R v Conway
[2005] VSC 205
•10 June 2005
| IN THE SUPREME COURT OF VICTORIA | Not Restricted |
AT MELBOURNE
CRIMINAL DIVISION
No. 1471 of 2001
| THE QUEEN |
| v |
| MIDAS CONWAY |
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JUDGE: | BELL J | |
WHERE HELD: | MELBOURNE | |
DATE OF HEARING: | 1-13 APRIL 2005 | |
DATE OF SENTENCE: | 10 JUNE 2005 | |
CASE MAY BE CITED AS: | R v CONWAY | |
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION: | [2005] VSC 205 | |
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Criminal Law – Sentencing – Murder of former fiancée – Male possessive rage - 19 years' imprisonment – 14 years non-parole period.
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APPEARANCES: | Counsel | Solicitors |
| For the Crown | Mrs C. Quin | Mr Steven Milesi |
| For the Accused | Dr G.J. Lyon | Ms N. Buccheri |
HIS HONOUR:
Midas Conway, in a trial conducted before Teague J, a jury found you guilty of the murder of Lisa Richardson on 18 October 2000. You sought to rely upon the lawful justification or excuse of provocation, but his Honour took that matter away from the jury. Justice Teague sentenced you to 19 years' imprisonment and fixed a non-parole period of 14 years.
You appealed successfully to the Court of Appeal against your conviction. The Court of Appeal decided that the question of provocation should have been allowed to go to the jury, and ordered that you be retried. That retrial occurred before me and you were allowed to rely upon provocation. The new jury again found you guilty of the murder of Ms Richardson. It rejected your reliance upon provocation.
Neither you nor the prosecution appealed to the Court of Appeal against the sentence that Teague J imposed upon you. You did not contend that it was manifestly excessive. The prosecution did not content that it was manifestly inadequate.
I am not bound to follow the sentence that Teague J imposed. I must decide independently the sentence that justice requires. However, in the circumstances that I have just described, there would need to be significant reasons for departing from the sentence imposed upon Teague J.
The principle submission made by your counsel, Dr Lyon, was that you should not receive a heavier sentence than that previously imposed. I accept that submission. Dr Lyon made a subsidiary submission that there were factors by which the previous sentence could be mitigated. There are some such factors and I have considered them. I have, however, come to the conclusion that they are not sufficient to warrant a departure from the earlier sentence. I will now explain my reasons for this in more detail.
The circumstances in which you committed the murder of Ms Richardson were described in the sentence of Teague J. This description was consistent with the evidence presented at the second trial before me and I gratefully adopt it. I set out below in full the reasons for sentence of Teague J[1]:
[1]([2002] VSC 486, 14 November 2002)
"Midas Conway. You have been found guilty by a jury of the murder of Lisa Richardson on 18 October 2000. As at that time, Lisa Richardson had been, but no longer was your fiancée. You had met her in 1999. A relationship was quickly established. In August 1999, the two of you became engaged to be married. The two of you were then living in a unit in Mentone. In January 2000, your plans to marry were disrupted. You were charged with offences relating to illegal drugs. You were remanded in custody. Those charges are still to be dealt with by the courts. You remained on remand until 9 October 2000.
When you first went to prison, Lisa Richardson visited you regularly. By the middle of the year 2000 her visits were further apart. As time passed, her attitude to you changed. Another man, a Rino Salpietro, had come into her life. She established a relationship with Salpietro. The time came when she told you that she had met Salpietro. Independently, you received confirmation of his being on the scene from other sources. To you, she downplayed her feelings for him. You were nevertheless devastated at the turn of events. You became depressed. Your depression was such as to necessitate you receiving treatment in prison. Lisa Richardson did not discontinue visiting you in prison. It was, nevertheless, still clear that the position between the two of you was no longer as before.
On 9 October 2000, you were released on bail. Shortly before that, Lisa Richardson communicated to you that, on your release, she would not have you back at the Mentone unit. She returned your engagement ring and some belongings. When you got out of prison, you went to live with your mother and sister. Two days after leaving prison, you went unannounced to the Mentone unit. Lisa Richardson was not there. You spoke with the two women who were then sharing the unit with her. While there, you arranged to meet with her the next day. At the unit, you saw a photograph of Lisa Richardson with Rino Salpietro. You noted her obvious happy appearance. The next day you went to meet her at a jeans shop in Mentone. She had an interest in the shop. She worked there at times. She had arranged for others to be in the background at the shop. You and she had what appeared to be an amicable discussion. But she made it clear to you that a relationship with you was no longer a consideration. After the meeting, your depression deepened. Your sister arranged for you to be seen by a doctor three times in that week for your depression.
You arranged to meet with Lisa Richardson again at the jeans shop on 18 October 2000. Before leaving your family home, you took a knife from a kitchen drawer. You concealed the knife under your clothes. When you arrived at the shop, Lisa Richardson was there. Also there was an assistant, Suzanne Thobis. You and Lisa Richardson talked in the staff room for a few minutes. You then took out the knife. You took hold of Lisa Richardson. She called for help. Suzanne Thobis came in to help. Suzanne Thobis showed herself to be a very brave woman. She tackled you despite your being considerably stronger. She managed to bring about the breaking of your knife. What you then did speaks clearly of your true motive. You promptly took up another knife from a nearby table. You plunged it into the back of Lisa Richardson in front of Suzanne Thobis. Suzanne Thobis ran for help. You stabbed the defenceless Lisa Richardson many more times. Your attack on her was sustained and ferocious. The blood loss from the wounds that you inflicted was extreme. You delayed the provision to her of help. Her life could not be saved.
Later, you were interviewed by the police. I did not find credible some parts of the account of events you then gave. I cannot accept your claim that you took the knife to the meeting to use on yourself. I cannot accept your portrayal of Lisa Richardson as callous. I cannot accept your claim that she acted in an uncaring way when you told her that you would take your own life if you could not have her. You claimed: that she just laughed; that she invited you to go ahead; that you lost it; and that you just reacted spontaneously by using the knife to kill her instead of yourself. Your claim of an intention to harm yourself is scarcely supported by the injuries you sustained. Moreover, it was extremely unlikely, given other evidence, that she would laugh derisively as you claimed. All the indications are that she was a caring woman, who was scared of what you might do. Whatever Lisa Richardson said to you on the fatal day was likely to have been compassionate, not new or shocking or uncaring. You were already well aware that the relationship was over. The evidence points much more strongly to your having acted as you did for a very different reason. That was that if you could not have Lisa Richardson, no one else would. You were motivated by jealousy and resentment for her having preferred another man to you.
I do make allowance in your favour for the confused and depressed state in which you then were. There was evidence from the trial and the report of Dr Lester Walton that the level of depression was significant.
I have read attentively two victim impact statements. One is that of Suzanne Thobis. The other is that of Mary Vavladellis, Lisa Richardson’s only sister. It is written on behalf of herself and her parents. While there are some aspects that go beyond what is appropriate, the contents of those statements make clear that the consequences of the death of Lisa Richardson for at least four people have been devastating, emotionally and in other ways. Nothing the law can do will much mitigate the adverse consequences flowing from her death.
I turn to your personal circumstances. You were born in August 1959 and are now 43 years of age. Your family background is a relatively normal one. You appear to have above average intelligence. Your schooling extended into the tertiary level. You have had a history of troubled relationships. You had two children by a marriage that had its ups and downs. You have a prior conviction for unlawful assault and two for trafficking in heroin. Both of the latter warranted prison sentences, the earlier being suspended. I note in your favour that you appear to have used your time in prison to date to advance your rehabilitation.
You have had 758 days of pre-sentence detention to today, 14 November 2002. I direct that that be noted in the court records. I sentence you to 19 years imprisonment. I fix a non-parole period of 14 years."
The essential fact that emerged from the evidence that has led to your conviction is that you brutally stabbed Ms Richardson, your former fiancée, to death because she had rejected your affections. The jury in the trial before me rejected your attempt partly to justify your actions upon the basis that Ms Richardson provoked you.
You murdered Ms Richardson in a state of possessive male rage. Your view was that if you could not have her, no-one else would. You took from Ms Richardson the most important of her human rights, the right to personal security, the right to life itself.
These actions require denunciation by the court in the strongest possible terms and I give that denunciation. This must be the most important sentencing consideration.
Just how you came to perform this act was explained in the evidence presented at the previous trial and expanded considerably in the trial before me. You are clearly a man of considerable intelligence, but you have some serious psychological problems and a social history fraught with difficulty, particularly in relations with women. You have prior convictions, but nothing that would indicate a propensity for violence.
The evidence establishes that in October in the year 2000 when you committed the crime, you were in poor mental health. You were markedly depressed, agitated, anxious and insomniac, and were taking medication for these conditions, although the medication did not relieve the symptoms. You appeared different to your family, friends and acquaintances to the man that they previously knew. You were suicidal whilst in custody and after your release on bail.
After killing Ms Richardson, you made no attempt to flee. When the police arrived you pleaded with them to shoot you. You did not implement your oft-stated threat to take your own life, but I accept at that time you wanted the police to do that for you. This too indicates your then state of mental ill health.
Dr Lyon submitted that your state of mental ill-health was an important sentencing consideration and I accept that submission. The reasons for the sentence imposed by Teague J reveal that he too took this consideration into account. I believe that this consideration was appropriately reflected in the sentence that he imposed.
There was more evidence of the state of mental ill-health in the trial before me but in the end this is really just a matter not of kind but degree.
If the evidence before Teague J did not establish that mental ill-health partly explained your actions, the sentence that he imposed upon you would have been considerably heavier than it was. I do not consider that the additional evidence on this subject is a basis on which I should impose a sentence lighter than that imposed by Teague J.
There are several grounds for thinking that you have good prospects of rehabilitation and may eventually occupying a meaningful place in the community, an opportunity that you have taken away from Ms Richardson. These grounds include the following.
Firstly, you expressed remorse to me through Dr Lyon and I accept that the occasion of the conclusion of your re-trial was an appropriate occasion on which to do so. Your expression of remorse was as follows: “Mr Conway expressly instructs that he wishes to express remorse for the killing and to apologise to all those adversely affected by his actions. In this respect, Mr Conway has particular regard for Mrs Vavladellis and Mrs Leone who gave evidence in the trial.”
Secondly, you have used your time constructively in prison. You are regarded by the prison authorities as a trusted prisoner. You have been appointed to the position of prison listener which gives you some ability to listen to assist other prisoners with their problems.
Thirdly, you are undergoing courses in prison the nature of which gives me some reason for hope. They are in alternatives to violence, stress management, anger management, drug and alcohol abuse, grief and loss, use of computers, psychology and philosophy.
These are all positive signs and I have taken them into account. I am satisfied that Teague J took similar considerations into account. If I had any reason to think that a heavier sentence should be imposed than that imposed by Teague J, these considerations would persuade me that I should not do so.
I have taken into account the victim impact statements from Mrs Suzanne Leone and also Mrs Mary Vavladellis on behalf of herself and her parents, the sister and parents of Ms Richardson. I know that for them the loss of a sister, a child, brings an almost unbearable pain that just will not go away.
I commend Mrs Leone for her bravery. This small woman tried to restrain you, Mr Conway, from stabbing Ms Richardson. Extraordinarily she forced one knife from your strong masculine hand. Tragically you found another close by.
I commend the police officer, Leading Senior Constable Robert Manks, for his bravery. Mr Conway, you confronted this police officer when he attended at the scene of the crime. You were in a violent state and had the murder knife in your hand. The situation was extremely threatening for Leading Senior Constable Manks. In this situation a police shooting could easily have happened. Leading Senior Constable Manks showed extraordinary restraint. You owe him a great debt.
For these reasons you are sentenced to be imprisoned for 19 years and I fix a non-parole period of 14 years. I declare that the period of pre-sentence detention to be reckoned as having been served as part of the sentence is 1696 days up to and including yesterday. I have made the relevant disposal order. I have made the relevant order under s.464ZFB(1) of the Crimes Act 1958 (Vic).
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