Registrar, Criminal Division, Supreme Court of New South Wales v Glasby

[1999] NSWSC 846

CITATION:	REGISTRAR, CRIMINAL DIVISION, SUPREME COURT OF NEW SOUTH WALES v GLASBY [1999] NSWSC 846
CURRENT JURISDICTION:	Common Law Division
FILE NUMBER(S):	12790/98
HEARING DATE(S):	26/10/98, 05/02/99, 06/04/99, 07/04/99,09/04/99, 12/05/99, 02/07/99
JUDGMENT DATE:	26 August 1999
PARTIES :	Registrar, Criminal Division, Supreme Court of New South Wales (Plaintiff) Suzette Louise Glasby (Defendant)
JUDGMENT OF:	Adams J at 1

COUNSEL :	Mr Neil Williams SC with Dr Pritchard (Crown) Mr M Austin (Defendant)
SOLICITORS:	I V Knight (Crown) Joan Baptie (Defendant)
CATCHWORDS:	Sentence; contempt of court; accomplice already sentenced; attempt to assist co-offender; refusal to answer questions at trial
ACTS CITED:	Sentencing Act
CASES CITED:	Smith v The Queen (1991) 25 NSWLR 1 R v Bloomfield (1988) 44 NSWLR 734 Pearce v R (1988) 72 ALJR 1416
DECISION:	See paragraphs 19 & 20

THE SUPREME COURT
OF NEW SOUTH WALES
COMMON LAW DIVISION

ADAMS J

THURSDAY 26 AUGUST 1999

12790/98

REGISTRAR, CRIMINAL DIVISION, SUPREME COURT OF NEW SOUTH WALES v SUZETTE LOUISE GLASBY

JUDGMENT

1    HIS HONOUR: On 12 May 1999 Suzette Louise Glasby was convicted by me of contempt of court for refusing to answer a number of questions directed to her as a witness in the trial of Gary Zane Glasby in this Court for murder on 15 April 1998. The circumstances of the commission of these offences are sufficiently set out in my judgment on conviction and I do not propose to repeat them here. I pointed out, in characterising the seriousness of the offences, that the prisoner intended to interfere with the administration of justice. She undoubtedly knew facts about the murder of Theissel and the implication of her husband which were of great importance in the trial. In the result, disclosure of this material was not vital to the Crown case since her husband was convicted on other evidence of a largely circumstantial kind. I concluded that the prisoner deliberately undertook to frustrate an appropriate and necessary exploration of the evidence she was able to give because she thought that that evidence might implicate her husband and that she dishonestly attempted to exculpate him for a cold-blooded contract killing in which she was herself involved. I have no doubt that this was a course of conduct designed, if possible, and to the extent to which she was able, to frustrate the due administration of justice in respect of her husband’s guilt, of which she was well aware. The suggestion made to his Honour Justice Sully that she declined to identify the true killer because she was frightened to do so was not pressed before me and I am satisfied that it was false. The prisoner was given every opportunity by the Judge to resile from the position she had adopted and her position was carefully explained to her. What she did was, therefore, a conscious and deliberate defiance of the law. To use the language of Mahoney JA in Smith v The Queen (1991) 25 NSWLR 1 at 23 -

“Conduct of this kind will not be deterred by admonition or by gesture: it is necessary that the punishment for it be direct, immediate and exemplary.”

2    Although the prisoner had not received any benefit by indicating an intention to give evidence at the time that she was dealt with on her plea of guilty to the murder of Theissel, the contempts were committed in the context of a trial for the most serious crime in the criminal calender and, indeed, one that fell within the most serious class of case for that crime. She has not indicated the slightest contrition. 3    The prisoner’s personal history is set out in the judgment of Sully J when he sentenced her for murder on 11 November 1997 and, as his Honour observed, it makes sad reading. I do not think it necessary to set this material out in this judgment. I should mention, however, that I accept that at the time she was involved in the crime for which she was then sentenced, she was very much under the influence of her husband who, as Sully J found, was, “a brutal and vicious man with a truly chilling criminal history”. To some degree, I think that she was motivated by a sense of misplaced loyalty to her husband in committing the contempts of which I have found her guilty allied, perhaps, with a foolish bravado. The prisoner has a young daughter, still being cared for by her mother so far as I am aware, and to whom she has regular access. I am prepared to accept that there is some prospect of future rehabilitation, although the behaviour that has given rise to these offences significantly qualifies this likelihood. 4    As Sullly J noted, the prisoner had made two past attempts at suicide. She was on methadone and has continued to receive it which leads to the hope that she will one day be free of the need to take drugs. It appears that she has completed some drug and alcohol related courses. 5    The prisoner was sentenced for murder to penal servitude for twelve years comprising a minimum term of nine years commencing on 30 September 1997 and expiring on 29 September 2006 and an additional term of three years commencing on 30 September 2006 and expiring on 29 September 2009. The principle of totality must apply to the sentence which I impose. Together with Sully J, I am of the view that there is present in this case a number of factors capable of amounting to special circumstances. However, I consider that increasing the additional term of three years imposed by his Honour by one year appropriately reflects the prisoner’s needs for rehabilitation and supervision upon her release into the community at the expiration of the minimum term which I propose to impose.

In the result I sentence Suzette Louise Glasby for the contempt of court committed on 15 April 1998 constituted by her refusal to answer a question as to what was the name of the person whom she said that she knew to have killed John Theissel to a term of six years imprisonment comprising a minimum term of two years commencing on 30 September 2006 and expiring on 29 September 2008 and an additional term of four years commencing on 30 September 2009 and expiring on 29 September 2012.

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Last Modified: 09/16/1999