R v Detenamo
[2005] VSC 411
•14 December 2005
| IN THE SUPREME COURT OF VICTORIA | Not Restricted | |
AT MELBOURNE
CRIMINAL DIVISION
No. 1436 of 2005
| THE QUEEN |
| v |
| QUINCY DETENAMO |
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JUDGE: | WILLIAMS J | |
WHERE HELD: | Melbourne | |
DATE OF HEARING: | 7, 10-12, 14 October 2005, 5 December 2005 | |
DATE OF SENTENCE: | 14 December 2005 | |
CASE MAY BE CITED AS: | R v Detenamo | |
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION: | [2005] VSC 411 | 1st Revision 23 January 2006 |
CRIMINAL LAW – Sentence – Manslaughter by unlawful and dangerous act of strangulation – Offender a weightlifter - Victim a sex worker – Victim strangled to stop screams –Victim pushed from car into laneway– Offender drove away- Offender concerned about detection in compromising situation - Offer to plead guilty to manslaughter before trial for murder –Remorse – Previous good character - Prospects of rehabilitation
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APPEARANCES: | Counsel | Solicitors |
| For the Crown | Mr G. Silbert | Mr S. Carisbrooke, Acting Solicitor for Public Prosecutions |
| For the Accused | Mr J. Lavery | Brugman Mellas |
HER HONOUR:
Quincy Detenamo you have been found guilty by a jury of the manslaughter of Grace Ilardi on 17 July 2004 at Elwood. The maximum penalty for the offence is 20 years’ imprisonment.
Ms Ilardi was a sex worker whom you had picked up in the St Kilda area sometime after 5.45 am on Saturday 17 July 2004. She had taken you to a lane in Elwood where you had sexual intercourse. A struggle broke out between you when she asked you to hurry and, ultimately, to stop. You were not prepared to stop and she attempted to push you away using her hands and legs. She hit an area of your face where you were bleeding from an injury sustained earlier that evening. You struck her face. She began to scream. A rear window of the car was broken in the course of the struggle. You told Ms Ilardi not to scream and kept striking her in order to make her stop. You put your face near hers and bit her on the lip in a further attempt to stop her screaming. She was later found to have a laceration consistent with a bite mark almost through the full thickness of her lower lip. She continued screaming and you applied pressure to her neck for three to four seconds with both hands. When you released her neck, she started to scream again and you pressed on her neck again, this time for five to six seconds. You fractured her hyoid bone and caused extensive bruising to her neck area, as well as haemorrhaging elsewhere which resulted from the act of strangulation.
Ms Ilardi died as a result of being strangled by you. You pushed her, half clothed, from your car out onto the laneway. You then got out yourself and moved her body so that you would not run over it. You noticed her gasp and thought she might have been breathing. You pulled up your trousers and left the scene, having panicked at the thought of being seen there, after hearing voices behind you. Ms Ilardi was discovered by concerned local people who had heard her screams and came onto the scene as you drove away. An ambulance was called and she was found to have died.
Because you were found guilty of manslaughter, I sentence you on the basis that the jury was not satisfied that you intended to kill Ms Ilardi or cause her serious injury. However, the jury was satisfied that her death resulted from your unlawful and dangerous act of strangulation.
You were staying with your aunt and uncle in Middle Park and driving a car used by them. You made no effort to clean the car or to disguise the state of its broken window. You left for Fiji where you were training as a weightlifter on a pre-arranged flight on the afternoon of the same day.
Victim Impact Statements
Ms Ilardi’s family have provided victim impact statements which movingly describe the loss of a much loved mother, daughter, sister and sister in law. Each has tried to describe the terrible effects of her sudden and tragic death in such distressing circumstances. They have suffered, and continue to suffer, as they struggle to come to grips with what has happened to them all. Their lives have been irrevocably affected by your actions. I have taken into account everything that they have said in sentencing you.
Personal circumstances
Counsel making the plea on your behalf tendered a psychological assessment report by Mr Joblin, a forensic psychologist. That report set out your personal circumstances.
You are 26 years old, having been born on 8 March 1979. You were 25 on 17 July 2004. You left school at the age of about 15, effectively illiterate in English, the language in which you were taught. I was told that you cannot read or write in your native language either.
After leaving school, you immediately devoted yourself to the sport of weightlifting. You have competed internationally and represented Nauru at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games. It was the first time your country had taken part in such an event. You trained continuously, working when convenient as a courier for the Nauruan Olympic Committee. Late in 2003, you obtained a scholarship to train and teach weightlifting at the Oceania Weightlifting Institute in Fiji. You were returning to Fiji from competition in Malta when you stopped over in Melbourne in July 2004.
A reference from Mr Paul Coffa MBE, the President of the Oceanic Weightlifting Federation, was tendered in the course of the plea. Mr Coffa has known you since 1994 and speaks highly of your character and athletic ability. He described you as a responsible, humble, likeable and honest person
You are the middle child in a family of seven and have three older married siblings. Your father died, in his mid 40s, in 2002, having come to Melbourne to train as an accountant, in the course of his employment in the administration of the Nauru Phosphate Company. You were very close to him. Your mother is now 46 and a staunch Christian. She cares for your younger sisters and brother. You have a strong and positive relationship with her and regard yourself as having some responsibility for her. You have supported her financially whilst living in Fiji. You told Mr Joblin that no members of your family have come to the attention of police.
You also have twin children of your own, a daughter and a son from your former relationship with their mother who died as a result of a motor vehicle accident in January 2005, at the age of 22. The now five year old twins lived with their mother, but had frequent contact with you when you lived in Fiji. You are concerned that they now have no parent available to them.
You lost your left eye in May 2003, as a result of an injury. This loss has had a strong psychological impact on you, causing you to believe that others ridicule you and focus on that eye area to try to upset you. You told Mr Joblin that you were trying to protect your head when Ms Ilardi hit you, although you acknowledge that your response may have been excessive.
On the night before the offences occurred in the early morning of 17 July 2004, you had been drinking with some cousins for some hours in a park and in the city of Melbourne. You had been so affected by alcohol that, at one stage you had fallen and cut your eye. The Court was told that your Christian family would frown upon such drinking behaviour. Your family and community would also not condone an association with a sex worker. The weightlifting organisation in Nauru does not sanction drinking and your drinking was normally controlled.
Mr Joblin interviewed you on 2 November 2005 and concluded that there was no evidence that you suffered from any diagnosable psychological abnormality. He said that you were certainly not psychotic and are of reasonable intellect. He did not consider you suicidal at the time of the interview.
Mr Joblin had no doubt that you were remorseful. He reported that you have strong feelings for Ms Ilardi and her family and, as a result, that you have felt suicidal.
Evidence was given by your uncle, Mr Vincent Detenamo, the head of your family. He is a former Vice President of the Nauruan Government and President of the Nauru Olympic Committee and Commonwealth Games Association. He contacted you in July 2004 and asked you to come back to Nauru to meet him. He advised you about Ms Ilardi’s death and you broke down and cried. He called your mother and instructed you to return to Melbourne. He told the Court that you were willing to return and face the consequences of your actions. You were arrested and charged with Ms Ilardi’s murder when you arrived back in this country.
Counsel submitted that you accepted responsibility and have not sought to avoid the consequences of your actions. He informed the Court that you had offered to plead guilty to manslaughter in the week preceding the commencement of your trial. This plea, in his submission, should be taken into account in mitigation. Counsel for the prosecution responded that your defence of the charge on the issue of causation deprives the offer of a plea to manslaughter of any significance as a mitigating factor. I am not persuaded by these submissions. In my view, once your offer to plead guilty to a charge of manslaughter had been rejected, you were entitled to require the prosecution to prove the commission of the offence of murder with which you had been charged. I do take it into account in your favour that you made an offer to plead guilty to the offence of which you were ultimately convicted.
It would appear from the evidence of witnesses who had contact with you in the period leading up to the offence, that you were affected by alcohol, after a night of heavy drinking. Counsel agree that your state should be regarded as neither an aggravating nor a mitigating factor, but rather as one of the circumstances in which your offence was committed. I have treated it as such.
It was submitted by counsel on your behalf that your offence should be properly regarded as one which should attract a sentence at the lower end of the range of sentences for manslaughter. He argued that your reactions to Ms Ilardi’s screaming were understandable, in light of your wish to avoid being found in a compromising situation which would attract the disapproval of your family and community, as well as have a potential impact in relation to your sporting career. Your behaviour in leaving Ms Ilardi’s body in the laneway was said to be explicable for the same reasons.
Counsel making the plea on your behalf also relied upon your evidence that Ms Ilardi appeared to be a bit angry or aggressive towards you. He referred to the evidence about her drug taking before her death and the evidence of Professor Drummer, the toxicologist, as to the possible effects of the drugs detected by post-mortem testing. The thrust of his submission was to the effect that the Court should be satisfied that she had been aggressive, violent or less than rational in her dealings with you.
Counsel for the prosecution responded that, on the contrary, the evidence established that Ms Ilardi had been a long term drug user and was in complete control of her faculties that evening when she decided to go to St Kilda. He referred to the evidence of her tolerance to drugs. I have taken the evidence of Professor Drummer into account, when considering the evidence as to Ms Ilardi’s drug taking and behaviour. I have also taken into account the evidence of her partner, Mr O’Sullivan, to the effect that she had spoken angrily to him when he refused to go out during the night, to obtain money for her to buy drugs. Apart from being persuaded by your evidence that Ms Ilardi appeared angry and aggressive to you when she told you to hurry up and then to stop having intercourse with her that morning, I am not satisfied as to the effect of the drugs she had taken.
Counsel for the prosecution submitted that your offence should be characterised as a bad example of manslaughter. He noted that you used sufficient force to break Ms Ilardi’s hyoid bone, when reacting to her attempt to bring what had started out as consensual intercourse to an end. He pointed out that you ejected her from the car into the lane and drove away. He noted your lack of any previous convictions and your general good character as well as the unlikelihood that you would offend again, but stressed the importance of general deterrence as a sentencing consideration. As far as remorse was concerned, he submitted that the material before the Court demonstrated not much more than that you were embarrassed and concerned at the predicament in which you found yourself. I am satisfied that you are remorseful in relation to your acts.
Counsel appearing for you submitted that your actions constituted an immediate reaction to circumstances, making principles of general deterrence inapplicable. I do not agree with this submission. Other people must be deterred from responding with violence to a situation in which they do not get their own way.
It was also argued on your behalf that imprisonment would be more burdensome for you because you would serve it in a foreign country where your immediate family will not be able to visit you and that you will be isolated in prison because there will be no-one with whom you can speak your native language. I have taken these matters into account, but bear in mind that you do have members of your extended family living in Melbourne from whom you are not estranged.
Counsel emphasised your previous good character and what I accept are your good prospects of rehabilitation with the support of your family. I note that you have no prior convictions and have previously been a man of very good character. I agree that the involvement of your family will enhance your prospects of rehabilitation.
I do not consider your offence as one properly described as a less serious example of the crime of manslaughter. You resisted Ms Ilardi’s requests that you cease having intercourse with her. You struck her about the face, causing her to have bruising and a black eye. When she screamed, you strangled her, causing her death. You were a strong young man weighing around 85 kilograms on top of Ms Ilardi who weighed 62 kilograms at the time. She was extremely vulnerable. You left her lying half clothed in the lane on a winter morning. You drove away, and, although you had the presence of mind to dispose of her personal belongings, you made no attempt to call an ambulance to assist her, even though you thought she was still breathing when you parted. Despite the fact that you panicked initially and may have been affected by the alcohol you had drunk, you made no effort to assist your victim. You returned to Melbourne only after being contacted by the head of your family.
I have taken into account your previous good character, your remorse and your good prospects of rehabilitation. I also bear in mind that your attack upon Ms Ilardi was spontaneous and your behaviour in trying to stop her screaming by strangling her and later leaving her in the lane was explicable (although, in my opinion, not in any way excusable) in terms of the potential consequences of detection in a compromising situation in which you had chosen to place yourself.
You will be sentenced to 9 years’ imprisonment for the manslaughter of Ms Ilardi and I will fix a minimum period of 7 years during which you will not be eligible for parole.
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