R v Crocker
[2012] VSC 570
•22 November 2012
| IN THE SUPREME COURT OF VICTORIA | Not Restricted | |
AT MELBOURNE
CRIMINAL DIVISION
No. 0044 of 2012
| THE QUEEN |
| v |
| MICHAEL ANTHONY CROCKER |
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JUDGE: | LASRY J | |
WHERE HELD: | Wodonga | |
DATES OF HEARING: | 20-28 August, 22 November 2012 | |
DATE OF SENTENCE: | 22 November 2012 | |
CASE MAY BE CITED AS: | R v Crocker | |
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION: | [2012] VSC 570 | Revised 26 November 2012 |
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CRIMINAL LAW – Sentence following jury verdict – Murder – Recklessly causing serious injury - Serious Offender - Good prospects for rehabilitation - Remorse.
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APPEARANCES: | Counsel | Solicitors |
| For the Crown | Mr E Delaney | Office of Public Prosecutions |
| For the Accused | Mr T Walsh | Robert Stary Lawyer |
HIS HONOUR:
Michael Anthony Crocker, on 28 August 2012, here in Wodonga, a jury found you guilty of one count of recklessly causing serious injury and guilty of one count of murder. Those counts related to incidents which occurred on 26 September 2010 in Wodonga resulting in serious injury to Amanda Jane Lee and in the death two days later on 28 September 2010 of Adam Fielding. The issue on your trial concerned whether, on the count of murder, the Crown could prove intention on your part to kill or cause really serious injury and also, on both counts, whether they could disprove that you were acting in self defence.
It is now my obligation to sentence you for these matters. Today I heard submissions from the Crown and from Mr Walsh on your behalf about what sentence should be imposed. The maximum penalty for recklessly causing serious injury is 15 years imprisonment[1] and the maximum penalty for murder is life imprisonment.[2]
[1]Crimes Act 1958, s 17.
[2]Crimes Act 1958, s 3.
Circumstances of offending
The victim of the first count of recklessly causing serious injury, Amanda Lee, had known you for about four years prior to this incident. Adam Fielding, the deceased, was also effectively related to Amanda Lee and had been involved in a relationship with her sister. Adam Fielding’s family was in Queensland but Adam Fielding had returned to Victoria and was living with Amanda Lee at the time of this incident. He had been living with her for about 12 weeks.
In order to assist Adam Fielding to travel to Queensland in relation to the custody of his children, Amanda Lee had borrowed $200 from you and acknowledged during her evidence that she already owed money to you from previous occasions.
26th of September 2010 was AFL Grand Final day and Amanda Lee and Adam Fielding were proposing to watch the football with two children. Later in the day they started drinking. Just before midnight on that night she received a message from you saying that you wanted your money back. She thought the message from you said “Get my money, that’s all I want”. There was then a phone call between you and Amanda Lee which was clearly hostile, but in the meantime Adam Fielding had left the house and had gone to your premises only a short distance away. Lee then put on a dressing gown and drove around to your premises in the car. All participants in this tragic incident were intoxicated.
Amanda Lee said that when she got to your house she pulled into the driveway and she saw Adam Fielding knocking on your door. She then said to Fielding “Don’t worry about it, just come on let’s go”, and as she got out of the car she heard the deceased man saying at the front door “Can you please open up Mick, it’s just Snow. I just want to talk to you”. Amanda Lee said that there was some discussion and she was urging Fielding to leave. At this stage there was no response from you and there was some discussion between Fielding and Lee as to whether or not anybody was home. Amanda Lee acknowledged that she knocked on the window to your bedroom and said something to the effect of coming back the next day and “I’ll punch your fucking head in”.
As Lee and Fielding were preparing to leave and having taken a few steps towards the gate, you came through the front door of the unit and said something to the effect of “I’m sick of people coming around hassling me”. At that stage you went to Amanda Lee, and the knife that was in your possession was pushed by you straight into her stomach. She said she did not see the knife until it was pulled out of her. The jury’s verdict in relation to count 1 seems to me to demonstrate that they concluded you were concentrating on Fielding rather than both of them. She said that you then stabbed Fielding in circumstances where you were face to face.
The effect of the injuries on Fielding was almost immediate. He was assisted by Lee to get into her car and she took him to the hospital. You, on the other hand, went back into your premises. Lee described the knife you used as having a black coloured handle and being serrated in the area of the blade closer to the handle. She said she thought it was about 15cm long. You disposed of the knife and it was not found. Amanda Lee was hospitalised herself for a period of 10 days, but on 28 September 2010 Adam Fielding died of his wound.
The post-mortem examination on Adam Fielding conducted by Dr Baker indicated that he had a blood alcohol level of 0.19% and had also obviously consumed diazepam and marijuana. The wound that you inflicted on him shaved a bone fragment from the 11th rib and the pathologist described the amount of force required to inflict the wound as at least moderate. She noted that there were no defensive injuries on Fielding to indicate that he had been defending himself against a sharp instrument prior to being stabbed and obviously he had no idea what was coming until you had stabbed him.
The wound that you inflicted on Amanda Lee penetrated about 7cm or so and the result of that wound was that she was for a time in the High Care Dependency Unit. Had the wound not been treated it may well have resulted in her death.
As I said earlier, there were two issues at your trial, first, whether or not the prosecution could prove beyond reasonable doubt that you had the necessary intention, that is whether you intended to seriously injure Lee and whether you intended to really seriously injure or kill Fielding and second, whether, in relation to both counts, you were acting in self-defence or more correctly whether the Crown could prove that you were not. The jury’s verdict demonstrates they were obviously satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that your actions in both counts were without lawful justification or excuse.
During the trial and on the issue of whether or not you had the required intention for the offence of murder, the fact that you had consumed a considerable amount of liquor was relied upon. Indeed in the course of his plea on your behalf, Mr Walsh said you had consumed something of the order of 30 cans of beer. Be that as it may the evidence indicated that after the stabbing of Amanda Lee and Adam Fielding you had the presence of mind to attempt to wash blood off the path of your premises. The jury were clearly of the view that as to Fielding, you did what you did deliberately and with at least an intention to cause really serious injury.
Victim Impact Statements
The prosecutor has presented a number of Victim Impact Statements. They are from:
· Amanda Lee who is the sister-in-law of the deceased and who was herself the victim of the first offence committed by you;
· Krystie Lee, the daughter of Amanda Lee;
· Fiona Elizabeth Lee, with whom the deceased Adam Fielding had three children;
· Christopher James Fielding who is the son of the deceased man and whose statement was completed by his mother;
· Matthew Douglas Fielding who is also the son of the deceased;
· Angel May Fielding who is the daughter of the deceased;
· Ian Fielding who is the father of the deceased; and
· Lynn Fielding who is the step mother of the deceased and who provided a detailed history of the life of the deceased man.
As the prosecutor, Mr Delaney, has submitted, each of these statements sets out the direct emotional and, in some cases physical, consequences of the crimes you committed on these people. They remind all of us that the killing and wounding of individuals always has far reaching and tragic consequences. In this case I suspect many of these people will never properly recover from them. I have taken these victim impact statements into account in the sentence I will impose on you.
Personal circumstances
You were born on 17 September 1958 in Warrigal and are therefore aged 54 years of age. It would appear that your family background was difficult with your parents separating when you were very young. Your father worked on the Snowy Mountains Scheme and that had an effect on the family. You have a 26 year old daughter and you had the care of her after her mother’s death.
You had education to the age of 14 years and then later worked as a jockey until 1991. Mr Walsh has outlined in some detail your riding career. You were, he told me, an accomplished horseman and had some significant success riding at provincial race meetings and some success at metropolitan meetings. However that career was not without its difficulties including being disqualified for a year for preventing a horse from running on its merits and then convictions for violence in relation to the trainer who persuaded you to do that.
Unfortunately, at the age of 17 you started using marijuana. At age 21 you were struggling to control your weight as jockeys must do. By the mid 1980s you developed a heroin addiction and over a lengthy period that drug did what it always does and almost ruined your life. You have apparently dealt with your heroin addiction and since 1998 no longer use it. Even during the time of that addiction you continued to work as a jockey, riding track work. To your credit, you moved to Wodonga in 2005 to care for your father and you have done so until your arrest. Your future contact with him is likely to be non-existent due to his difficult medical conditions. Your daughter has in recent times looked after your father. You maintain a friendship with Lani Sharp who was a witness at your trial and she has continued to support you. It would seem from the report of Carla Lechner that alcohol has filled the space left in your life by not using heroin and, at the time of these offences, you were drinking very heavily. You are now alcohol dependant.
You have a significant criminal history although many of the offences are matters dealt with in the Magistrates’ Court commencing in 1985 and many of them involve offences concerning the use of drugs. You only have one prior conviction for any offence of violence and that was in 1985, being an offence of assault occasioning actual bodily harm, unlawful assault and criminal damage, and in relation to those matters you were given a three year good behaviour bond in the Melbourne County Court. This was the incident concerning the trainer following your disqualification for a year from riding. The more serious matters for which you have been sentenced to imprisonment have been concerned with the trafficking of drugs (including heroin) and obtaining social security payments dishonestly. In August 2009, you were sentenced to two months’ imprisonment wholly suspended for offences including driving whilst in excess of the required concentration of alcohol and driving while disqualified. You were on that suspended sentence at the time that these offences were committed.
I was provided with a report prepared by Carla Lechner, clinical and forensic psychologist. The important aspects of that report include her statement that you are remorseful for what has happened though you continued to assert to her that you were acting in self-defence. You do not suffer from any disorders and your risk of further violence could be regarded as low, as it seems your behaviour in custody so far demonstrates. You are, as she put it, mildly depressed but you do not have an anti-social or aggressive attitude. She thought that subject to treatment for the substance abuse problems you have, which you indicated you would undertake, your prospects were reasonable.
I understand that the time you have spent in custody since your arrest has been satisfactory. You have completed various courses including in horticulture and you have been given a role as a unit billet at the Metropolitan Remand Centre. I trust the authorities will take your family circumstances into account when you come to be classified. Given the material that has been put before the Court including from you, I am willing to accept that you are genuinely remorseful for what has occurred. Ms Lechner has suggested that with a longer period of parole you have good rehabilitation prospects and I agree with that.
On your behalf Mr Walsh submitted that I should consider your personal circumstances and that violence is not a significant part of your history and these were spontaneous offences.
Conclusion
I am willing to accept that this terrible incident occurred relatively spontaneously. Both Adam Fielding and Amanda Lee had come to your house late at night and you were entitled to be apprehensive. This was not an offence that was premeditated and, based on the comments and testimonials of others, was conduct out of character for you. However, I am also satisfied, as the jury must have been, that there was no threat of violence to you from either of them. They were unarmed and the evidence suggested that the deceased man had said that he simply wanted to talk to you. When you came out of your premises, Lee and Fielding were in the process of leaving and the jury clearly concluded that you had no justification for your attack on either person. By the time you got outside you must have known that neither person was any threat to you. What you were doing was making what became a vicious and tragic point.
Your case is yet another in a long line of cases where alcohol and knives have combined to produce tragedy for everyone involved including you. I despair that the community will never fully understand how easily such tragedies happen. By the time you serve the sentence I will impose on you, you will be a very significant age.
Having considered the evidence and the matters raised on your behalf during the course of the plea, I have come to the conclusion that I should impose the following sentence on you. On Count 1, being the alternative count of recklessly causing serious injury, you are sentenced to be imprisoned for a period of 4 years.
On Count 2, the count of murder, I note that pursuant to the Sentencing Act 1991 you are to be sentenced as a violent offender and I direct that this be entered into the records of the Court. For that offence, you are sentenced to be imprisoned for a period of 20 years. I will direct that 2 years of the sentence on Count 1 be served cumulatively with the sentence on Count 2. That results in a total effective sentence of 22 years. I have not regarded it as necessary to impose on you, a sentence longer than that which is proportionate to the gravity of the offence in view of the material put before me.
I fix a period of 16 years to be served before you are eligible to make an application for release on parole.
I declare that your pre-sentence detention is a period of 788 days and I direct that be reckoned as time already served and entered in the records of the Court.
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