In the matter of Anthony O’Donohue
[2018] QMHC 8
•10 August 2018
MENTAL HEALTH COURT
CITATION:
In the matter of Anthony O’Donohue [2018] QMHC 8
PROCEEDING:
Reference
DELIVERED ON:
10 August 2018
DELIVERED AT:
Brisbane (ex tempore)
HEARING DATES:
9 and 10 August 2018
JUDGE:
Dalton J
ASSISTING PSYCHIATRISTS:
Dr FT Varghese and
Dr EN McVieCOUNSEL:
JD Briggs for Mr O’Donohue
SJ Hamlyn-Harris for the Chief Psychiatrist
TA Fuller QC with D Balic for the Office of the Director of Public ProsecutionsSOLICITORS:
Legal Aid Queensland for Mr O’Donohue
Crown Law for the Chief Psychiatrist
The Director of Public Prosecutions (Qld)
HER HONOUR: This is a reference in relation to Anthony Mark O’Donohue, born 28 February 1968. Mr O’Donohue faces a charge of murder and 14 charges of attempted murder, as well as a charge of arson.
On 28 October 2016 at 9 o’clock in the morning, he boarded a Brisbane City Council bus at a stop on Beaudesert Road, Moorooka. He held a backpack containing an accelerant. He lit it, and he placed it on the bus driver. The driver was Manmeet Sharma, aged 29 years. He was killed by Mr O’Donohue’s actions. The doors to the bus were closed at the time this happened and were, at first, unable to be opened. Flames and smoke filled the bus, and the charges of attempted murder relate to those people who were trapped inside. There were 14 passengers.
I would normally name such people as a mark of respect to them to show that I have considered them as individuals. In this case, many have asked not to be named, and I think, when I consider the evidence about how dangerous the defendant is, I understand why they do not want to be named. However, among the passengers were Carolyn Ann Wilson, Norman Ross Passfield, Lille Mina Gill and Cecil George Cox. I will also add there were three very little children amongst those passengers.
A taxi driver who happened to be at the bus stop at the time assisted by breaking entry into the bus, allowing all 14 passengers to escape. His actions were very brave and I think he saved the lives of those 14 passengers. The passengers were terrified at the time and I understand they have been adversely affected into the future because of what they experienced.
The defendant O’Donohue did not leave the scene. He was arrested by police, having been identified by some of the passengers who escaped from the bus and other passers-by. He has also been identified as the person responsible by the closed-circuit television. He refused to be interviewed by police. He was assessed by psychiatrists on the day of the offending. Two or three days later on 31 October 2016, he was admitted to The Park High Secure Program under the care of Dr Angela Voita.
At the time of the offending, Mr O’Donohue was a 48 year old single man living alone in public housing at Moorooka. I will say something about his early life because I think it is important to contrast that to the man as he was at the time he committed these acts. He had an unremarkable childhood in rural Queensland. He had a good family who cared for him. He did well at school and he was popular at school. He was sent to a private boarding school for high school. He socialised well there. He was good at sport, and he was good at school. He went to university and has two university degrees. He had a good work history, although I notice from the beginning he never stayed long in any one job.
By 2003, the defendant was working as an accountant for New South Wales Rail. He says at first his work was recognised as being of a high standard, and this might be right. At some point, he began to have difficulties with
his employer. In all likelihood, those difficulties were caused by the onset of his delusional disorder. But because he could not recognise that he was ill, he attributed the difficulties to interference from his workmates. He complained about that, and there was an investigation. He became convinced he was being persecuted and intimidated. He left his job and stayed home from work to renovate his house. Within six weeks of that, his girlfriend left him.
He travelled to Queensland and began to work for Queensland Rail. Once again, he perceived he was being intimidated and persecuted in his workplace. He decided he would not work again, and became preoccupied with perceived injustices that had happened in his workplaces. His delusions began to expand. He began to believe that trade unions were persecuting him. He even believed his family became part of the movement that would persecute him. He travelled overseas, and even when he was overseas, he thought that the people who were persecuting him had followed him and were persecuting him overseas.
He recognised that his life was spiralling downhill, but he could not understand why. He was unemployed. He lost his house. He lived in public housing. Then he lost his place in public housing. He made a serious suicide attempt and was treated for psychosis in the public hospital system. He lived in a share house and began to think the people he shared with were persecuting him. They had jobs, and he did not have a job. He realised that that was because they were being rewarded for their efforts in persecuting him.
He eventually ended up at an organisation called Ozcare. That is an organisation which provides hostel care for people who are essentially homeless. Then he began to believe that the other residents of Ozcare were trying to kill him. He left Ozcare and slept in the streets. He was unemployed, and because he did not apply for jobs, his unemployment benefit was terminated. He saw this as part of the vendetta to destroy him. He broke off contact with his family and became obsessed with fantasies of revenge against those who he believed had destroyed his life.
In 2010, when he tried to kill himself, he was diagnosed as psychotic by mental health services. He said he tried to suicide because he could not stand the continual persecution. He was subject to psychiatric treatment after this. To say he did not co-operate with this treatment is an understatement. He did not believe he had an illness, and he actively tried to avoid treatment.
In 2011, five years before the events I am concerned with, he took a tyre lever to a police station and he asked the police to lock him up because he believed he would kill someone. Police took him to mental health services and he was made an involuntary patient. He remained under involuntary treatment until December 2014. He was treated with depot antipsychotic drugs. This involves putting a deposit of medicine, which will last perhaps a month, under the person’s skin by an injection.
In 2014, he travelled overseas and his drug regime was changed. Because he could not receive depot injections overseas, he was put onto oral medication – tablets that
he swallowed. The difficulty with this was he did not believe he had a mental illness and did not want to take drugs. I think it is likely that he was never fully compliant with his prescribed medication after that time.
Dr Voita described in her evidence that he lied to his treating psychiatrists, pretending that he was taking the tablets. Even though he didn’t take the tablets, he would go to the chemist and pay for the prescription to be filled in case anybody checked. He seemed to understand that the doctors might test his blood to see if he was taking the tablets, and sometimes took some tablets before he was due to be reviewed at the hospital in case that happened.
Even though the depot antipsychotic treatment did not make him much better, it is clear that once he stopped it, he became much worse. He began to believe his food was being tampered with. He said he could hear voices coming from his computer and thought that he was under constant surveillance in his unit through the computer and the telephone. He began writing notes that he left out in his unit so that the people keeping surveillance on him could read the notes. He thought he received messages from the television, the radio and the internet. He thought there were messages in newspapers, in the advertisements at the supermarkets, on people’s T-shirts, on the sales dockets that he received from shops.
He went to the hospital in August 2016 for chest pain, and he believed that doctors put technology into his body so they could keep an eye on him. He thought that his persecutors were causing him to experience electric shocks in his arms and legs. In August 2016, he went to a union building at South Brisbane. He was threatening, abusive and ranting, demanding to see a union boss. He spoke of wanting retribution against the union.
Immediately after the acts I am concerned about, the defendant told police of these long-term persecutory delusions. He mentioned his previous employment in the railway, and he mentioned his family were involved in it. When he was taken to The Park, that is virtually all he would speak about to Dr Voita.
So far as the offending is concerned, he told Dr Voita that he targeted the bus because it was “the first bus that came along”. He said:
I know it’s a terrible thing, but I feel justified. He was part of that group that had been torturing me. I just knew he knew who I was and what my situation was. In those last couple of seconds, I felt some kind of acknowledgement. I felt there was a recognition. He recognised me, even though I didn’t recognise him.
Mr O’Donohue said:
I saw the bus driver’s facial expression and the way he looked at me. If that was different, then maybe the whole thing would not have happened.
As to the motivation for the attack, he said:
I just need to show there would be consequences if they screwed me over. They destroyed my life.
He said:
I have suffered a lot of deliberate abuse for more than a decade. Lots of malicious bullying. Some people do it willingly; others more reluctantly. It’s like a club. They profit from it.
He said he purchased petrol about a month before the commission of the acts I am concerned with. He mixed petrol with diesel because he knew it would be more explosive. He kept the mixture in his apartment for more than a month. He told Dr van de Hoef it was like a loaded gun, there for the people who were surveilling him to see. He wanted those people to see it, know he was serious and to stop persecuting him.
On the day of the offending, he put the accelerant mixture in a backpack and put a piece of cloth into the top of the bottle, making a Molotov cocktail. He said he thought the people who were persecuting him would stop him as he walked to the bus stop, but nobody did. In a way which is contradictory to this, he said he thought the SAS or [a well-known Australian entrepreneur –ed.] would come and rescue him and take him to Western Australia. He had packed a bag to take with him when they arrived. A third thing he said, which I accept is logically inconsistent with the first two, is that he thought as he walked to the bus stop he would receive a sign that the persecution would stop. None of these things are logical. They are un-understandable.
There is good evidence about his trip to the bus stop. Some workers had arrived in the bottom of his housing building at about 9 o’clock that morning. They remembered the time they arrived and they remembered that, very soon after, he walked past them and was very rude to them.
The police have another statement from a lady who was waiting at the bus stop. Because she was catching a bus, she was very aware of the time she arrived at the stop and the time the bus was expected. She thought she got to the bus stop at 8.55 and she sat down and waited. She noticed the defendant arrive, and she noticed his behaviour was very strange. She noticed he had a backpack and he held it in an unusual way, with his right hand hidden inside the backpack. She said he looked stressed. She said he paced up and down. She said he appeared to annoy people by talking to them and they did not speak back to him. I think this evidence shows that the defendant O’Donohue did go straight from his home to the bus stop, and then he attacked the first bus that arrived.
There is also evidence about how Mr Sharma, the bus driver, was behaving. The police took several statements, and I will read from some of them. One man said:
I recall the driver was very polite, friendly and relaxed.
Another witness said:
I smiled at the driver and said hello. The driver smiled back and said hello. I remember he had happy eyes and a nice smile.
Another witness said:
As we got on the bus, the driver said hello. He was lovely.
And in the victim impact statement that Ms Gill has filed in the court, she says this:
The memory of Manmeet’s bright and vibrant smile as I boarded the bus that day became one I am grateful for. In our brief greeting, we had both been open and sincere, smiling at a brand new day, the kindness of strangers, and I think just at that uplifting feeling you get on a sunny spring morning. It’s not often you get such a greeting from a city bus driver, and I liked him instantly.
The evidence is that Mr O’Donohue waited till all the other passengers got on the bus, and then he got on last. When he got on, I think that the bus driver probably smiled at him too. But when Mr O’Donohue looked at the bus driver, he thought the bus driver was smirking at him. He said it was obvious the bus driver recognised him, and this meant that the bus driver was part of the conspiracy. This meant that the conspiracy had not stopped, so he stepped onto the bus, lit the bag, and lifted it onto the driver. Mr O’Donohue got out of the bus then. His own trouser leg had caught fire. He waited for police because he knew he would be arrested for what he had done.
There is no suggestion that he was intoxicated with alcohol or any drug.
Mr O’Donohue has said that he regrets Mr Sharma’s death, but he has always added that he thought it was necessary to achieve his aims and that his actions were justified.
I turn to the medical evidence. Dr Voita gave a report dated 27 September 2017. She is a very experienced psychiatrist and is the director of the High Secure Service for the Criminally Insane. By the time of Dr Voita’s report, she had seen Mr O’Donohue over 50 times, and by the time she gave evidence in this Court, she had seen him many, many more times. Before writing her report, she also conducted an interview with Mr O’Donohue’s brother and his mother.
I have a report from Dr van de Hoef dated 8 June 2018. She saw Mr O’Donohue in May this year. I have a report from Dr Scott dated 13 March 2018. Before giving evidence in the Court, he saw Mr O’Donohue again, and, in fact, he saw him only two days ago. I have a report from Dr Beech dated 25 July 2018. I have a report from Dr Schramm.
All the doctors except Dr Scott thought that the diagnosis was paranoid schizophrenia. Dr Scott thought the diagnosis was delusional disorder. For legal purposes, it does not matter who is right. All the doctors thought that Mr O’Donohue suffered his illness for a long time, probably since 2003, when his difficulties in New South Wales Rail began. All the doctors thought that at the time of the offending, the defendant was deprived of the capacity to know he ought not do the acts involved in the offences.
In some respects, this is an unusual case so far as this capacity is concerned, because the defendant did know that the acts he was doing were against the law. In the vast majority of cases where a defendant knows that, he is not deprived of the capacity to know he ought not do the acts. But the Court does recognise this category of case. I refer to the case of Stapleton (1952) 86 CLR 375:
In cases of serious crime, the fact that it is punishable by law is enough to show the prisoner that it is something which he ought not do … but in certain cases where the insane motives of the accused arise from a complete incapacity to reason as to what is right or wrong (his insane judgment even treating the act as one of inexorable obligation or inescapable necessity)
he may yet have at the back of his mind an awareness that the act he proposes to do is punishable by law.
[discussion with interpreter omitted]
The words of that case written in 1952 are very apt to describe this defendant’s insane motive which made his actions, in his mind, actions of inescapable necessity.
I make the finding that Mr O’Donohue was deprived of the capacity to know he ought not do the acts in relation to all the charges before the Court.
I turn to the future. Treatment so far has produced some improvement in Mr O’Donohue overall, but he still will not give up his delusional beliefs. In particular, the evidence of Dr van de Hoef and Dr Scott, who saw him only two days ago, was very emphatic that he still remains severely delusional. It is clear that a forensic order must be made. The advice of my assisting psychiatrists is that he should be confined to the High Secure area at The Park.
There is a question about whether I should make an order that the forensic order not be revoked. This power has never been exercised. The reasons for making a non-revocation order cannot be punishment or denunciation. They must be the safety of the community. This is clear from the second reading speeches in Parliament and from the objects of the Mental Health Act 2016.
Generally, the Court would not interfere by making such an order. Generally, the Court would leave these things to the discretion of the psychiatrists who treat a forensic patient. Speculation about the future is always difficult, and the assumption is that there will be competent people –
doctors – in charge of the forensic patient and that they will make rational decisions as the future treatment progresses.
Under our system, it can never be the choice of one psychiatrist to revoke a forensic order. Any such decision has to be reviewed up a hierarchy of more senior psychiatrists within Queensland Health. Many psychiatrists would have to agree, so the chances of a mistake being made are reduced. Even then, the psychiatrists do not have power to revoke the forensic order. That must be done by the Mental Health Review Tribunal. At the Tribunal hearing, the Attorney-General is represented and can advocate for the safety of the community.
It is truly extraordinary, then, in this case, that the four very experienced psychiatrists who gave evidence and the two assisting psychiatrists to the Court all recommend a non-revocation order.
I will make such an order, and I will make it for the maximum time I can, 10 years. The reasons are that the defendant is very ill and is very dangerous. He has a very poor prognosis. He deliberately set out to fool psychiatrists in the past and managed to do so.
Can I turn to one last matter, and it is this. The family of Mr Manmeet Sharma have asked questions about whether this attack was racially motivated. They are sensible questions, and I think they deserve to be taken very seriously. Two statements were given by bus drivers, who both said that Mr O’Donohue made racist statements in their buses. I have them here. I am not going to read them, because they are offensive. I notice that one bus driver said that while he was talking like this, the person complained a lot about Queensland Rail. We know that Mr O’Donohue complained a lot about Queensland Rail. The other bus driver said that he complained about immigrants taking jobs. We know Mr O’Donohue complained a lot about not having a job, and that other people had them, and he was envious. I think these things make it likely that the bus drivers’ recollections were correct. Mr O’Donohue denies that it was him who made the statements. It is not my legal job to decide who is right and who is wrong about that. But I will assume that Mr O’Donohue did make those statements.
I still do not think that the attack on Mr Sharma was a racist attack. There are two reasons. The first is what I have already described, that we have witnesses that showed he went straight from his house and got on the first bus that arrived. He could not know what race the driver would be.
The second reason is that the defendant talks and talks and talks about the things that agitate him. Dr Voita said this, and Dr van de Hoef said the same thing. She said for three hours he spoke at her very, very rapidly about all his delusions. As well, the defendant has written I think literally hundreds of pages about the things that agitate him. There are no racist themes in all that material. The defendant is not inhibited about making very unattractive statements when he talks about his delusions. He is not inhibited in saying that he thinks what he did was justified. I think if he had racist motives, he would not be inhibited from expressing them.
I do think that an attack on a bus driver was something that fitted in well with the defendant’s delusions. The delusions began when Mr O’Donohue worked for New South Wales Rail and they continued when he worked for Queensland Rail. I think it is fair to say that there was a transport theme to his delusions, involving the Transport Workers Union. He came to believe that all government agencies were against him. He saw the city council buses in that context, as part of a government agency. He thought there were messages for him in the advertisements on the side of buses. He thought bus drivers beeped their horns to draw his attention to these messages. He had no car and he spent a lot of time on buses. He thought that bus drivers and bus passengers gave him messages. None of this makes sense in an ordinary way. I do think, though, that so far as we can analyse the defendant’s thinking, there is a connection between his delusions and the attack on a bus driver.
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