R v Whincup
[2001] VSC 408
•7 September 2001
| IN THE SUPREME COURT OF VICTORIA | Not Restricted |
AT MELBOURNE
CRIMINAL DIVISION
No. 1424 of 2001
| THE QUEEN |
| v. |
| SANDRA LEIGH WHINCUP |
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JUDGE: | COLDREY, J. | |
WHERE HELD: | MELBOURNE | |
DATE OF SENTENCE: | 7 SEPTEMBER 2001 | |
CASE MAY BE CITED AS: | R. v. WHINCUP | |
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION: | [2001] VSC 408 | |
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CATCHWORDS: Sentence – Plea of guilty to intentionally causing serious injury – Offender stabbed a work colleague several times with a knife – At time of attack offender suffering from a psychotic illness involving severe paranoid delusions – Subsequent treatment proving effective – No prior convictions – Remorse – Stable and supportive family – Proceedings adjourned for 5 years pursuant to s.72 Sentencing Act 1991 on special conditions including ongoing psychiatric treatment.
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APPEARANCES: | Counsel | Solicitors |
| For the Prosecution | Miss Cannon | Office of Public Prosecutions |
| For the Accused | Ms. McNiff | Victoria Legal Aid |
HIS HONOUR:
Sandra Leigh Whincup, you have pleaded guilty to intentionally causing serious injury to Tracy Louise Maggs at Eltham on 3 July 2000.
In sentencing you, it is necessary to briefly examine the facts and circumstances surrounding the commission of this offence so as to place your actions in context.
The incident itself may be briefly described. On Monday 3 July 2000 you attended your workplace, Parsons Canvas Company, at about 8.45 a.m. That company was owned and operated by Mrs Tamara Maggs and one of your work colleagues was her 23 year old daughter, Ms Tracy Maggs. Tracy, and indeed her mother, regarded you as a good worker who was pleasant and polite, even meek and mild. On that morning Mrs Maggs noticed that you appeared subdued.
You complained that the sewing machine upon which you stitched canvas products would not sew. Tracy described you as seeming a bit upset and looking like you were going to cry. She told you that the machine was, in fact, operating properly and you commenced to sew. Shortly before 9.30 a.m. Mrs Maggs left the business premises to refill a bottle for the gas heater. Her daughter Tracy was working on a clipping press when she noticed you sweeping the floor. This was unusual as it was not one of your normal duties. The next thing she knew was that you had struck her once or twice to the back of the head with the broom. She heard you say "You bloody bitch" and when she turned around you attacked her, initially pulling her hair. Tracy Maggs was trying to get out of your grip but you pursued her around the factory floor, swearing at her. She was screaming and she described you as being "in a frenzy" and "like a mad thing" and "out of control". The next thing Ms Maggs remembered was lying on her back on the floor near the clicking press. You were kneeling beside her with the upper part of your body over the top of her. You had a knife in your right hand with which you were attempting to stab her in the chest. She described gripping the knife by the blade with her right hand as you were pushing it towards her chest and, at some stage, her throat. Although Tracy Maggs had no recollection of feeling the blade make contact with her body, a number of stab wounds were inflicted by you.
At one point Ms Maggs managed to wrestle the knife from you and she endeavoured to throw it across the room. You, however, managed to retrieve it.
In the course of the struggle a customer, Ronald Heath, entered the premises. Hearing Ms Maggs scream he entered the back area of the premises where he observed you and Ms Maggs in the position I have described, struggling for control of the knife; you having hold of the handle and Ms Maggs the blade. Quite courageously Mr Heath grabbed both your wrist and that of Ms Maggs and after a period of time, which he estimated at about two minutes (but may well have been less), you surrendered your grip on the knife handle, stood up and eventually walked slowly out the front door of the store.
The knife itself, which belonged to you, was a Wiltshire Stay Sharp with a blade variously estimated at 10 to 15 centimetres in length. Having taken possession of it, Mr Heath placed it on one of the nearby work tables.
Shortly thereafter Mrs Tamara Maggs returned to the shop to find her daughter lying bleeding on the floor.
The injuries sustained by Tracy Maggs included stab wounds to the right upper back and throat and lacerations to the left lower back and the top of the head. There were also defensive type cuts on Ms Maggs' hands. The major injuries described by a Dr Demitra Tcherkas, the Thoracic Surgery Registrar at the Austin Hospital, were a penetrating wound to the left chest area and a cut to the left forearm which damaged the underlying tendons.
On its face, your conduct was quite inexplicable and totally out of character. In order to understand how it came about, it is necessary to examine the surrounding circumstances.
The material before the court includes a statement from the previous owner of the business, Mr Malcolm Parsons. Like Mrs Maggs, he reported no problem with you as an employee and described your work as perfect. However, in the year before he sold the business in June 1998, Mr Parsons noted changes in your behaviour. For example, you became very concerned about your appearance. Similar concerns were expressed about disease and you asserted that Mr Parsons had given a disease to you and that your husband and children had also contracted it. You claimed that your daughter Sally was getting fat because of this disease and that you had to watch your own weight because of it.
Subsequently in late March or early April 2000 you wrote a letter which you apparently distributed to Mr Parsons' neighbours and church associates accusing him of disreputable conduct. On about 18 April 2000 Mr Parsons drew the attention of your husband David to these letters suggesting that you needed help. Your husband was extremely upset at the contents but told Mr Parsons that he had not noticed anything unusual about you.
On Thursday 29 June 2000, four days before this incident, you spoke on the phone to Tamara Maggs in an unusually aggressive manner asking her, "Why are you trying to destroy my family?" in the course of that conversation you, in effect, blamed Mrs Maggs for problems between your son Jamie and a go-kart organisation with which he was involved, as well as blaming her for difficulties your daughter was experiencing at her workplace. According to Mrs Maggs you appeared to seek confirmation that you were a good person and that Mrs Maggs was not trying to ruin you and your family's lives. That conversation is significant in light of other material that emerged following the stabbing incident.
Shortly after this incident a letter addressed to your husband David was located in the bedside drawer of your Greensborough home. It is, in effect, a suicide note which exhibits high levels of paranoia against the activities of various persons including both Tamara and Tracy Maggs. The note also includes the comment, "I can't go on like this, there is nothing here for me. I hope in some way you can get out of this mess. I love you all dearly." later you wrote, "I'm not good enough for you. I must go. And I hope with all my heart that you will survive this terrible nightmare. My last wish that you look after both the kids. And by some miracle you can get around this horrible mess."
Indeed, when you were located in the driveway of a neighbour's house just after midday on 13 July you were soaking wet and had blood over your face. You said to your husband, "It's Tamara, it's Tamara's fault." you later told Dr Douglas Bell, an experienced consultant psychiatrist attached to the Victorian Institute of Forensic Mental Health, and who gave evidence before this court, that you had earlier contemplated killing yourself by drowning and had marked the letters "DD", being "death day" on your calendar. You had, in fact, endeavoured to drown yourself in a neighbour's pool, initially by holding your breath under water and later by banging your head on the side of the pool to try and knock yourself out. This had resulted in cuts over your right eye and forehead and the blood observed on your apprehension.
The sequence of events thereafter was as follows. Later on the afternoon of 3 July you were examined by a Crisis Assessment Team and on the following day at 9.30 a.m. a Dr Natalie Hood determined that you were unfit to be interviewed. On the same day, you were seen by Dr Douglas Bell who formed the view that you were suffering from a psychotic illness consisting of non-bizarre paranoid delusions involving a belief that you and your family were being harassed by your employer and fellow employees. You also had an intense pre-occupation with thoughts of suicide. Accordingly, you were transferred as a security patient to the Thomas Embling Hospital pursuant to the provisions of the Mental Health Act 1986. At the hospital you were treated for a paranoid delusional disorder with the antipsychotic medication Risperidone being prescribed. You remained an in-patient in the hospital until 14 February 2001 when you were released on bail back into the community.
In the comprehensive report dated 8 December 2000, and in evidence before this court, Dr Bell outlined the development of your psychiatric problems. It is not necessary to detail all of them. It is sufficient to note that in the 12 months prior to the commission of this offence you developed an increasing pre-occupation that you had acquired scabies and herpes from your former boss and had transmitted this to your husband and children; that your current employer was undermining your son's activities at the go-kart club and your daughter's activities at work. There was an escalating preoccupation that a female neighbour was making critical remarks about your personal appearance and that your work colleagues were constantly whispering about you and deliberately sabotaging your work equipment in order to cause you to make mistakes.
In the three months prior to the offence you experienced a mounting sense of anger towards your perceived persecutors and also a sense of desperation that you could no longer control your situation. Consequently you commenced to plan ways of committing suicide. The suicide intention remained, but as you became increasing convinced that Ms Tracy Maggs was the source of your perceived harassment you experienced a rapidly escalating state of rage towards her and a desire to punish her for what you deludedly believed she had done.
In his evidence Dr Bell put it this way:
"... I came to the very clear conclusion that Mrs Whincup was at the time of the crime suffering from a quite severe paranoid delusional disorder which had been evolving over a period of three to four years, and that ... she had escalating depressive symptoms for a period of some three months which were secondary to her paranoid symptoms ... I have little doubt that her actions at the time of the crime were in a very direct way driven by both the persecutory delusions she was experiencing and also by the sense of desperation that she felt about her situation that she could no longer tolerate."
As to your mental state at the time of the offence, Dr Bell commented in his report:
"... It is my opinion that it would be possible for Ms Whincup to sustain the defence of not guilty on the grounds of mental impairment if she elected to submit such a plea. Although the alleged attack on her victim was, by her own account, driven by an escalating sense of rage and resentment over the way she had been treated, this rage and resentment undoubtedly had its origins in her psychotically-based delusional convictions which were of such an intensity as to undermine her capacity to reason regarding the wrongfulness of her actions with a moderate degree of sense and composure."
I have no hesitation in accepting the opinion of Dr Bell as to the genesis of your mental illness, and its role in the commission of this offence.
Despite your mental state at the relevant time, you have pleaded guilty to intentionally inflicting serious injury. It was put by your counsel that one reason for this was your feelings of remorse at what had occurred. I do regard you as being remorseful. There are two other consequences which flow from your mental state at the time of this incident. Firstly, although you have pleaded guilty, your level of culpability may be regarded as being low. Secondly, it is inappropriate that any real weight be given to the principles of specific and general deterrence in your case.
In determining the appropriate sentence there are also a number of matters personal to you which I must take into account. Before I do so, however, it is appropriate to acknowledge the effect this incident has had upon both Tracy Maggs and her mother. In addition to the trauma, pain and suffering and financial losses occasioned by this offence, Ms Maggs currently has a problem of reduced strength and fatigue in her left hand. Hopefully this will improve with further therapy. Further, the scarring of her arm and neck are constant reminders of this incident. She has had to undergo the frustration of frequent visits to medical practitioners and now suffers a level of anxiety in dealing with members of the public. Another side effect of this incident has been to make Ms Maggs more wary and less trustful of people she meets. In essence, she has experienced a general loss of enjoyment of life.
For Mrs Tamara Maggs the experience of having a seriously injured daughter was very traumatic. This was all the more so given the earlier untimely deaths of other members of the family circle. Mrs Maggs is also faced with the effect this incident has had on her daughter's personality and upon the closeness of their relationship.
Sandra Whincup, you are presently 54 years of age having been born in January 1947. Your father was an administrator in the Commonwealth Public Service. You left school at the end of Year 9 at the age of 16 having received your secondary education at Preston Technical College. You commenced work as a dressmaker at Georges in Collins Street and you were involved in the design and manufacturing of exclusive childrens wear for 14 years.
You married in 1972 and remain in the same relationship after 29 years.
At the end of 1977, because of your pregnancy, you left your employment at Georges and the two children of the marriage, Sally and Jamie, were born in April 1978 and February 1983 respectively. You played an active role in raising your two children before returning to work in 1994 in the business operated by Mr Parsons. Your husband, who is a printer, has operated the Morning Star Press for the past 29 years. Your son is employed in that business whilst your daughter is employed as a dental assistant. There is great family pride in the achievements of your son Jamie who was Australian motor sport champion in the years 1999 and 2000 in the Formula Ford division.
Neither you nor any of your family have been involved in anti-social behaviour and there is no reason to disagree with your counsel Ms McNiff's description of you as "a thoroughly decent constructive member of our community."
Two character witnesses were called on your behalf. Your brother-in-law, Mr Graham Whincup, who is the manager of a screen printing company described you, in effect, as a model parent and probably the most placid person he has met. It followed that this incident was totally out of character. Mr Whincup also noted the support you have received from your family and friends. Mr Alan Welch, formerly the Associate Director of Western TAFE, endorsed the comments of the previous witness and emphasised the high level of support you were receiving. This was also evidenced by the large number of persons present in the court and prepared to give evidence on your behalf.
Since your release on bail in February 2001 you have been treated by Dr Paul Collier, a consultant psychiatrist associated with the North East Community Mental Health Service, and a case manager, Mr Ali Kasapgil. At present you are on antipsychotic medication Quetiapine which you are tolerating well with minimal side effects.
In relation to your ongoing treatment, you were reviewed by Dr Bell on 22 June of this year at the request of Dr Collier. It was his opinion that the symptoms present at the time of this offence had essentially resolved. Dr Bell told the court:
"There was still very minor residual persistent evidence of illness, partly in the way that it affects her emotional appreciation of what happened. There was also a very, very minor persisting residual propensity to suspiciousness or mistrustfulness, but this is very, very different from her state of mind that pertained at the time of the crime."
He also expressed the view that your state of mind had improved considerably since February 2001. This view was endorsed by Dr Collier in his report of 27 August 2001. Both of the experts expressed the opinion that you should continue the anti-psychotic medication and undergo regular review by your psychiatrist and case manager for an indeterminate future period of time.
Dr Bell informed the court of his view that, from a clinical perspective, the best psychiatric location for ongoing treatment would be in your current domestic setting rather than in custody.
I note that, given your current mental state, a hospital order is not appropriate.
By letter dated 2 September 2001, Dr Collier confirmed his willingness and ability to continue providing you with psychiatric care, for a period of years if necessary.
In the course of her helpful plea, your counsel Ms McNiff sought a non-custodial disposition and Ms Cannon on behalf of the Crown did not seek to argue that such an option was not open. This is an unusual case and one which is sad both from your perspective and from that of your victim, Ms Maggs. Your mental state at the time was such that there is a very low level of moral culpability for this offence. Up until you developed your delusional state you had for 45 years lead a blameless life and one in which you had made a contribution to your community. The circumstances are such that little, if any, weight needs to be accorded to specific and general deterrence and, insofar as rehabilitation is concerned, your history indicates virtually no likelihood of your reoffending.
It seems to me that not only your own interests, but those of the general community, will best be served if you can continue your treatment in a non-custodial setting. To imprison you may be regarded as both purposeless and gratuitously cruel.
However, this was a serious offence and, given your plea of guilty, it should be marked by a conviction.
Any penalty imposed should be designed to ensure your continued treatment and hence the safety of the community as well as being designed to give your victim, who still resides in the general area of this incident, as much peace of mind as possible.
Of the various sentencing options available to me, I regard the most appropriate as releasing you under s.72 of the Sentencing Act 1991 to be of good behaviour for a period of five years and to appear before the court if called on to do so during that period. I propose to fix the further special conditions that during the period of five years:
1.You continue to receive psychiatric treatment from Dr Paul Collier or his nominee as required, and obey all lawful instructions and directions of Dr Collier or his nominee; and
2.You do not communicate either directly or indirectly with Ms Tracy Maggs or intentionally approach her in any public or private place.
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