over, is all too common.
You offered to plead guilty in mid-September 2008, following the committal. Your counsel accepts that the plea was not made at the earliest possible opportunity, but I accept that the plea was “timely”.
You are entitled to a discount on the sentence to be imposed upon you in recognition of your plea. The community has, by your plea, been spared the time and cost of a trial. Furthermore, although your wife was cross-examined at the committal, she and other witnesses, including Mr Tsiatsios, have been relieved of the trauma of a criminal trial.
Your counsel urged me to conclude that the mere fact of your plea evidenced remorse. Of course, a person may plead guilty from a sense of remorse, and/or for some other reason. For example, where the prosecution case is a strong one, the court may conclude that the plea has resulted from the recognition of the inevitable. Or a plea may be offered in exchange for the prosecution reducing the charges. You were initially charged with eight offences, which were reduced to three on your plea. Furthermore, the prosecution case against you was very strong.
As mentioned earlier, your record of interview demonstrated no real contrition; on the contrary, you tried to give an account which minimised your culpability, after you and your wife had been found by police in circumstances that clearly required some explanation by you.
You are entitled to a discount for pleading guilty. But I am not satisfied that you did so out of any sense of genuine remorse. On the contrary, based on evidence received at the further hearing of your plea, I am satisfied that you are far from remorseful about what happened, and still harbour considerable hostility towards your wife.
There was one occasion, shortly after you had been arrested, when your wife attended the prison where you were being held, in order to assess the conditions in which your son would visit you. During the course of that visit, you apologised to her and asked about her injuries. You appeared upset during the conversation. However, your attitude towards your wife seems to have hardened since that visit.
I heard evidence from Stephen Manly, who was working as a probationary corrections officer with protection prisoners at the Melbourne Assessment Prison between late June and September 2008. On the morning of one of your court appearances, he heard you say about your wife “She’s a fucking bitch, and when I get out of here I will do the job properly”. Although Mr Manly was cross-examined about a number of aspects of this conversation, his account of what occurred was detailed, consistent and credible.
Your lack of remorse and ongoing hostility are also supported by recordings of telephone conversations between you and your parents, in the period between November 2008 and June 2009. In those conversations, you have made various remarks to the effect that your wife is a “bitch” who is going to have to “deal with” you when you get out of custody, that she will “get hers” when you get out, and that “if she makes [you] too bloody angry then she’ll deal with somebody that she don’t want to meet.” Your counsel suggested that those remarks should not be interpreted as some sort of threat towards your wife, but should be understood as an expression of frustration about your limited access to your son. Whilst some of the remarks may indeed be ambiguous, or prompted by child access issues, they nevertheless demonstrate (at the very least) considerable, ongoing hostility towards your wife.
In a conversation on 5 December 2008, following her visit to you in prison the previous week, your mother said she couldn’t cope with “the way you keep talking about, you know, getting revenge and killing [your wife].” It seems that your mother was taking your threats seriously. And you didn’t deny that you had made such threats, or suggest that your mother had misunderstood what you had previously said to her.
You do not seem to have accepted responsibility for what you have done. In saying to your mother, in one of the recorded conversations, that if your wife “had been honest and not such a slut and a mole then [you] wouldn’t be in this situation”, it seems clear that you still blame your wife for your current predicament. Mr Cummins reports that you ruminate and obsesses about your predicament, without suggesting that you accept any real responsibility for it.
I am not persuaded on the balance of probabilities that you are genuinely remorseful for what you have done.
Issues of rehabilitation and specific deterrence are not easy in this case. On the one hand, you have no prior convictions or history of violence, have previously been of good character, and have made a contribution to society through your various jobs, in particular as a police officer.[6] In isolation, those matters would suggest your prospects of rehabilitation are good and that you are unlikely to re-offend. On the other hand, as just mentioned, you do not seem to have accepted full responsibility for what you have done, and still bear considerable hostility towards your wife.
[6]I accept that a consequence of your conviction for these offences is that you will have little, if any, prospect of resuming either a police or legal career.
Your counsel urged me to conclude that your hostility towards your wife is likely to diminish, with the passage of time. That may happen. Or, it may be that your feelings will intensify, as you sit in prison continuing to ruminate and obsess about your predicament, and continuing to blame your wife for what happened.
Your conduct was a completely inappropriate response to the breakdown of your marriage. It cannot be said that there is no real risk that you will try to harm your wife, as and when you are eventually released from prison. The need for specific deterrence remains a very real sentencing consideration in this case, notwithstanding your adjustment disorder and previous good character.
Throughout your time in custody, you have been held in a protection unit, due to your previous occupations as a police officer and lawyer, and because you have received threats of violence whilst in custody. I accept that you will need to be held in protective custody, wherever you are sent to serve the remainder of your sentence. In sentencing you, I have taken into account the more onerous nature of protective custody, including additional stress and the more restrictive access to rights and opportunities generally available to others within the prison system.
I have also made allowance for the fact that you may well find prison more onerous than a prisoner not suffering from depression. According to Mr Cummins, you display mild paranoia and a distinct lack of trust in prison staff, and your physical and psychological isolation will exacerbate your difficulties, meaning imprisonment will also be burdensome on that account.
It was also argued that your time in custody would be more onerous for you because of restricted access to your son. Although he initially visited on a couple of occasions, you have not seen your son since late 2007. It is common ground that he was so distressed following the last visit, that he did not want to return. There has also been some limited contact through cards, gifts and letters. It seems that visits and contact have also been restricted to some extent by Family Court orders (the details of which I am not aware) and by prison authority restrictions. Unfortunately, separation from family members is not an infrequent consequence of imprisonment. In this case, you brutally attacked and tried to kill your son’s mother, after drugging the young boy and leaving him alone in the house; it is hardly surprising that one of the consequences of your actions has been some restriction on access to your son.
Balancing as best as I can the principles of sentencing enunciated in the Sentencing Act including punishment, specific and general deterrence, and rehabilitation, I have concluded that the appropriate sentence is that you be imprisoned for a period of 13 years in respect of the count of attempted murder, 7 years in respect of the count of intentionally causing serious injury, and 2 years in respect of the count of reckless conduct endangering life.
Whilst there should be substantial concurrency, to reflect the related nature of these offences, the attack on your wife at your home and the attempted murder were separated by a period of some hours, during which you had time to consider your involvement in each of the offences. I order that 2 years of the sentence for intentionally causing serious injury be served cumulatively upon the sentence for attempted murder.
The offence of reckless conduct endangering life arose out of the very same conduct as the attempted murder. I order that the whole of that sentence be served concurrently with the sentence for attempted murder.
This makes a total effective sentence of 15 years. I fix a period of 12 years as the period you must serve before becoming eligible for parole.
I declare, pursuant to s 6AAA of the Sentencing Act that, but for your plea of guilty, I would have sentenced you to a total effective sentence of 18 years’ imprisonment, with a minimum non-parole period of 15 years.
Further, I declare that the period to be reckoned as already served under this sentence is 902 days, inclusive of today's date. I direct that there be noted in the records of the court the fact that such declaration was made and its details.
I will make a disposal order and an order for the retention of a forensic sample – both of which are consented to – in terms of the draft orders which have previously been provided to me.
It is also agreed that in order to try to minimise further psychological harm to your young son, I should make a suppression order which will have the effect of preventing him from being named in the media. I will do so in a way that permits the media to report your name and the details of the case, but without publishing the names of either your son or his mother (as he could be identified by some people by reference to his mother’s name).
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