R v Geoffrey Lance Ryan

[2009] NSWSC 46

CITATION:	R v Geoffrey Lance Ryan [2009] NSWSC 46
HEARING DATE(S):	13 February 2009
JUDGMENT DATE :	13 February 2009
JUDGMENT OF:	Buddin J
DECISION:	In accordance with s 38 of the Mental Health (Criminal Procedure) Act 1990 (the Act) I find the accused not guilty of the charge of murder on the grounds of mental illness. In doing so I have had regard, pursuant to s 37 of the Act, to the practical and legal consequences of that finding. I order that the accused be detained, pursuant to s 39 of the Act, in the custody of the Department of Corrective Services until released by due process of law. The Registrar is to notify the Minister of Health and the Mental Health Review Tribunal of the terms of the orders made by the court.
CATCHWORDS:	CRIMINAL LAW - murder - trial by judge alone - defence of mental illness
LEGISLATION CITED:	Criminal Procedure Act 1986 Mental Health (Criminal Procedure) Act 1990
CATEGORY:	Principal judgment
CASES CITED:	R v Porter (1936) 55 CLR 182
PARTIES:	Regina Geoffrey Lance Ryan
FILE NUMBER(S):	SC 2008/14924
COUNSEL:	T Thorpe (Crown) E Tabchouri (Accused)
SOLICITORS:	S Kavanagh (Solicitor for Director of Public Prosecutions) Macquarie Lawyers Burwood (Accused)

IN THE SUPREME COURT
OF NEW SOUTH WALES
COMMON LAW DIVISION

BUDDIN J

FRIDAY 13 FEBRUARY 2009

2008/14924 – R v GEOFFREY LANCE RYAN

JUDGMENT

1 BUDDIN J: Geoffrey Lance Ryan (the accused) is charged with the murder of his de facto partner Hazel McLoon (the deceased) at Cronulla on 30 October 2007. The matter has proceeded before me as a trial by judge alone pursuant to s 132 of the Criminal Procedure Act 1986. Upon arraignment the accused pleaded not guilty. No oral evidence was called at the hearing and the matter proceeded by way of an Agreed Statement of Facts together with reports from two forensic psychiatrists. Dr Allnutt prepared a report after having examined the accused at the request of his legal representatives whilst Dr Skinner prepared a report after having examined the accused on behalf of the Crown.

2 Because it is common ground that the accused killed the deceased with the requisite intention, the only issue which I have to determine is whether the accused was mentally ill at the time of the killing. Even upon that issue the evidence is all one way and the parties are in agreement that I should find the accused not guilty by reason of mental illness.

The events of 30 October 2007

3 As there is no dispute about the facts they can be briefly stated. As at 30 October 2007 the accused and the deceased, who had been in a domestic relationship for in excess of 30 years, were residing together in a one bedroom floor unit at 1/46 Seaview Street Cronulla. At about 6.50 am that morning the accused obtained a large knife from the kitchen. He entered the bathroom of the premises where he proceeded to stab and kill the deceased. The knife which the accused used to kill the deceased was left embedded in her chest.

4 A number of neighbours said that they heard a female screaming. She was heard to yell “get off me, get off me.” One witness described hearing screaming of a nature which suggested the female was defending herself from an attack. One neighbour described the incident as sounding “real physical and violent”.

5 Dr Duflou conducted a post mortem examination upon the deceased the following day. He found that the deceased had sustained multiple stab wounds to the chest and abdomen as well as probable defence wounds to the limbs. He concluded that it was likely that a number of the wounds had been inflicted after the deceased had died. He observed that a knife protruding from a wound in the deceased’s chest had penetrated her heart. The knife had also penetrated her lungs, diaphragm, colon and liver.

6 At about 6.58 am the accused telephoned 000 and said to the operator “I have just committed a murder…I just killed my partner”. He said that he had stabbed the victim a number of times. He said that she was not breathing and that the knife was still in her chest.

7 At about 7.20 am police officers attended the unit and spoke to the accused. When asked what had happened the accused replied: “I’ve committed murder”. He was then arrested. An officer entered the unit and discovered the victim lying naked in the bath with a knife protruding from her chest. She was covered with a towel. A large amount of blood was discovered upon and in the vicinity of the deceased’s body. Ambulance officers attended and confirmed that the victim had died. The accused was searched and police observed blood spots on his left shoe.

8 Shortly thereafter the accused was spoken to at the premises by detectives. After being cautioned the accused admitted that he had obtained a knife from the kitchen and that he had stabbed the deceased because “he just went crazy”. The accused said that she was making his life difficult by switching things around and changing his food. He said that he was not game to eat any food. He then said: “My life was so difficult the last few years. Everywhere I went there was [sic] barcodes. I was getting zapped left right and centre.” The accused denied having consumed any drugs or alcohol on the day in question.

9 At the police station, the accused was further interviewed. He adopted the conversations which he had had with police at the time of his arrest. During this interview the accused told police that he and the deceased had not been getting on well. He said that she had been sleeping in the bedroom whilst he slept in the lounge room. He said that she had been moving his possessions around in the unit and that he could not understand why. He said that the victim had on several occasions threatened to kill him. He said that when he got up on the morning of the offence that he “didn’t feel too good”. He said that thoughts were going through his head as if he had been plugged into a computer. He said that he had experienced that feeling previously. He said that he had had breakfast alone in the courtyard of the unit and that the deceased had been having a wash in the bathroom. The accused said that he was scared and that he had obtained the knife in order to defend himself. He told police that the incident was something that had just happened and that he had not planned it. He informed police that he suffered from chronic schizophrenia and that he had been diagnosed with that disorder in 1984. The accused was unable to say when he had last taken his medication for his illness, but said that he had consulted his psychiatrist about two weeks prior to the fatal incident.

The psychiatric evidence

10 The accused is aged 64. It is apparent from his medical records that he has suffered from a mental illness for more than 30 years. He was first admitted to Gladesville Hospital on 6 August 1976 where he remained for several days. He was brought in by his father as he had become very anxious and paranoid. He apparently believed at the time that his then girlfriend wanted to kill him. A provisional diagnosis of acute paranoid reaction was made for which he was prescribed medication.

11 On 19 January 1984 the accused was admitted to Sutherland Hospital where he remained for about two weeks. Just prior to admission he had ceased talking and had begun to communicate by using hand signals. The discharge summary indicated that there had been a definite deterioration in the accused’s ability to cope over the preceding few years and it appeared that he was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. His deteriorating condition was apparently precipitated by an armed robbery which was committed upon the post office where the accused was then working. During the course of the incident, which occurred in November 1983, the robber had held a shotgun to the accused’s abdomen. From that point on the accused believed that people were trying to kill him.

12 On 29 May 1984 the accused was again admitted to Sutherland Hospital. At the time he was again often communicating only by way of hand signals. He indicated that he did so because he was afraid to speak. He also said that he felt that he was being controlled but that he did not know by whom. A diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia was made and the accused was discharged on 13 June 1984.

13 On 11 February 1992 the accused was yet again admitted to Sutherland Hospital. He remained there until 3 March 1992. He was diagnosed as suffering from schizophrenia and it was also noted that he had obsessional and narcissistic traits. It was observed that at times his conduct towards the deceased had become threatening.

14 The accused was treated by a private psychiatrist, Dr George, from 1984 until 1995 when the doctor closed his practice. He was then taking anti-psychotic medication. For the next few years the accused was under the care of his general practitioner who continued to prescribe the same medication for his condition. From 1998 until his incarceration the accused was treated by a psychiatrist, Dr McDowell, for chronic schizophrenia. The accused’s ongoing symptoms included paranoid delusional beliefs such as that people were sending him messages or trying to control him.

15 In 2000 Dr McDowell changed the accused’s medication and prescribed Zyprexa. Although ongoing psychotic symptoms remained, that medication appeared to stabilise the accused’s condition until about 2007.

16 In April 2007 the deceased accompanied the accused to an appointment with Dr McDowell. She informed the doctor that the accused was not taking his medication and that his behaviour was paranoid and obsessional. Following that appointment the accused agreed to resume taking his medication and it seems that there was some improvement in his condition over the next few months.

17 On 18 October 2007 the accused and the deceased again went to see Dr McDowell. The doctor observed that there was tension between the couple. He also noted that the accused was depressed and anxious. Nevertheless the accused agreed to increase his dosage of medication although there is nothing to suggest that he actually did so.

18 The day before her death the deceased rang her son. She informed him that the accused’s mental health was deteriorating and that she could no longer live with him. The deceased told her son that the accused would not touch anything purple and that he had been prescribed medication which was in a purple foil. She also told her son that the accused did not trust the food or drinks that she made for him because he thought that she was poisoning him.

19 One particular obsession which the accused had developed, and to which there has already been brief reference, concerned computerised barcodes. The accused regarded them as “traps”. Dr Allnutt asked the accused why he felt that way. Dr Allnutt described the accused’s response in the following terms:

He [stated] that on 17 December 2005 he was walking the dogs in the park. He had a TAB ticket with a barcode in his pocket. He then got a pain in his legs, which he attributed to having a barcode in his pocket, that he was being watched and that someone would hit him with a “ray” from a computer system. He felt at the time that he had been a target. He was targeted because of his name, which had both Gs and Rs, which signified the enemy. This he had concluded from seeing a movie called “Rear Window” where James Stewart had said that people with Gs and Rs in their names were enemies (he had realised this for the first time only in the last 20 years). So for this reason he saw barcodes as traps because people could bounce beams off them.
Since 17 December 2005 he had always been very careful with what he did with his cigarette butts and packets of food. He unwrapped all packets with barcodes and put them in the bin and put them in plastic bags. He said he never smoked a cigarette out of a packet. He said in December 2005 he was eventually diagnosed with a torn cartilage.
He believed that it was possible that people were trying to get him because he was the enemy. He stated that even the word “target” had an R and G in it. He also believed that for some particular reason red and white was a colour applicable to him. He could not say why. To him currently it seemed to be what people wanted him to wear.
…

20 The accused told Dr Allnutt that during 2007 he had stopped taking Zyprexa. In his report Dr Allnutt recorded that the accused said that he had done so because of what the deceased had told him. The accused’s response is recorded in these terms by Dr Allnutt:

He explained that she had implied “four things”: 1) that he had been cast down from the heavens, 2) that his name meant a weapon of war, 3) that she had called a curse down on him and 4) that she was going to kill him.
When he thought about it he could understand the first thing she said could be true. The second, he could not understand because his name could be angel if one looked at the name Lance and put a G where the C was and with regard to the third issue, she had said this to him previously in 2005 but at that stage he had taken no notice. Now, on this occasion, when she said it he did take notice of it because of all the aches and pains he was getting in the back of his legs between October 2006 and the time of the incident in 2007. He said that between the period October 2006 and April 2007 he had to go to her father’s house to clean the house. He explained that in the Bible it said that members of his own family would be enemies so he started thinking that the alleged victim and her son were using computer science on him. He thought people were putting barcodes, screws and nuts around the alleged victim’s father’s house. With regard to the fourth issue, he said that she had said to him on at least six to eight occasions that she was going to kill him. She had said this to him in early 2007.
He said he stopped the medication because he was therefore scared of her. He thought that the medication made him less alert. It tended to make him more sleepy (possibly as a side effect). He stopped the medication to be more alert because he thought that she was going to kill him. The only reason he could give for her motive for doing this was because his name to her meant a weapon of war.
…
When he stopped his medication, his girlfriend realised that he was off the medication and she came to see Chris McDowell with him. He went back on the medication again and then again as she said she was going to kill him so he stopped the medication in the beginning of September 2008 (sic).
From September 2008 (sic) onwards he continued to think that she was going to kill him. He believed that she had a fixation about making sure crockery and cutlery had only six to a set. He thought that she was “crackers”.
In the time leading up to the alleged offence he continued to have experiences with barcodes, computers beaming at him and pains in his legs and back. He thought that she was behind this because she had threatened to kill him and maim him as well.
…
[On the day in question] he said he got his breakfast. When he drank his coffee the milk tasted off. He thought she had put drugs in the milk. He nevertheless sipped the coffee. At the time he heard a voice say that “she is going to kill you, if you don’t defend yourself you’ll be dead”. This voice had been present through the years on different occasions. It was male. He denied any messages from the TV or the radio at the time telling him that she was going to kill him.
When the voice came into his head he felt “fuzzy”. He said at the time he believed the voice emphatically. He believed the voice because of the statements she had previously made.

21 Dr Allnutt arrived at the following conclusion:

In my opinion, at the time that I saw [the accused] he was manifesting ongoing active symptoms of a chronic psychotic disorder from which he had probably suffered for many years, in my view, consistent with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, with a differential diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder or delusional disorder. At the time that he saw me he was experiencing delusional beliefs (that there were traps related to barcodes, computer beams and computer science) and referential ideas (that there were things being communicated to him through the television). There was no evidence of auditory phenomena at the time that he saw me, although he gave a history of that.
In my opinion, there are reasonable grounds to conclude that [the accused] suffered from a “disease of the mind” at the material time that the alleged offence occurred. He describes in the time leading up to the alleged offence experiencing intermittent auditory phenomena, irrational persecutory beliefs about “traps” on the ground, barcodes, computer rays, computer science as well as referential ideas, consistent with delusions. In the time immediately preceding the alleged offence he reports experiencing auditory hallucinations which told him to defend himself against his girlfriend. He had earlier been incorporating his girlfriend into his delusional system. On these grounds I believe at the material time of the alleged offence he was suffering symptoms consistent with a psychosis. Psychosis would be regarded by most psychiatrists [as] meeting the legal criteria of “disease of the mind”.
Psychosis is, by its very nature, a mental condition that affects a person’s capacity to make rational interpretations about their environment and to rationally appraise the veracity of their own thought. In addition to that, psychosis is a condition that impacts on a person’s capacity to be aware that they are incapable of doing this (loss of insight). Fundamentally psychosis causes a “defect of reason”.
In my opinion, [the accused’s] “defect of reason” was unlikely to be of a nature or severity that it significantly impacted on his capacity to know the nature and quality of his actions. I believe [the accused] maintained [the] capacity to understand that a knife or a weapon could cause harm to another person if utilised on another person.
However, in my opinion, I believe there are reasonable grounds to be of the view that [the accused’s] defect of reason was of a nature and quality that it significantly compromised his capacity to know the wrongfulness of his actions. [The accused] had for many years been labouring under the belief that there was some form of conspiracy with people causing him physical harm through the use of barcodes and computer rays. In that time he had come to incorporate the alleged victim into that delusional belief believing that at least she and probably her son were in some way involved. He had, in the time leading up to the alleged offence, come to a number of conclusions based on illogical premises …and things that she had said such as him believing that she had said that he had been cast down from the heavens, that his name meant a weapon from war and that she had called a curse down on him. It is likely that as a consequence of an inability to think more abstractly, he took statements that she might have said to him without intent or meaning like “I’m going to kill you” or that she was going to do something to him at face value and incorporated this as further proof to him that there was some malevolent intent on her behalf. At the actual time of the alleged offence he experienced auditory hallucinations telling him to kill her; otherwise he would be harmed. He described feeling somewhat compelled to act in this manner because he felt that there was no other option available to him. Significantly it appears that he acted despite himself because he felt fearful for his life. He saw himself as acting in self defence and for the purpose of self preservation. All these factors would support the conclusion that his actions were derived from defective reasoning processes and illogical inferences about the victim caused by his psychosis. Thus, he would have been incapable of reasoning about the matter of the wrongfulness of his actions with a moderate degree of sense of composure and thus would have a defence of mental illness available to him.

22 In the circumstances it is unnecessary to review in any detail the report which was prepared by Dr Skinner. In any event she canvassed much of the same material as Dr Allnutt had. Suffice it to say that having examined the accused and having reviewed his medical records, Dr Skinner also concluded that the accused was suffering at the relevant time from a severe mental illness, namely paranoid schizophrenia. She formed the opinion that his condition was such that he did not appreciate that what he was doing was wrong.

23 To establish the defence of mental illness the accused must prove that at the time of the killing he was suffering from such a defect of reasoning arising from a disease of the mind that he did not know the nature and quality of what he was doing or that what he was doing was wrong. It is the second limb of that test which is of particular significance in the present case. That particular requirement was expressed in the following terms by Dixon J (as his Honour then was) in R v Porter (1936) 55 CLR 182:

The question is whether he was able to appreciate the wrongness of the particular act he was doing at the particular time. Could this man be said to know in this sense whether his act was wrong if through a disease or defect or disorder of the mind he could not think rationally of the reasons which to ordinary people make that act right or wrong? If through the 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. What is meant by “wrong”? What is meant by wrong is wrong having regard to the everyday standards of reasonable people. (at 189-90)

24 It is to be observed that the opinions of both Dr Allnutt and Dr Skinner are directed to the test which I am bound to apply. In light of all the evidence I have no hesitation in accepting the opinions of those experts each of whom is eminently qualified in the area of forensic psychiatry.

25 I accept the submission made jointly by the parties that the accused has established upon the balance of probabilities that he did not know, in the relevant sense, that what he was doing was wrong and that therefore he was mentally ill at the time he stabbed and killed the deceased. It is axiomatic that a person who is found to be mentally ill cannot be held criminally responsible for his or her actions.

Order

26 In accordance with s 38 of the Mental Health (Criminal Procedure) Act 1990 (the Act) I find the accused not guilty of the charge of murder on the grounds of mental illness. In doing so I have had regard, pursuant to s 37 of the Act, to the practical and legal consequences of that finding. I order that the accused be detained, pursuant to s 39 of the Act, in the custody of the Department of Corrective Services until released by due process of law. The Registrar is to notify the Minister of Health and the Mental Health Review Tribunal of the terms of the orders made by the court.

27 Finally, I would like to take the opportunity of extending my sympathy to Ms McLoon’s family, who would undoubtedly be deeply affected by this tragic event.

**********