R v Ince
[2000] VSC 118
•8 February 2000
| SUPREME COURT OF VICTORIA | |
| CRIMINAL JURISDICTION | Not Restricted |
No. 1419 of 1999
| THE QUEEN |
| v. |
| MEHMET INCE |
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JUDGE: | TEAGUE, J. | |
WHERE HELD: | MELBOURNE | |
DATE OF SENTENCE: | 8 FEBRUARY 2000 | |
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION: | [2000] VSC 118 | |
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CATCHWORDS: Crime – Sentence – Murder – Accused later diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic – Incipient mental illness – No pre-meditation.
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APPEARANCES: | Counsel | Solicitors |
For the Prosecution | P.A. Coghlan QC with R. Barry | Office of Public Prosecutions |
| For the Accused | M.P. Bourke | McLennan's Solicitors |
HIS HONOUR:
Mehmet Ince, you have been found guilty of the murder of Ian Broadbent at Bundoora on 14 December 1997.
On 13 December, the deceased had been to a party at Montmorency. He had taken to the party two joints of marijuana. He stayed at the party until around 11 p.m. He seemed happily drunk. He left the party to be driven home. Near the intersection of Settlement and Plenty Roads, in Bundoora, he insisted on getting out of the car in which he was being driven. He walked west in Settlement Road. He walked onto the road and tried to get car drivers to stop. He intruded on a dance at a hall nearby. He returned to Settlement Road and walked east. He acted aggressively towards approaching drivers. His movements suggested that he was angry, upset, irrational, violent and swearing. At the intersection of Grimshaw Street and Plenty Road, he approached cars in a confrontational way as if he was wanting to fight. He went up to and tried to open car doors. He continued to act aggressively towards car drivers until he came up to the Mazda in which you were the front seat passenger.
Tolga Caliskan was driving that Mazda. You had lost your driving licence some months earlier, but your mother had organized for the Mazda to be available for your use. It was stationary at the traffic lights in Plenty Road governing turns into Grimshaw Street. Tolga Caliskan was waiting for the right turn light to switch from red to green. Like you, Tolga Caliskan had come to Australia from Turkey two or three years earlier. The two of you had been friends for over twelve months. Some time before 13 December 1997 you had bought for $3,000 a Belgian Browning handgun. You had shown Tolga Caliskan and others your capacity to use the gun. Unknown to Tolga Caliskan, you had placed the gun under the passenger seat in the Mazda on the night in question. On the night of 13 December 1997, Tolga Caliskan was driving the Mazda at your request to pick up a girl named Sibel in Greensborough. He was following the directions that you gave him. He had stopped the Mazda at the traffic lights behind another car.
The deceased went to the car in front, and punched or kicked that car. The deceased then came up to your car. The windows were closed, but the sunroof was open. The deceased had no shirt on. He was swearing and acting in a way that appeared angry and violent. He struck the front driver's side window. He was in a position to look and speak through the sunroof at you. You said "no, no" to him. The right turn light switched to green. Tolga Caliskan started to move the car and to execute a right turn. The deceased moved with the car. That was because he had chosen to hold on to the car at the edge of the sunroof. The deceased continued to swear at you from a few inches above your head. Tolga Caliskan queried with you whether he should stop the car. You said not to stop as the man would kill you both. You said that the man might jump off soon. Caliskan completed the turn, and drove east in Grimshaw Street. He increased the car's speed to over 80 kilometres per hour. The deceased held on, and continued swearing loudly at you.
Without indicating to Tolga Caliskan what you intended to do, you took out your gun. You got up from your seat. You fired two shots at or towards the deceased in quick succession. The second hit the deceased in the top of the head. He fell to the roadway, finishing up nearly 500 metres east of the point where he had first held on to the sun roof. Tolga Caliskan asked you if you had shot the man. You said that you had fired the gun in the air and that the man had got scared and jumped. Caliskan continued driving to Greensborough following your directions. You acted as if nothing unusual had happened. A few days later you told two friends you had shot the man. Much later again you told Tolga Caliskan that you had done so.
Twice in the few days before the events of 13 and 14 December 1997 you had seen your general practitioner, Dr Erciyas. Dr Erciyas referred you to Dr Chau, a consultant psychiatrist, who saw you on 17 December. You made no mention to Dr Chau of an incident involving a man on a car. Dr Chau concluded that you were then in a psychotic state and ought to be referred on for further psychiatric treatment. After you were arrested and charged with murder, you came under the care of Dr Douglas Bell, a psychiatrist with Forensicare at Rosanna. You were a patient under his care from 3 April to 22 December 1998, and since the trial you have been under his care for a further period.
Dr Bell has made the diagnosis that you have been suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. He has expressed the opinion that you had been so suffering for at least six months prior to April 1998. You told him of what he took to be persecutory delusions that you were in danger, that when you are in public people were looking at and talking about you and that someone in the community wanted to kill you. Dr Bell made his diagnosis aware of concerns that you might be feigning to be mentally ill. With antipsychotic medication, your symptoms were reduced in severity and scope. However, you have had your ups and downs. In June 1998, you made an attempt to hang yourself. You were seen in early 1999 by Dr Walton, another psychiatrist. He also formed the opinion that you suffered from paranoid schizophrenia.
The task of determining the most appropriate sentence for you is a particularly difficult one because of the issue as to your psychiatric state. Before I turn to that, I wish to comment on the subject of the four victim impact statements. One is from the deceased's mother, one from his father, one from his de facto wife and one from a close friend. I have taken time to read them closely. They are carefully and articulately expressed. They are moving. It is clear that the deceased was a man who was much loved by many people, and deeply loved by those who were very close to him. His death has brought immense sorrow and suffering and loss, and will continue to do so. Regrettably, while the sentencing process can recognize those matters, it cannot correct them.
I come back to the important question of your psychiatric state. It is easy to make the finding that as from the time you were seen by Dr Bell you have been suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. However, on the whole of the evidence, I am unable to find that the state of your psychiatric health was nearly as bad on 14 December 1997 as it was later. It is not possible to reconcile satisfactorily the opinions of Drs Bell and Walton with evidence from other sources. I have noted the evidence from Dr Chau and from consultants at the Early Psychosis Prevention and Intervention Centre. But I must weigh against that other evidence. That includes testimony, tested before the jury, from several people who were in close contact with you on or about 14 December 1997. I note that I have little to go on as to the position of Dr Erciyas.
The evidence overall is such as to warrant my finding that you were suffering to a limited extent from the paranoid schizophrenia on 14 December. I say only to a limited extent for reasons that include that your symptoms then appeared not to have been severe. You appeared to be functioning more than moderately well in the community. You were also capable of feigning and trying to manipulate to advantage, and speaking of such matters and other matters, even in a boastful way.
I find that you intended to kill the deceased. I find that you did so with a gun that you obtained earlier, apparently for the purpose of self-protection. Those findings as to specific intent with a firearm would warrant a heavy sentence, if it were not for my having found as I have as to your incipient psychiatric state at the time you shot the deceased.
Sentencing principles require me to make allowance appropriately for the minimal impact of considerations of general and specific deterrence in such circumstances. Your incipient state of psychiatric illness also means that I place little weight on the circumstance of your having convictions relating to events which occurred earlier in 1997. I accept that there are a number of further mitigating factors that I must take into account in your favour. High on the list of mitigating factors is your youth, which carries with it a high prospect of rehabilitation.
You are now 21 years of age, having been born on 4 March 1978. I note that you come from a deprived background. You were raised in a village in Turkey. You came to Australia in 1995. Your opportunities for education in both countries have been limited. Problems with skills have come on top of difficulties with English. I note that you have done some unskilled work.
I also note that there was no question of premeditation. The deceased was quite unknown to you until he chose to attach himself to your car. Events preceding and including the shooting of the deceased occurred in a very short time-frame. The level of fear and panic for you as for Tolga Caliskan and the deceased must have been extremely high. The circumstances of this untimely death were as bizarre as they were tragic.
The number of days allowed for pre-sentence detention is affected by the circumstance that there must be deducted 275 days for a sentence imposed on you in April 1998. What would otherwise be 687 days is therefore 412. I direct that you have spent 412 days in prison up to today, 8 February 2000.
I sentence you to fifteen years' imprisonment. I fix a non-parole period of ten years.
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