Willgoss v The Queen [1960] HCA 5

High Court of Australia Dixon C.J. McTiernan, Fullagar, Menzies and Windeyer JJ. Willgoss v The Queen [1960] HCA 5

ORDER Application for special leave to appeal dismissed.

The Court subsequently delivered the following written reasons for judgment:—

Dixon C.J., McTiernan, Fullagar, Menzies and Windeyer JJ.

This was an application for special leave to appeal from an order of the Full Court of the Supreme Court of Victoria sitting as a court of criminal appeal. The order of the Supreme Court refused an application of Walter William Lewis Willgoss for leave to appeal against a conviction for murder.

Willgoss was convicted before O'Bryan J. of having on 2nd May 1959 murdered one Ivor Lesleigh Gillett. It is from the order refusing to give him leave to appeal from that conviction that he sought special leave to appeal to this Court. We refused his application but we thought in view of the argument that we should state our reasons in writing.

The prisoner relied upon a defence of insanity and the questions upon which his application turned arise out of that defence. It is necessary to give only the briefest account of the crime itself. It appears that Gillett was a man aged about seventy-two years who lived alone in Corio near the Geelong Road. He owned a utility truck and had a little money in the house. Among the things in his house was a .22 rifle, and some cartridges. From the circumstantial evidence and a statement the prisoner made to the police it would appear that the prisoner had come to the house on Saturday morning believing that Gillett had departed for the time being. The prisoner says that on the previous day he had come and had asked for food and that Gillett had angrily ordered him away. On the Saturday morning the prisoner entered the house looking, according to his own account, for food and for money. Gillett came back to the house while the prisoner was in the kitchen. The latter took up the rifle and shot Gillett through the head three times. Finding he was dead, he dragged the body to an underground tank, placed it in the water and put the lid over the tank. He made some attempt to remove the traces of the crime and then went off with the deceased's truck, taking some money and some articles which he stole from the house.