R v Nhat Viet Vo
[2005] VSC 511
•25 November 2005
| IN THE SUPREME COURT OF VICTORIA | Not Restricted | |
AT MELBOURNE
CRIMINAL DIVISION
No. 1517 of 2004
| THE QUEEN |
| v |
| NHAT VIET VO |
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JUDGE: | Byrne J | |
WHERE HELD: | Melbourne | |
DATE OF HEARING: | 18 November 2005 | |
DATE OF SENTENCE: | 25 November 2005 | |
CASE MAY BE CITED AS: | R v Nhat Viet Vo | |
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION: | [2005] VSC 511 | First correction 2 February 2006 |
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Criminal Law – sentence – murder – plea of guilty.
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APPEARANCES: | Counsel | Solicitors |
| For the DPP | Mr T Gyorffy | Office of Public Prosecutions |
| For the Accused | Mr Nicholas Kanarev | Victoria Legal Aid |
HIS HONOUR:
Sentencing Remarks
Nhat Viet Vo, you have pleaded guilty to the charge of murdering Mimi Zhen Zhang on 9 February 2004.
The circumstances of this offence, as I find them, are as follows. In mid-2002 you met Amy Yigong Wu, the daughter of the deceased, and later in that year you started making regular contact with her. You started going out with her in early 2003 and this continued until about the middle of that year. She was then but 15 years old and a student and Methodist Ladies College. The evidence shows that you were infatuated with her. You left your job and had little contact with your friends. It seems that you focused your life entirely upon her. She described the relationship as intense. You saw her in the first half of 2003 on a regular and frequent basis. The relationship soon became intimate. In mid-2003 this relationship was terminated by Amy, perhaps with some encouragement from her mother.
Your love for Amy continued and the relationship resumed after a few months. You continued to visit and to go out with her until September of 2003 when she told you of her decision to terminate the relationship. You were very upset about her decision and did not accept it. You continued to go out with her even after that date. She says that she continued the sexual relationship with you, but at your insistence and against her will. She told you to leave her alone but you continued to attempt to make contact with her. On one occasion in October 2003 the police were called to Amy’s house after midnight when you knocked on her bedroom window. In short, you did not accept her decision to terminate the relationship.
Between 3 December 2003 and 26 January 2004, Amy and her mother visited China. It may be that this was an attempt to remove her from you.
About this time, too, you were taken on a holiday to Vietnam, to the place where you were born and where you spent your early years. According to your close friend, Anh Thi Viet Vo, this was an attempt to take your mind off Amy and, perhaps, to meet other girls. If this was correct, the objective was not achieved; you continued to think only of Amy.
You were born in Vietnam on 16 July 1980. You were therefore 22 years of age when you started your relationship with her and 23 years and seven months on the date of the offence. You are the third of four children of your parents. You arrived in Australia in 1990 at the age of 10 years, having left Vietnam with your mother and younger sister to join your father and older brother who had already arrived in this country in 1986. Your parents have since separated and you lived with your mother at the time of the offence.
The evidence before me shows that you have been a man of good character. You were described as having a shy disposition and a willing, if not particularly able, student. It seems that your lack of academic success and the succession of jobs you held meant that you lacked confidence and self-esteem. You did not have a girlfriend before Amy other than a short-lived friendship which terminated when the girl rejected you about the time when you met Amy.
Your family relationships were not good. You say that your father was violent towards you until your parents separated when you were 16 or 17 years old. After this, you drifted away from your family, remaining close only to your younger sister.
It was against this background that you formed the intense relationship with Amy Wu which I have described. When she, too, rejected you, you found this unbearable. You made baseless accusations that she was seeing another man. You may well have felt, perhaps with more justification, that Amy’s mother was against the relationship.
On the evening of 8 February 2004, after Amy went to bed about 11 pm, you appeared at her window seeking to entice her to come outside. When she told her mother you were there, her mother went outside and you ran away.
You then went home and telephoned Amy seeking to have her agree to meet you. The accounts of this conversation differ. You say you were angry and complained that she lied to you about her first boyfriend. In any event, you returned to her house, this time with a kitchen knife. When you arrived Amy’s mother went outside to send you away. She told you in angry tones that Amy did not want to see you and that you should leave her house. According to your account, she pushed you in the shoulder with her fist. You wrestled her to the ground and she started to scream out. You became angry and stabbed her in the neck and chest. The pathologist’s report discloses stab wounds to the head and two to the chest together with defensive cuts to the left-hand. She died quickly.
Amy witnessed the assault and ran to her mother’s aid. She tried to seize the knife but you pushed her away and told her she was coming with you. She resisted and you ran off.
In your record of interview you offer as the explanation of carrying the knife that you wanted to scare Amy so she would listen.[1] And as an explanation for stabbing Amy’s mother, that if she were dead you would have Amy.[2] Again, in answer to the question whether you intended to kill, you said “probably”.[3] Even making allowance for your confused state of mind, I find in the light of these admissions and the circumstances and severity of the attack that you stabbed Mimi Zhen Zhang with intent to kill her.
[1]Q. 214.
[2]Q. 269.
[3]Q. 307.
Victim impact statements have been provided from Amy, from Yang Wu the father of Amy Wu, and from Wei Min Zhang, the father of the deceased. It is impossible not to be moved by the statement of Amy. Not only has she lost her mother and her financial, parental and even social support, but she must live with the memory of the terrible incident which she witnessed. She has had to endure, too, the reproaches of her father who blames her for the tragedy.
The statement of Yang Wu, the estranged husband of the deceased, shows his feeling for his loss. He speaks of nightmares and a reluctance to disclose the fate of his wife to his friends.
For Wei Minh Zhang the 76 year old father of the deceased who lives in China, the loss of his youngest daughter who provided financial and emotional support for him has been devastating. He says that the whole family has been broken by her death and that he will live with the pain of the loss for the rest of his life.
And although there was no evidence of this, I am sure that this terrible crime has and will have a lasting effect on your own family and friends.
Evidence was led in mitigation from Mr Bernard Healey, a psychologist, who saw you on 17 December 2004. Mr Healey makes no mention of mental abnormality or disease. He describes you as anxious with a hypo-manic trend in keeping with your immaturity and impulsivity and he refers to responses associated with social introversion and withdrawal. He speaks of you as a conforming person having a high level of guilt and self-reproach.
The psychiatrist, Dr Leslie Walton, examined you on 26 July 2005, soon after your trial. He was not asked to attempt an assessment of your state of mind at the time of the killing. At the time of your trial you were being treated with ante-psychotic medication and this treatment has continued until recently. The investigations of Dr Walton have disclosed that since May of this year your mental state had deteriorated significantly, particularly as the trial date approached. Then in July when you were admitted to the prison psychiatric unit you were experiencing paranoid delusions, auditory hallucinations and suicidal ideas. This responded to medication, so that there was no question of your being unfit to stand trial. The medication has, in October, ceased and you presently suffer from no psychiatric condition.
Dr Walton expresses the opinion that, at the time of the killing, you might have suffered from a nascent or non-diagnosable form of psychosis which did not manifest itself until mid-2005 when it may have been triggered by the stress caused by the imminent trial. I do not conclude, however, from this speculation that the conduct with which you have been charged was the result of any psychiatric illness. I do not understand your unreasonable suspicions directed to Amy as an indication of mental illness; but rather as the fantasies of a disappointed lover. Dr Walton considered it likely that you may suffer from recurrent episodes of the psychotic condition which he identified.
You pleaded guilty on the second day of your trial. By so doing you spared the State the cost of the trial and, more importantly, you spared Amy the ordeal of reliving her memory of that terrible evening. I take this into account in your favour notwithstanding that your plea was very late. This is a case where the sentence must reflect the value which the community places on the life of one of its members. Murder is a serious offence – the most serious of all.
The sentence which I impose must serve as a warning to those who may be minded to carry knives.
It is not uncommon for young people to experience the disappointment and desolation of rejection by a person whom they love. It is entirely unacceptable that you or any one else should see the use of a knife as an appropriate means of resolving such a situation. The sentence must serve as a deterrent to such persons.
It was put on your behalf that you suffered a serious psychiatric illness which should bear upon the sentencing process. In Tsiaras[4], the Court of Appeal explained how, in the appropriate case this may be so. The fact is that I do not accept that, at the time of the offence or now, you suffered or suffer from such an illness.
[4][1996] 1 VR 398.
My task is to weigh up the competing considerations which bear upon the sentence which I impose. I have mentioned already that the sentence must reflect the community’s disapproval of your conduct, the harm you have inflicted on others and the need for general deterrence.
I have mentioned the impact which your crime has had and will continue to have upon the family of your victims and upon your own family and friends. There is, however, no evidence of remorse on your part for what you have done. I do not understand the evidence of Mr Healey of your sense of guilt and self-reproach as extending to any sense of concern for the harm you have done to others.
I have had regard to your youth, to your previous good character and to your readiness to assist in the activities of Rotary within the Vietnamese community at Collingwood. Your prospects of rehabilitation are good.
Although I am satisfied that you stabbed Ms Zhang with intent to kill, I have regard to your confused state of mind at the time of your impulsive conduct. In all the circumstances, I consider that the appropriate sentence is one of imprisonment for 18 years. This is, in your case, much less than the maximum sentence for the crime of murder which is life imprisonment. I fix 14 years as the period within which you are not eligible to be released on parole.
I declare 654 days as the period to be reckoned as already served under the sentence hereby imposed and I direct that the fact of this declaration and its details be noted on the records of the Court.
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