Regina v Deborah Anne McDonald [2001] NSWCCA 301

Reported Decision : 124 A Crim R 17

New South Wales Court of Criminal Appeal

CITATION : Regina v Deborah Anne McDonald [2001] NSWCCA 301 FILE NUMBER(S) : CCA 60224/00 HEARING DATE(S) : Thursday 2 August 2001 JUDGMENT DATE : 2 August 2001

PARTIES : Regina Deborah Anne McDonald JUDGMENT OF : Mason P at 1 & 32; Sully J at 2; Newman AJ at 32

LOWER COURT JURISDICTION : Supreme Court LOWER COURT FILE NUMBER(S) : 70221/98 LOWER COURT JUDICIAL Ireland AJ OFFICER :

COUNSEL : R. A. Hulme - Crown S. M. Kluss - Appellant SOLICITORS : S. E. O'Connor - Crown Stacks, Taree - Appellant

LEGISLATION CITED : Crimes Act 1900 NSW CASES CITED: Ex Parte Corbishley; re Locke (1967) 2 NSWLR 547 at 549 R v Brown & ors. (1994) 1 AC 212 at 237 DECISION : Leave to appeal granted; appeal dismissed

IN THE COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEAL

60224/00

MASON P SULLY J NEWMAN AJ

Thursday 2 August 2001

REGINA v DEBORAH ANNE McDONALD

JUDGMENT

1 MASON P: I invite Sully J to give the first judgment.

2 SULLY J: This is an application for leave to appeal against sentence. The applicant is Mrs Deborah Anne McDonald. The sentence is one that was passed upon Mrs McDonald by Ireland AJ on 14 April 2000. 3 The applicant pleaded guilty before his Honour to the manslaughter by gross negligence of one Shannon John Faichney. Such an offence contravenes sections 18(1)(b) and 24 of the Crimes Act 1900 NSW and attracts upon conviction a statutory maximum penalty of imprisonment for twenty five years. His Honour imposed a sentence of imprisonment for seven years, fixing in respect of it a non parole period of five years. 4 The facts of the matter, put shortly, are as follows. 5 On or about 6 June 1998 the victim was living in the home of the applicant and her husband. Also there at the relevant times was another young person who is identified only as BJT, he then being aged some fourteen or fifteen years. 6 During the afternoon of 6 June BJT set upon the victim and beat him with such ferocity that the injuries thus caused to the victim proved to be fatal. 7 The learned sentencing Judge, speaking of those injuries, says that they were, as his Honour puts it: "Simply appalling. On almost every aspect of the body the examination revealed a variety of injuries consistent only with prolonged and repeated physical abuse derived from a variety of sources and objects ... Death was due to a collection of blood over the brain. This had been caused by trauma probably in the form of the head being violently shaken or hit against a flat surface such as to cause the wide spread bruising of the face." The victim was aged chronologically seventeen but his developmental age was closer to about twelve. 8 Exhibit 1 before his Honour is a summary of the relevant background of the victim. It runs to five closely typed pages spanning the years from 1986 to 1998. What it demonstrates is a history of abuse and cruelty of a kind which one would have hoped would have ceased long ere this to be present in any part of the contemporary Australian community. Reading that document one can only repeat the observations made by Holmes JA speaking for the Court of Appeal in Ex Parte Corbishley; re Locke (1967) 2 NSWLR 547 at 549. There his Honour, speaking of a manifestly unjust refusal to grant bail, says this: