R v Bona Lual
[2015] VSC 790
•26 June 2015
| IN THE SUPREME COURT OF VICTORIA | Not Restricted |
AT MELBOURNE
CRIMINAL DIVISION
S CR 2014 0084
| THE QUEEN |
| v |
| BONA LUAL |
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JUDGE: | T FORREST J |
WHERE HELD: | Melbourne |
DATE OF HEARING: | 19 June 2015 |
DATE OF SENTENCE: | 26 June 2015 |
CASE MAY BE CITED AS: | R v Bona Lual |
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION: | [2015] VSC 790 |
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CRIMINAL LAW – Sentence – Convicted of murder at trial – Deceased was estranged wife – Deceased killed in her own home – Cause of death a single stab wound – Laceration of eyes of the deceased an aggravating factor – Horrific childhood of the accused – Significant prior – Sentenced to 21 years’ imprisonment with a minimum period to be served before parole eligibility of 16 years 6 months
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APPEARANCES: | Counsel | Solicitors |
| For the Crown | Mr A. Tinney SC | OPP |
| For the Accused | Mr G. Barns | Pica Criminal Lawyers |
HIS HONOUR:
Mr Lual, you have been convicted of the murder of your estranged wife, Suzy Oghia. You had been separated for some years and you wished to return to the family home. Your wife did not agree and for that she paid with her life. Your actions have destroyed one life and left your four children effectively as orphans.
The background to your offending commences in Sudan. You were born there, as was Suzy Oghia. You have two brothers and a sister who still live there. Your parents are deceased. You married Ms Oghia in 2000 when you were 22 or 23 and she was 18. Over the next few years you fathered two children and escaped from war-torn Sudan to Australia in 2005. Your family settled in Melbourne, but by the time you arrived here the marriage was in difficulty. Notwithstanding this, two further children were born in Australia.
Initially you and your family lived in Noble Park with friends, who observed the tension within your marriage. In 2007 you moved to Brisbane, but your wife and children remained living in the Noble Park area. In 2009 your family moved up to Brisbane to live with you. The tensions in the marriage soon surfaced however and Ms Oghia and the children moved back to Melbourne within a few months.
Occasionally you would come to Melbourne to visit your family. In about 2011, two of your wife’s friends noticed injuries to the left side of her face. Your wife said that you had assaulted her because you thought she was seeing another man. There is no evidence that this was ever the case. Various witnesses in the trial spoke about threats or implied threats that you had made towards your wife. The general tenor of these threats was that if she was having an affair with anyone you would kill her and the other person.
You returned to Victoria in about September 2013 and expressed a wish to move back into the family home. You slept there one night but after that Ms Oghia asked you to leave. This must have taken a great deal of courage. You left and moved in with your friend, Martin Ohuchol. Over the next few weeks you prevailed upon Ohuchol to speak to your wife to allow you to return. He did so and she refused. You also asked Andrea Lual and Diana Guarang to make the same request but each refused to approach your wife.
Your conduct became more intrusive. About a month before she died you again threatened to kill Ms Oghia and any man she was seeing. Ms Oghia disclosed this to her friend, Election Majilakwa. I accept that, at least intermittently, you began following Ms Oghia. In the month or so before her death Ms Oghia met Mr Majilakwa at a shop in Noble Park. She left hurriedly, and a short time later Mr Majilakwa saw you in the same area. Ms Oghia would let you come to her house for relatively limited periods to see the children. You supplied your 12 year old son Ammanuel with a phone and notebook. You told him to record his mother’s movements. It is clear enough from the evidence that Ms Oghia thought the marriage was over and that you could not come to terms with that.
Suzy Oghia was a much liked, gregarious member of the Melbourne Sudanese community. In early November 2013, she helped to organise a Melbourne Cup Eve party at the Menzies Avenue Hall in Dandenong North. She spent the day on Monday 4 November at the hall helping decorate it. You went to her house at 6 Marna Court, Noble Park at about 4.00pm. Amanuel, Beatrice, Nelson and Sandra were there. When Suzy arrived home you were still there. She changed her clothes and sometime later went to the dance.
You had not been invited to the dance but your friend Martin Ohuchol was. You decided to attend nevertheless. You arrived, saw that you were underdressed, returned to Ohuchol’s house, changed clothes and returned back to the hall at about 11.30pm. You looked for your wife. CCTV footage shows Suzy Oghia speaking to others out the front of the hall at one stage. An analysis of other CCTV footage shot from different cameras demonstrates that at this time you were in her near vicinity but apparently out of her sight in the shadows.
Once inside, you told Seima Latita that you wished to speak to Suzy. Ms Latita told Suzy that you were looking for her. Not long after at 1.06am Suzy left the hall and drove to her Noble Park home. Only a couple of minutes later you left the hall. You were following her again. After providing a breath sample for the interlock device you drove straight to Ms Oghia’s house and arrived there at about 1.20am. There is no witness account of what occurred inside the house and you exercised your right to silence when interviewed by police.
It is clear from the pathological and forensic evidence that you gained access to a very large knife, confronted Ms Oghia in the living room adjacent to the kitchen and stabbed her once very deeply in the right lower abdomen. This attack caused great internal damage and Ms Oghia died in a very short time. Before leaving, but after your wife had died, you inflicted two further stab wounds: one to each eyeball. I regard this as an aggravating feature of your offending.
At 1.52pm, you left the house. You had been there for about half an hour. You contacted emergency services and told them that police and an ambulance were needed at the address, there had been a fight and the husband had stabbed the wife. You said “the lady is maybe going to die soon… a big knife was used and the man is the one who stabbed the female”. About five minutes later you repeated this call, adding “she is alone at the house and if you don’t hurry up she is going to die.” You then admitted that it was you who stabbed her. It is hard to know what to make of these calls. You may, belatedly, have been seeking help for your wife, not yet appreciating that she had passed away. This is hard to reconcile with the pathologist’s evidence to the effect that Ms Oghia was most likely deceased when you lacerated her eyeballs. On balance, I am prepared to accept that you may have thought there was some hope that she was still alive and that she may be saved. There certainly is urgency in your voice on the 000 recordings. This is the only scintilla of remorse that I have been able to find in your favour. In making this assessment I do not include your undoubted remorse at your children’s now predicament. It seems to me that is quite independent of any remorse that relates to your killing of Suzy Oghia.
You returned to Menzies Road Hall, collected Mr Ohuchol and drove with him to the Dandenong Police Station where you presented yourself and told police you had had a fight with your wife. You were then arrested.
At about 2.10pm, police arrived at 6 Marna Court and found Suzy Oghia to be deceased. Your four children were asleep in the house. They were sleeping when you murdered your wife. I commend the police for removing the children by an exit that did not involve them filing past their deceased mother. Paramedics then arrived.
In assessing your moral culpability or criminality I have taken the following matters into account:
1.You were a jealous, controlling husband who could not come to terms with Ms Oghia’s rejection of you.
2.You believed, wrongly in my view, that she was having an affair.
3.You made threats to kill her and whoever the other party was.
4.She feared for her life as a consequence of your threats.
5.The murder was carried out in her own home late at night. As life ebbed from her she must have known that the man who had done this to her was still armed and in the same house as her four children.
6.I am unable to say whether the act that caused Suzy Oghia’s death was premeditated or whether it arose relatively spontaneously. I am satisfied that you went to the house to confront your wife. I am also satisfied that at 1:20am you had no right to be there. I am unable to say whether you took the knife to the house or whether you found it there. On the construction of the facts most favourable to you, you would still have had to go into the kitchen, open a drawer, and select a knife – in fact, the largest knife available. You would then have had to walk to the adjacent lounge room where the murder occurred. Even on this construction there is some time for thought, but you did not pull back. For reasons that I will set out shortly, I consider you were extraordinarily angry at this stage.
7.You carefully mutilated both her eyes after death. As I have indicated, I regard this as an aggravating feature. I stated to Mr Tinney I am not prepared to speculate as to any hidden meaning in these actions. The fact of them is aggravating in itself. At that stage you cannot have been feeling any remorse whatsoever. It is also, in my view, an indication of the great anger you felt towards your wife.
The impact of your offending has been profound. Your children have been taken in by members of the community. In one selfish action they have been deprived of a mother and a father. Your son Amanuel is a brave young man. His Victim Impact Statement was particularly moving. I also take into account the impact of your crime on other members of the community, who it seems are struggling to come to terms with the loss of their friend.
During your time in Brisbane you were imprisoned for causing grievous bodily harm. This was serious offending involving the stabbing of another Sudanese man. You described the implement used to stab this man as a “tool” and you stabbed him in the left thigh and buttock, causing considerable blood loss. The District Court at Beenleigh sentenced you to 2½ years’ imprisonment with 8 months to be served before parole eligibility.
I have mentioned something of your background whilst setting out your relationship history. There is more to it than that. I accept that your early life was characterised by great hardship and acts of cruelty by others towards you and your family. These are factors relevant to this sentencing exercise and I shall set out a brief summary of them. Most of this material is set out in the psychological report, prepared for this case by Mr Simon Candlish on the instructions of your solicitors, or from the witness statements of Election Majilakwa and Olane Ajoang.
You were born in South Sudan in the village of Awil. You are from the Denka tribe. Your family were very poor, but apparently happy. Occasionally members of your family were imprisoned for their religious beliefs. It is unclear to me how much schooling you have had, but I accept by Australian standards it was not much. When you were 12 a rebel army attacked your family home looking for food. Your mother was raped. So were you. Your younger siblings were unharmed and your father was not present. Your mother was grievously injured and died two weeks later. This was the end of your childhood. You were sent to work as a servant to an army officer for approximately the next five years. You then went to work in the construction industry. I accept that both in Sudan and Australia you have a reasonably steady work history.
In 2002, you were apparently wrongly accused of being part of a rebel tribe and placed in solitary confinement without light and with only occasional food for a period of a fortnight. You state to Mr Candlish that you were beaten and effectively tortured during these two weeks. This was the precipitating factor in your and Ms Oghia’s decision to leave Sudan and seek refuge in this country.
I accept that since you have been incarcerated you have regularly attended Mass at the MRC. You have conducted yourself respectfully and are working in the metal work area. Sister Mary O’Shannassy, director of the Catholic Prison Ministry, has prepared a letter which has been tendered on your behalf. I accept that you are currently extremely isolated in prison, and likely to remain so. There are a few Arabic-speaking prisoners, but not many. In the 19 months since you were arrested you have not had a visitor nor received a telephone call. You have been unable to make contact with your family in Sudan, who to your knowledge are unaware of your circumstances. I quote from Sister O’Shannassy’s letter:
All of this has made the time that Bona has been on remand extremely isolated and isolating for him. Is has been an extremely tough time for him.
I consider that the sentence that I shall impose will be more onerous on account of this isolation than otherwise it would be. Your community has ostracised you and I consider it likely that this isolation will continue. I take this into account. I also take into account your unhappy early life. I have moderated the sentence I would otherwise impose to reflect these factors.
I assess your prospects for rehabilitation as reasonable. You have a solid work history and have endeavoured to improve yourself whilst on remand. Against that you have a serious prior conviction and the circumstances leading up to and including your offence cause me to be guarded in my assessment.
As I have mentioned, a psychological report has been prepared on your behalf. I do not consider that there was any underlying psychiatric or psychological illness that materially contributed to your offending. I accept that you may have been frustrated at your wife’s refusal to welcome you back in the family home. You clearly need some psychological counselling in strategies to avoid domestic conflict. On the material before me there is not, however, any evidence of a mental impairment that operates to reduce your moral culpability or reduce the weight given to deterrence as a purpose of sentencing. Similarly there is, in my view, no evidence of a mental impairment that would operate to increase the hardship experienced in prison or justify a less severe sentence on the basis that there was a significant risk that imprisonment could adversely impact upon your mental health.
The sentencing purposes of general and specific deterrence must be given significant weight. It is the court’s duty insofar as it can, to protect the weak and vulnerable in our community. We can’t protect Suzy Oghia now, but if this sentence causes a jealous bully to reconsider what he’s about to do, then one of its sentencing purposes will have been achieved. You have a relevant prior conviction for a serious assault. Another purpose of this sentence should be to try to deter you from reoffending. Your conduct also calls for denunciation and punishment.
I have already observed that the following factors are in your favour:
(a) You have had an horrific childhood and harsh adolescence;
(b) You will be greatly isolated during the lengthy prison term that I must impose;
(c) You have reasonable prospects for rehabilitation
(d) You demonstrated some fleeting remorse in the 000 calls
Balancing these factors as best I can, I sentence you to 21 years’ imprisonment with 16 years and 6 months to be served before parole eligibility. I declare that 599 days of imprisonment inclusive of today have been served by way of pre-sentence detention.
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