R v Craft

[2003] NSWSC 588

CITATION:	R v CRAFT [2003] NSWSC 588
HEARING DATE(S):	30/06/03
JUDGMENT DATE:	30 June 2003
JURISDICTION:	Common Law
JUDGMENT OF:	Barr J at 1
DECISION:	The accused was found not guilty of either of the charges by reason of mental illness. Order that he be detained in the psychiatric ward of the hospital at Long Bay Correctional Centre or such other place as may be determined by the Mental Health Review Tribunal until released by due process of law.
CATCHWORDS:	Criminal Law - accused found not guilty on the ground of mental illness
LEGISLATION CITED:	Mental Health Act 1990
PARTIES :	REGINA v Adam Ronald CRAFT
FILE NUMBER(S):	SC 70102/02
COUNSEL:	Crown: PS Dare SC Accused: J Stratton
SOLICITORS:	Crown: SE O'Connor Accused: D Humphreys

IN THE SUPREME COURT
OF NEW SOUTH WALES
COMMON LAW DIVISION

GRAHAM BARR J

Monday, 30 June 2003

70102/02 REGINA v Adam Ronald CRAFT

JUDGMENT

1 HIS HONOUR: Adam Ronald Craft has pleaded not guilty to two charges, namely that on 23 May 2002 at Mayfield he murdered John William Barr and that on 5 June 2002 at Cessnock he inflicted grievous bodily harm upon Robert Gregory Manning with intent to murder him.

2 The accused has elected for trial by judge alone and the Crown has consented to that form of trial. I shall explain when I review the psychiatric evidence why I think it appropriate that the accused be tried without a jury.

3 The Crown must prove beyond reasonable doubt that the accused did the acts which constitute the offences but he admits all the facts relied on, so there is no doubt about those matters. The accused contends that he is not guilty of any offence because at the time of the events giving rise to the charges he was mentally ill and therefore not legally responsible for his actions. He must prove that it is more likely than not that that was so.

4 The statement of the test for a defence of mental illness was propounded as long ago as 1843 in R v McNaghten. The question to be answered was whether the accused at the time the offence was committed was suffering from a defect of reason, from a disease of the mind, so as not to know the quality and nature of the act he was doing or, if he did know it, that he did not know that what he was doing was wrong. The law has been amplified in Australia in the present century and the test may be said to be whether the accused was able to appreciate the wrongness of the act that he was doing. If through disordered condition of the mind he could not reason about the matter with a moderate degree of sense and composure it may be said that he could not know that what he was doing was wrong. It may also be said that if a disease of the mind so governs the faculties that it is impossible to reason with some moderate degree of calmness about the moral quality of an act, the actor is prevented from knowing that what he does is wrong.

5 The accused was born on 16 March 1974. He was one of a family of three children whose parents separated when he was aged one or two years. He had no contact with his natural father until the age of fifteen or sixteen years. He was brought up by his mother and a de facto step-father who, it is alleged, sexually interfered with him and his brother. Following those events his mother left the step-father, taking the children with her. The accused gave evidence at the trial of the step-father for the reported sexual assaults. The step-father was acquitted and the accused is reported to have been devastated at the result. His mother noticed his becoming more erratic after the trial. He had conversations with himself during which he rambled incoherently. He told her about conversations he had had with his grandfather, who had then been dead for twelve years. After he finished high school he attended the James Fletcher Hospital at Newcastle and was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Part of his treatment included fortnightly injections of an anti-psychotic drug. Over the four years immediately before the events giving rise to the charges he was not taking his medication as directed and he and his mother argued about the matter.

6 It appears from the reports of members of the accused’s family that he became fixated with his step-father and what he had done to him. He began when angry or agitated to accused people of being paedophiles. These accusations were unreasonable and included people he had never met, his natural father and even himself.

7 The accused began to use drugs at the age of fifteen or sixteen years. He first tried cannabis and over the succeeding years heroin, LSD, magic mushrooms, amphetamine and cocaine. He is a moderate social drinker of alcohol.

8 He was first diagnosed mentally ill in July 1994, when he was admitted to the Hunter Area Mental Health Service. He was suffering dysthymia, major depressive disorder and possibly personality disorder. In the following months he was again admitted to hospital. He had been homeless and had been destroying property at his mother’s house and threatening to kill himself. He had been drinking heavily. The final diagnosis was anti-social personality disorder and borderline personality disorder with alcohol abuse.

9 During the following year he was admitted to Morisset Hospital and the discharge summary reported a long involvement with counsellors and psychiatrists. He had problems with polysubstance dependence. The diagnosis was drug dependence and anti-social personality disorder.

10 Early in 1996 he was admitted to hospital again, accusing his step-father of abusing him. He was thought-disordered and manifested persecutory ideation and ideas of reference. The family reported a long history of odd behaviour and aggression. He was treated with anti-psychotics and responded. The diagnosis was schizophrenia and polysubstance abuse. A month later he was again admitted to hospital and was hearing voices and had suicidal ideation. He was admitted again a month later, having breached an apprehended violence order. He was angry with his family for previous abuse and had assaulted them. He was showing ideas of reference and auditory hallucinations of a persecutory nature. A final diagnosis was chronic schizophrenia, polysubstance abuse and anti-social personality disorder.

11 In March 1998 he caused a lot of damage at his mother’s flat and was again admitted to hospital. He reported hearing the voice of his dead grandfather. He was difficult to contain. The diagnosis was query psychotic disorder, query substance abuse and query anti-social personality disorder.

12 He was admitted to other mental hospitals several times more during that year.

13 In 2001 he was apprehended by the police when he was carrying a knife and threatening to kill someone. He told police that he was the son of God, that God had put stigmata on him and that the person he was going to kill was molesting children. He was thought-disordered and had limited insight. The diagnosis was query schizophrenia and query drug induced psychosis.

14 There is a report by a psychiatrist who interviewed the accused in November 2001 at Cessnock Correctional Centre. Dr Hinton believed that the accused was psychotic but thought it unclear whether there was underlying schizophrenic illness or whether the symptoms were the result of drug abuse. He thought that there was a personality disorder marked by poor impulse control, aggression and violence. He thought that the accused required ongoing anti-psychotic medication, drug and alcohol counselling and follow-up by a community mental health team when released from gaol. Dr Hinton was concerned about the risk that the defendant posed to his former girlfriend and those whom he perceived as paedophiles and to whom he had made explicit threats.

15 Not many days before the first of the events giving rise to the charges the accused was released from gaol in Queensland, where he had spent one month for assaulting police. He had been using intravenous amphetamines heavily. His mother was concerned about him. He appeared psychotic. He had been pointing to moles on his stomach, which he believed were signs of the cross and had religious significance, and spoke about hands and hearts which were rotating. He believed that he had a mission to spread the word of God.

16 The deceased, John William Barr, was forty-nine years old at the time of his death. When he was eighteen years old he suffered severe head injuries in a motorcycle accident and was rendered unable to work and had to go on to a disability pension. Following the death of his father he progressed from being a social drinker to an alcoholic and spent time in a number of institutions from time to time for treatment for alcoholism. He had several relationships with women and there could not be the slightest suggestion that he ever sexually interfered with children. He lived in premises at Mayfield rented from the Housing Commission and friends stayed there with him from time to time. One of those friends was the father of the accused, Mr Gordon Cram.

17 In April 2002 Mr Cram was staying with the accused in Bass Hill and on one occasion decided to leave after they had had an argument. Mr Cram found it necessary to summon the police for his own safety. The accused was calling him an alcoholic and a paedophile. Mr Cram is not a paedophile.

18 Mr Cram went to stay with the deceased. When he arrived there from work on 22 May 2002 he found the accused there, drinking alcohol with the deceased. Both seemed to have been smoking marijuana. On the following morning he told the accused that he should find somewhere else to live.

19 At about 12:30 pm on 23 May 2002 the accused attacked the deceased with a knife, putting a fifteen centimetre long transverse incised wound across the front of the throat. The wound produced major airway damage as well as damage to the jugular vein. The deceased was thereby rendered unable to breathe and bled to death.

20 The accused ran away from the premises but returned on the following day and was arrested by the police. He told them that he could not remember how he had cut the deceased’s throat but knew that he had done so in a fit of rage. He said that he had intended to kill him because of what he had done to young girls in the past. He was charged with murder and remanded in custody.

21 He was kept at Cessnock and a psychiatric registrar recommended that he be referred to the Community Mental Health Court Liaison Service for a mental health assessment. He was placed in a cell with another man, Robert Gregory Manning. At about 1:45 am on 4 June 2002 a nurse was summoned to the cell following the accused’s complaint of nausea. He was agitated. The nurse provided him with medicine and spoke to Mr Manning. Both were polite and there did not appear to be any problem between them. The nurse wondered whether the accused should be sharing a cell and asked another officer about it. It was ascertained that the accused had a phobia of paedophiles and that Manning was not a paedophile. Things were left as they were.

22 At 4:10 am on 5 June 2002 officers attended an alarm call from the accused’s cell. When they arrived Mr Manning was lying in the middle of the floor of the cell with blood around his head. The accused was present and kept repeating the words, “What have I done?”. Then he said, “I’ve killed him”.

23 Mr Manning was taken to Royal Newcastle Hospital and the following injuries were recorded -

1. A head injury involving the left frontal lobe together with extradural haematomas on the right temporal and right frontal areas as well as bilateral anterior cranial fossa fractures;

2. Facial injuries including an undisplaced fracture of the nasal bones and anterior/posterior ethmoidial complex and a minimally displaced tripod fracture of the right zygomatic arch. There was a fracture floor of the right orbit;

3. Neck injuries including undisplaced spinous process fractures of C7 and C5.

24 Mr Manning was still in a coma on 17 June. He has suffered a very severe head injury as a result of which he remains fully dependent. He will be left with permanent and severe disabilities as a result of his injuries.

25 The accused was taken to Cessnock police station where he was interviewed. He said that he had killed the man because he thought he was a paedophile, that he, the accused, had hearts in his hands, clubs, hearts, killer whales and a snake and a female and male killer whale. He felt that he was the chosen one from God to kill all paedophiles off the face of the earth. He described in detail how he caused injury to Mr Manning. He said that he choked Mr Manning, kicked him in the head and stomped on his head. He wrapped his head in a blanket.

26 The accused has been kept in custody ever since those events. On 16 July 2002 he was seen by a psychiatrist, Dr Westmore. Before Dr Westmore visited the place where the accused was being held he was made aware of the history of the case and, I think, of the accused’s personal history. The accused told Dr Westmore that he just heard voices telling him to go and kill John Barr. He said that the radio and television told him to kill him. He said that he only did it for the kids, that Mr Barr was a paedophile and had openly admitted the fact to him. He said that he, the accused, had been molested when he was a child and that he did not like paedophiles. When asked how he knew that Mr Barr was a paedophile he said that he told him that he was and the television and radio told him to kill him. He told Dr Westmore about the attempted murder of Mr Manning. He said that he strangled him first and jumped on his head because the voices on the radio told him that he was a paedophile too. He observed that straight after he had murdered a paedophile they had put him into a cell with a paedophile. It was a set up, he said.

27 Dr Westmore saw the accused again in January 2003. By that time the accused was being held at the Long Bay Prison Complex. He had been the subject of a continuing regime of psychiatric treatment. He had been taking high doses of anti-psychotic drugs at morning and at night. Speaking of the killing of Mr Barr the accused told Dr Westmore that he had heard voices on the television and radio. He said that he did not hear them any more because he had been taking his medication. He said that the voices that had told him to kill Mr Barr had been present for about twelve months before he had killed him. He said that he had not been taking his medication for a period of about five months before the homicide.

28 Statements elsewhere in the papers suggest that he had not taken medication for as much as eighteen months before that event.

29 He told Dr Westmore that he had been hearing voices for some considerable time and that the radio had been talking to him since he was twenty years old.

30 Dr Westmore thinks that the accused is fit to be tried. He understands what a criminal trial is designed to achieve, the roles played by the judge, the jury and counsel. The accused can answer the charges and instruct his counsel accordingly so as to make a defence.

31 Dr Allnutt, psychiatrist, saw the accused in March 2003 on behalf of the Crown. He, too, was supplied with documents setting out the history of the matter and had access to documents recording the psychiatric history of the accused. The accused gave Dr Allnutt a bizarre account of his thoughts and attitudes at the time leading up to the time of his killing Mr Barr. He said that he was hearing voices of what he described as “the human nation”, which was those people still alive on earth after he had slain all rapists, paedophiles and “rock spiders”. He said that the voices of the human nation hounded him because there were still some paedophiles left on earth. When he was at the house of the deceased the voices told him that he would have to kill Mr Barr in order to become a king. He had to leave the meal table because the voices were becoming intense. He went to lie down. He was distressed. He did not want to kill Mr Barr but he was a paedophile and he, the accused, had to go to gaol by killing a paedophile. He believed that when he got to gaol he would have another heart attack and would then have an opportunity to kill all the paedophiles in the gaol. He would be released after that, get a pardon from the Government and then be made king. He told Dr Allnutt that he was still waiting for that to happen. He said that he knew that it was wrong killing Mr Barr but he had to murder him because he, the accused, would have died if he had not.

32 Describing the attack on Mr Manning, the accused told Dr Allnutt that he thought that Mr Manning was a weirdo and that the voices of the human nation and voices from the television and radio told him that he was a paedophile and that he had to kill him. He believed that he had a microchip in his head and messages were being communicated to him by means of it by people around him. When he was in the cell with Mr Manning at night he continued to receive commands to kill. He obeyed the voices.

33 Dr Westmore is of the opinion that the accused was suffering from a schizophrenic illness, possibly of a paranoid type with a chronic course at the time of the events giving rise to the charges. He thinks that the accused also qualifies for the diagnosis polysubstance abuse. Schizophrenia is a disease of the mind. Dr Westmore believes that that disease would have totally deprived the accused of his capacity to know that he ought not to kill Mr Barr or attempt to kill Mr Manning.

34 Dr Allnutt thinks that the accused would fail an objective test of knowledge of wrongfulness of his acts. He thought it interesting to note that the accused might have felt personally reluctant to kill and to attempt to kill but noted that the possible reluctance was overridden by the delusional belief of the accused that there was external moral expectation that he behave in the manner in which he did. This was described by Dr Allnutt as delusional justification. Dr Allnutt thinks that there would have been a significant deficit in the capacity of the accused to integrate external and internal experiences and that his value system would have been substantially distorted by his delusional beliefs and would thereby have impaired his capacity to know the wrongfulness of what he was doing.

35 Both psychiatrists agree that the accused has the defence of not guilty on the ground of mental illness available to him.

36 In my opinion the accused has proved that at the time of the events giving rise to the charges he was mentally ill and is entitled to succeed in the defence of not guilty on the ground of mental illness. He must therefore be found not guilty of each of the charges.

37 Ever since the time of his arrest the accused has been treated with anti-psychotic drugs. Although some of the things he said to Dr Allnutt suggest that he is not altogether free of psychotic belief, the evidence shows that he is now much better than at the time of his arrest. He no longer appears to be in the acute phase of his illness. Accordingly, and in this respect I rely particularly on the opinion of Dr Westmore, no question arises whether the accused is unfit to be tried. He has demonstrated that he understands the trial process and the functions of those who take part in it and that demonstrates to the Court that he has the capacity to elect for trial by judge without a jury.

38 The evidence shows that the accused needs to be treated with anti-psychotic medication and that his treatment should be supervised by a psychiatrist.

39 It is necessary to say a number of other things. The events giving rise to these charges have been distressing and perplexing for the family of Mr Barr and for Mr Manning and his family and for the accused’s family and others who have been touched by these events. The sympathy of the Court goes out to the victims and all those who have been affected.

40 The statute which governs cases like this requires me to make an order that the accused be detained in such place and in such manner as the Court thinks fit until released by due process of law. In practice that will mean that the accused will be referred to the Mental Health Review Tribunal under the provisions of the Mental Health Act 1990. A strict statutory regime will then come into effect.

41 The Mental Health Review Tribunal is a body of professional experts. Within 14 days after the verdict the Tribunal will commence a review of the case of the accused. When it has done its review the Tribunal will make a recommendation to the Minister for Health. That recommendation may be either unconditional or subject to conditions as to the manner in which the accused should be detained, cared for or treated. If the Tribunal is satisfied that the safety of the accused or any member of the public would not be seriously endangered by his release, it may make a recommendation as to his release. If it makes such a recommendation that will be considered by the Department of Health which in turn will advise the Governor-in-Council. The Governor-in-Council will then, in accordance with the recommendation and advice, either make an order for the detention of the accused or for his release, conditional or unconditional. The Governor-in-Council may only make an order for release where the Tribunal itself has recommended release. Assuming that no recommendation for release is made after the first hearing the Mental Health Review Tribunal can at any later time, and must at least once every six months, review the case of the accused.

42 After hearing the evidence at any later review, it must make a recommendation to the Minister for Health as to the continued detention, care or treatment of the accused or as to his release, conditional or unconditional. The Tribunal is not free at any such review to make a recommendation for release unless it is satisfied that the safety of the accused or any member of the public would not be seriously endangered by his release. Again following such a review and recommendation the matter goes to the Department of Health and the Minister advises the Governor-in-Council. Any recommendation so advised can be carried into effect only by order of the Governor-in-Council.

43 If the accused were at any time released back into the public on conditions and there were a breach of any of those conditions, the Governor-in-Council might order that the accused be apprehended and detained. Such an order would follow by reason of the practical consideration that if a person were released, the Department of Health would maintain a watch over his case with the assistance of a Community Health Centre, a private psychiatrist, or one of the other public facilities available. In other words, if a person is released conditionally back into the community, then the Department maintains a watch over him and a breach of any condition will lead to his being apprehended and detained once again.

44 The conditions which could be applied include matters such as living in a particular place, taking particular medication and so on, to ensure that the accused was properly cared for. Other than pursuant to any such release, the accused would remain, as I have said previously, in strict custody within one of the psychiatric institutions catering for forensic patients.

45 The only manner in which a person ceases to be a forensic patient for the purposes of these provisions is when he is unconditionally released by the Governor-in-Council, or is released upon conditions which include a condition as to the time that his release should become unconditional. If that time expires, then his release becomes unconditional and he ceases to be a forensic patient. However, as I previously explained, the accused will never be released unless the Mental Health Review Tribunal is satisfied on the evidence available to it that his safety and the safety of any member of the public will not thereby be seriously endangered.

46 I find that the accused is not guilty of either of the charges by reason of mental illness. I order that he be detained in the psychiatric ward of the hospital at Long Bay Correctional Centre or such other place as may be determined by the Mental Health Review Tribunal until released by due process of law.

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Last Modified: 07/04/2003