R v Sita
[2006] VSC 323
•25 August 2006
| IN THE SUPREME COURT OF VICTORIA | Not Restricted | |
AT MELBOURNE
CRIMINAL DIVISION
No. 1558 of 2005
| THE QUEEN |
| v |
| KRISTY LEANNE SITA |
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JUDGE: | BONGIORNO J | |
WHERE HELD: | Melbourne | |
DATE OF HEARING: | 24 July 2006 | |
DATE OF JUDGMENT: | 25 August 2006 | |
CASE MAY BE CITED AS: | R v Sita | |
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION: | [2006] VSC 323 | |
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Criminal law – sentence – intentionally cause serious injury – mental deficiency and possible psychiatric condition – sensible moderation of requirement of general deterrence – young offender – rehabilitation – longer parole period for greater supervision – R v Tsiaras (1996) 1 VR 398, applied.
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APPEARANCES: | Counsel | Solicitors |
| For the Crown | Mr T. Gyorffy | Office of Public Prosecutions |
| For the Accused | Mr P. Jansen | Victoria Legal Aid |
HIS HONOUR:
Kristy Leanne Sita, you have pleaded guilty to one count of intentionally causing serious injury to John Peterson at Melton on 16 March 2005. It is now the duty of this court to sentence you, according to law.
John Peterson who was 56 at the time of this offence, was a friend of your mother. At the relevant time he was staying with her at a unit in Coburns Road, Melton South. On the day of the offence your mother, Rochelle Sita, bought a cask of wine which she and Peterson began to drink at about 11 am. This was not an unusual thing for your mother to do. She and Peterson often sat around, talking and drinking.
At about midday on 16 March 2005 you arrived at the unit with a young child you were looking after and apparently joined in the social activity with your mother and Peterson. However some time after you arrived something occurred which caused you to get into a sudden argument with Peterson. The reason for this argument is not clear on the materials before the court, but it would appear that you were concerned about some previous real or perceived physical maltreatment of your mother by Peterson.
You and Peterson left the unit in the course of the argument which continued after you went outside. Shortly after you walked to another unit in the same block and armed yourself with a kitchen knife. You approached Peterson and, without warning, stabbed him once in the chest, causing him to collapse against a wall of the unit, bleeding profusely. At the same time you shouted a number of times that you were going to kill him.
The occupant of the unit in which your mother and Peterson had been drinking, one Seifer Jaka, came to Peterson's assistance. He restrained you as you were continuing to behave in an aggressive fashion, notwithstanding that at that stage Peterson was in a helpless state, and bleeding profusely. You said to Peterson "I told you I was going to stab you." And a bit later "you want me to stab you again?" Peterson was heard to plead "No, No."
Ambulance and police were called, and when they arrived at the scene they saw Peterson lying in a garden bed near Unit 2. He was covered in blood and was receiving treatment from the ambulance officers. You were further up the driveway, adjacent to Unit 4, holding a knife in your right hand and a glass in your left hand. You dropped the knife at the request of the police. When you were asked what happened you swore and gestured at the injured man and said "I told the cunt, I fucking told him, the fucking dog, I'll do it properly next time. He's fucked."
The ambulance officers who treated Peterson considered that his life was threatened by the injury which you had inflicted. His blood pressure was too low to ascertain and his conscious state was decreasing. His pulse was rapid, there was a decreased air intake and the officers considered he had a problem with a lung. Immediate evacuation by helicopter to the Alfred Hospital was arranged.
On arrival at the hospital, Peterson's injuries were classified as severely life threatening. He had a four to five centimetre wound to his left clavicle area and had lost something in the order of 50 per cent of his blood volume. He required blood transfusions and a chest drain to help with his deflated left lung.
On exploration in theatre, Peterson's chest wound was found to pass through the shoulder, through the armpit, and enter the chest between the fourth and fifth ribs. His cephalic vein was cut and his axillary vein was severed.
Peterson remained in hospital until 23 March when he was discharged. He continues to suffer physical and emotional effects from your attack upon him, which are outlined in a victim impact statement and a statement by J Sadai which are both before the court. It is probable that he will continue to suffer from the effects of this assault for the rest of his life.
Upon being interviewed by the police, you freely and repeatedly admitted stabbing Peterson and gave as a reason for this behaviour Peterson's maltreatment of your mother. In your interview with the police, although you were frank in your admissions that you stabbed Peterson, you made a number of contradictory statements as to whether Peterson had, in some way, harmed, or threatened to harm you. These statements can be discounted. Not only are they not corroborated by any other witness, but they are internally inconsistent and, on that account alone, highly improbable.
The Crown has accepted a plea of guilty to the offence of intentionally causing serious injury. Your repeated assertions at the scene and subsequently that you intended to kill Peterson, have been discounted in accepting this plea. This was because of your obviously agitated state and the incoherence and inconsistency in some of your answers.
You are indeed fortunate that the efficiency of the ambulance paramedics and the air ambulance helicopter was as good as it was. Had Peterson not been able to be air lifted to the Alfred Hospital as quickly as he was he would almost certainly have died and you would have been facing a murder charge to which you would have had little in the way of defence. Your sentence would have been many times longer than that which the court is, in fact, going to impose.
Your counsel outlined your personal circumstances in the course of making a plea on your behalf. The Crown has not sought to contest the accuracy of the matters which he put, so that I can accept them as a generally accurate statement of your pre-offence situation. Much of that material is derived from psychiatric reports and reports from the Department of Human Services detailing the intellectual disability from which you suffer and your psychological condition. This material is before the court.
Dr Danny Sullivan, a psychiatrist, examined you on 21 April 2005 and produced a report dated 1 May 2005 which is before the court.
You gave Dr Sullivan a history which included a description of your family circumstances. You were the youngest of four children of an Italian father and an Australian-born mother. You attended Coburg Primary School and Melton South Primary School to about Year 6. You attended secondary schools in Bacchus Marsh, Kurunjang and Deer Park and finished Year 9, but only with the assistance of integration aides. You were often placed in special classes for people with learning difficulties. You had frequent detentions and suspensions.
Dr Sullivan noted that after leaving school you had worked on a couple of occasions doing cleaning, but these jobs ceased when you stopped attending. You have apparently also attended work education training at the Melton Campus of the Victoria University of Technology, but left after 18 months without graduating.
You told Dr Sullivan that prior to being arrested for this offence you spent time playing with your dogs, using a PlayStation, watching television and playing sport. You were living with your sister and a friend in a Ministry of Housing house in Deer Park immediately prior to your arrest. You had been there about four weeks.
You have suffered from asthma and, soon after your arrest, you were diagnosed as having an acute sero-conversion Hepatitis C virus. You were taking anti-depressants and had been in receipt of attention from ORYGEN Youth Services where you had seen a Dr Zoe Williams. You had had three previous admissions to psychiatric hospitals, two in 2004 and one in 2005. All of these admissions were brief and related to crises in which you became suicidal. For some time, at least, you were on suicide observation whilst in the Dame Phyllis Frost Correctional Centre. You have exhibited symptoms which may suggest psychosis.
You have had drug and alcohol problems and have had considerable difficulty in engaging with services involving detoxification offered to you with respect to these matters. You said you first drank alcohol at the age of 13 you were drinking excessively. It is noted that your mother is an alcoholic.
You use cannabis, you have taken amphetamines and have once injected heroin without ill effect. You told Dr Sullivan that you used no other drugs. The taking of cannabis and the injecting of heroin is, of course, illegal.
Dr Sullivan's opinion was that your background had been marked by disruption and upheaval; parental and sibling drug and alcohol abuse, and significant interpersonal learning and behavioural difficulties. He thought that since leaving the Education system you have shown an increasing psychosocial deterioration involving homelessness and transient accommodation. He thought that you were in the range of borderline intellectual ability and would qualify as having a mild intellectual disability. He thought that you required ongoing and intensive case management by a mental health service. It is to be sincerely hoped that upon your release from prison you will have access to such a service and will, to the best of your ability, use it to your advantage.
You were also the subject of a long and comprehensive report by Mr Simon Nudds, a psychologist from ORYGEN Youth Health, which report is before the court. It outlines in considerable detail your history, your current situation and the steps which ought to be taken to implement a management plan for you at an appropriate time. Again, it is to be hoped that when you are released from prison you co-operate with such management initiatives to the best of your ability to try to make the most of the services offered to you.
You have been classified by the Department of Human Services as being eligible for services from that department pursuant to the Intellectually Disabled Persons' Services Act 1986. In the course of assessing your eligibility for this service, DHS ascertained that your full-scale IQ is 64; your verbal IQ is 64, and your performance IQ is 69.
You have pleaded guilty to the offence of which you have been charged and you have no prior convictions. Each of these matters will be taken into account in fixing an appropriate sentence in your case. Your plea of guilty was entered at an early stage of the proceedings and that, too, will be taken into account.
A submission was made by counsel on your behalf that, having regard to your mental state and your intellectual disability, the principle of general deterrence which would normally be a major sentencing factor in a crime like this, should be somewhat ameliorated in your case. This submission should be accepted. Relying upon principles of sentencing recognised by this court, there should be some sensible moderation of the normal requirement for general deterrence to be one of the major sentencing considerations in your case.
The other matters which the court must take into account in fixing a sentence are the need to deter you, as far as possible, from offending again, and the need to express community denunciation of violence generally, and in particular violence involving the use of a deadly weapon such as a knife.
Finally, it is necessary for the court to take into account the fact that you are a relatively young offender and that the question of your rehabilitation is one in which not only you have a significant interest but the community has a significant interest as well. The community is better served by the rehabilitation of a young offender than by the imposition of a longer gaol sentence where the opportunity for education in the criminal culture is thereby increased. The community sometimes fails to appreciate that gaols are the universities of crime so that the less time young people spend in them, the better from the point of view of the community as a whole.
Your rehabilitation will be enhanced if you are able to receive appropriate supervision for some time after your release. In this regard your father gave evidence upon your plea to the effect that he is willing to provide some stability and appropriate care and guidance when you are released from prison. His assistance, together with the parole system and disability services from DHS will provide you with the means to become a useful citizen of this society. Whether you use those means to achieve that result will be up to you. If you do you will never see the inside of a prison again. If you do not you can look forward to spending longer and longer periods away from your family and friends in the hostile and destructive atmosphere of the prison system.
Notwithstanding the matters to which I have referred it is necessary in your case for an immediate sentence of imprisonment to be imposed. Injuries such as you deliberately inflicted on John Peterson must be visited with punishment consistent with the sentencing principles to which I have referred. However, having regard to your youth and to maximise the possibility of you being successfully rehabilitated after you have served the minimum term of the sentence to be imposed on you, it is appropriate that you be subjected to a longer possible parole period than might ordinarily be the case. Re-integration into the community will be better achieved by your being released from prison earlier than might have been the case, provided you are supervised by the parole system after that release for an appropriate period.
The sentence of the court is that you be imprisoned for a term of four years. It is further ordered that you serve a minimum of one year and eight months before being eligible for parole. It is declared that you have served 499 days by way of pre-sentence detention in respect of this offence and it is directed that this declaration and the fact that it has been made be entered in the records of the court.
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