R v Turan

[2000] VSC 207

SUPREME COURT OF VICTORIA
CRIMINAL JURISDICTION	Not Restricted

No. 1413 of 2000

THE QUEEN

v.

FETI TURAN

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JUDGE:	TEAGUE, J.
WHERE HELD:	MELBOURNE
DATE OF SENTENCE:	12 MAY 2000
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION:	[2000] VSC 207

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CATCHWORDS:      Crime – Sentencing – Jury verdict of manslaughter – Provocation – Victim paranoid schizophrenic son of prisoner.

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APPEARANCES:	Counsel	Solicitors
For the Prosecution	J. Vandersteen	Office of Public Prosecutions
For the Accused	D. Drake	Victoria Legal Aid

HIS HONOUR:

1. Feti Turan, a jury has found you guilty of manslaughter.  You killed your son, Ufuk Turan, on 2 June 1999.  Ufuk was the older of your two sons.  At the time he died, he was 31 years old.

1. Until he was 18, your son was seen to be the apple of your eye.  When he was 18, he had a relationship with a young woman.  That young woman reacted adversely to your son's decision to marry another woman.  She made clear her position in a way that could only have been highly traumatic for your son.  In his sight, on the eve of the wedding, she leapt from a balcony in high-rise flats.  Your son picked her up from where she fell.  She died a short time later.  From that time on, your son behaved abnormally.  At times, over the next 13 years, he had to be admitted to psychiatric hospital, for treatment.  He was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic.  Your son was reluctant to accept that he was ill.  He resented taking medication.  At times, he became deceitful about it.  At times, he spoke in an aggressive way to his mother, your wife, and acted in an intimidatory way towards her.  His behaviour had adverse effects on the health of his mother.  At times, he was violent, to some degree, towards you and his siblings.  He was prone to abuse you and other members of the family. 

1. His insensitivity, his abusiveness, his restlessness at night, his loudness in his words and actions, his occasional resorts to violence, would have made him extraordinarily difficult to live with.  Yet you and other members of the family did more than tolerate the behaviour, for more than a decade.  The family in general, and you in particular, continued to love him and to do what you could to care for him.  He none the less blamed you for his problems.  You tolerated the blame and the abuse.  You restrained yourself from dealing with him other than by continuing to care for him.

1. At times, his behaviour, resulting from the schizophrenia, would worsen.  In the week leading up to 2 June 1999, the behaviour of your son had begun to worsen again.  He reacted adversely when asked to refrain from the louder and more abusive and more irrational behaviours.

1. He had some insight into his condition.  On 1 June, he went to Dr Sleaby, for medication, and was prescribed tablets.  Consistently with your earlier demonstrations of your concern to care for him, on 2 June, you went to check with Dr Sleaby about the tablets. 

1. Later in the afternoon, you went walking with the wife of your younger son and with your two grandchildren and the dog.  You returned home at some time after 5.30 p.m.  Your son was home.  He abused you.  He said to you, "I want to fuck you".  He said it fiercely and he said it peremptorily.  He then walked off.  He had abused you before, in like words, and even in those very words.  But this time there was, to you, a difference in how he said the words, and a difference in the effect they had on you.  This time, it was as if there was an explosion in your head.  You lost your capacity to restrain yourself from reacting to gross abuse.  You could no longer tolerate what your love for your son had enabled you to tolerate for years.  In your own words to the jury, you could not take any more water in, and just exploded.  You decided to kill the deceased.  Your anger blinded you to the consequences.  You got into your car.  You took from the glove box the knife that you kept there.  You put it between the seat and the console, with the blade down.  You caught up with your son a few hundred metres from home.  You pulled over.  Your son got into the car.  He did up his safety belt.  You drove to a position close to the reserve, opposite the school.  You pulled over to the side of the road.  You said, "Why did you use those words?"  You gave your son no time to answer.  You stabbed him a number of times.  You drove by your home and sounded your car's horn.  You called out to your wife, when she appeared, that you had stabbed your son.  You drove to the nearest police station and confessed to having stabbed your son. 

1. There was a basis for querying whether the jury's verdict hinged on provocation.  That basis rested on factors such as that your son had abused you similarly before, and that your actions, over the period before and after the stabbing, seemed relatively calm and deliberate.  In my assessment, the jury was more attracted to seeing what occurred on the night in question, in the context of what had happened over the previous 13 years.  Looked at in that way, there had been 13 years of provocative conduct, with one intense last instance sparking off an intense emotional episode. 

1. I turn from the events of last year, to focus on you.  You are 60 years of age, having been born in May 1940.  Details of your upbringing, education, marriage, children, working history, and other milestones, are set out in the report of Mr Joblin, which was tendered on the plea.  I will arrange for a copy of his report to be sent, with the sentencing comments, to the Parole Board.  I can accept all, or almost all, of what he says, including as to the high level of your remorse for having killed your son. 

1. Your past trouble with the law has not been so slight as to be dismissed out of hand, nor has it been so great as to warrant a concern as to the need to allow for special deterrence. 

1. Mr Drake has urged upon me the need to allow for the additional hardship that will be suffered both by you and by your family while you remain in prison.  Your wife, two daughters, and your younger son, are very supportive of you.  Your wife is ill and has communication and other difficulties, but she and you have, in Nezrin, a daughter who appears to me to be extremely sensible and caring.  I do not believe that the hardship will be exceptional in the sense shown in many other cases.  Nevertheless, I do accept that there will be some additional hardship.  I propose to make some appropriate allowance accordingly.  I will also allow for what I assess to be a high level of genuine remorse, and for you having offered to plead guilty to manslaughter at an early stage.  I would note that I have studied carefully the reasons of the Court of Appeal, in the case of Kallipolotis, decided in May 1998, before arriving at what I consider to be the appropriate term of imprisonment.

1. I declare that you have spent 345 days in prison, up to today, 12 May 2000.  I direct that that declaration be noted in the records of the court.

1. I impose on you a sentence of four years' imprisonment.  I fix a non-parole period of two years.

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