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- [00:04]
A
This is Australian True Crime with Michelle Laurie. Catherine Knight is the only woman in Australian history to be sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. In 2001, she was convicted of murdering her partner, John Price, in a case so shocking and brutal that it remains one of the most infamous crimes Australia has ever seen. Today, we're unpacking the crime, the trial and the legal questions surrounding the case with Lauren Casamatis, principal lawyer and director at Gallant Law. This is Australian True Crime. We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast is created, the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung People of the Kulin Nation and a warning. This episode of the podcast contains graphic descriptions of violence we know from other people we've spoken to in the same field that. I mean, there's a lot of public pressure on you guys. Do you tell people when you're meeting them at a barbecue that that's what you do?
- [01:07]
B
I often don't. I'll just say, I'm a lawyer and leave it at that. But if they want to get into the specifics, I know I'm going to be met with this question, which is, what do you do if you know they're guilty? I've got an answer, you know, I'll tap for that every time.
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A
And what is it?
- [01:20]
B
It's just that some people are guilty, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they want to deny the truth. Sometimes they're advocating for the best pathway forward for them and society. So it's not a matter of us lying or denying what' what's the best way forward in terms of rehabilitation and protection of the community?
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A
That's a good way of explaining it.
- [01:39]
B
Yeah. Especially when you had a few wines.
- [01:41]
A
Yeah, that's good. It does shut down any argument, I think. And also I always think that it's about giving the jury confidence or the judge confidence in what they're hearing from the prosecution as well. Because if there's a strong defence, then the jury can have confidence in their own judgment, can say, I believe I've heard everything. I've heard both sides. I've heard everything I need to hear. I've heard the debate and now I can make up my own mind. But if there wasn't a great defence team, we wouldn't be able to do that.
- [02:12]
B
Absolutely. And the jury determines the facts. They're not there to determine the law, they're there to think about what facts are being presented and what's, I guess, the most plausible case theory. So we operate in terms of Theories or strategies. So the prosecution rely on evidence the police have obtained and they piece together a jigsaw puzzle based on those pie as defence. We create a different puzzle with the same pieces and it might be that that one is more, I guess, believable to the jury or acceptable, and that's how they'll determine if there's an acquittal or not.
- [02:41]
A
Yeah, but we don't want to live in a culture, and there are cultures around the world where the police are given free rein to say whatever they want about an offender or an accused offender and there is no defence. And then I feel like, well, you can't be really sure what you're hearing from the police in those jurisdictions, whereas in our jurisdiction, I think you can have that confidence because you've got a robust defence.
- [03:03]
B
Definitely. We've got, you know, the beauty of. We live in a democratic society and there is that opportunity to have a jury, 12 people from society, all walks of life, think about what is the best argument here.
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A
Yeah. Okay, so I think we've done a good job of defending you. What do you think?
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B
I think I love it.
- [03:21]
A
Thank you.
- [03:21]
B
Great.
- [03:22]
A
Ok, good. But you have offered to come and talk to us about some massive crime stories and sort of help us not necessarily see them, just from the defence perspective, but we can talk about the crime and then talk about how you may have played this, if I may say so, in defence. The one we asked you to come and talk to us about was Catherine Knight. This is an incredible Australian crime story, and for whatever reason, even I. It happened in the 90s, right?
- [03:50]
B
Yeah, 2000. Yeah.
- [03:51]
A
Right. So even I. I think I was always into true crime, but even I don't really remember a lot about this crime. And I feel like if it happened today, oh, my God. We'd have media from all over the world here to talk about this and to watch this trial. What can you tell us about Catherine Knight? What's her background? Who is this lady?
- [04:09]
B
So, Catherine, I've got to make clear I didn't represent her, but she.
- [04:14]
A
Well, you would have been too young, by the way.
- [04:16]
B
I was 20, but thank you. I was still probably studying law. Yeah. No, so look, we've seen it now with the Maestro murder, you know, and you're right, social media now puts everything out there on various platforms, so we follow true crime even more closely now. So it's probably why Catherine Knight's probably not as famous. But when you look at the case, it's remarkable in that it's probably the most. I'd say reprehensible crime at that stage in Australia that it occurred. And what makes it more, I'm not gonna say attractive, but people fascinated by true crime. And why were they so fascinated by her? It's because she was a female. A lot of people don't expect women to be so aggressive. And also because it was just so, I guess, tragic and barbaric, we can
- [05:01]
A
say we don't expect women to behave in a certain way. But also when I look at her background, her early childhood, it ticks all the boxes of a violent offender. She was born into violence, domestic violence in the home, sexual violence in the home. And so again, if she were a man, we'd go, okay, yeah, well that's a great start for a violent offender in adulthood. Right, yeah.
- [05:22]
B
And I agree. So she not only experienced violence against herself, but she witnessed horrific violence against her mother, sexual violence. And so that usually is a precursor to violent crimes. Especially when you're a young person and in your formative years, you're starting to develop a sense of identity and a sense of, well, how to process the world and the environment around you. So some of us, when we experience trauma in our lives, we've got at least positive role models around us to get us on track and deal with things constructively. Others sink and they develop significant mental health issues, which is what happened to this woman is that she ended up what the psychiatrists assessed her as, was having borderline personal disorder. And that often comes from serious trauma as a child witnessing violence like she did. So I, I think that you're correct in that when we think about violent male offenders, we often write it off as well, boys will be boys, they don't express emotion, it's through anger. Whereas with women we're expected to be a bit more nurturing. You know, we're maternal, we almost seen as deviants when we do commit a wrong, let alone a crime.
- [06:30]
A
She was always an extraordinary woman and young girl in terms of, and I mean extraordinary in its true sense. You know, not as in great, but as in, I read that when she was 16 she said she got her dream job, which was at the abattoir. And it was, and it was on the tools at the abattoir. So there's not many 16 year old girls who want to spend their working days cutting up animals, let alone call it their dream job.
- [06:56]
B
No, definitely not. And I can't even imagine like the smell and everything about it. And I'm an animal lover, so. But it often starts off that way. I'm not obviously a psychologist, but I've worked closely with many throughout my career. And what you'll see is that especially children that experience violence, they'll start off with small acts of harm against animals. And I won't go into it, but it starts off with a small animal, a small act, and then it turns into something far more violent to the point of even causing death. And then it. They then inflicted on humans. So I'm not surprised she ends up in an avatar. Cause there's probably a way to release sort of that pain within her in a way.
- [07:36]
A
Yeah. But in this situation, she can sort of convince herself, if not everybody else, that this is a job, it's a. Someone has to do it.
- [07:44]
B
And yeah, she was subjected to her mother's partners inflicting harm on her. And then she had a series of relationships where she says that men were violent towards her and her own children actually gave evidence that that was the case. The courts question that, I think at
- [08:04]
A
some stage, because there's lots of accusations of her being violent in relationships.
- [08:07]
B
Correct. And I think she was trying to say that that was a repercussion of her being the victim to begin with. And I think her children backed that. But there was some doubt around the veracity or authenticity of those claims. But it often does happen.
- [08:22]
A
Talk to us about that. The victim offender overlap, especially with women.
- [08:27]
B
It's very common. So what we see is, and I always say there's no such thing as an evil person. People commit crimes because of something that's happened in their lifetime. And often what you see with women is that they are a victim of domestic violence to begin with and it turns into crime because either they've learned maladaptive behaviours, they've sort of inherited these actions and they go on to do it themselves. Or. Or there's such a deterioration in their sense of worth, their sense of esteem and their sense of, I guess, belonging, that they look for crime as a way to heal. So I'm thinking, for example, drug use, fraud, like there's often women that are committing dishonesty offences because it's a way to take charge of their life or control their life, or there's situations where there's desperation. So victims of violence that leave a really unhealthy relationship, especially when they're mums, they go out on their own, they've been reliant on this abusive partner for so long that now they're left basically in a state of poverty. They're trying to build a brand new life for them and their Children, they're trying to afford rent, they're trying to get a job. Often they can't get a job because they're just so broken or they've been isolated or been reliant financially for so long that they haven't been out there in the workforce. So what do they do? They then turn to fraud to survive. There's others that I've had many female clients that have turned to prostitution, and then there's others that go on to commit crimes against their new male partner. And even, and this is, I guess, similar to what happened with Catherine Knight's case, is that even if this current partner isn't necessarily violent, there's almost this sense of resentment and there's a fear that they'll be abandoned. So they want to sort of maintain some control. And that's when the violence might start off as emotional abuse and escalate to something physical as what happened here.
- [10:12]
A
It feels like she entered every relationship expecting combat.
- [10:17]
B
And I think that's a real. That's. You see that often in victims of domestic violence, even those that are subjected to emotional abuse, they're expecting that the partner's going to put them down, there's going to be manipulation, control. So they're ready to fight. Yes.
- [10:33]
A
And she. She had a baby young, didn't she? And there was. There was real evidence of mental illness around this child, wasn't there?
- [10:41]
B
Yeah. And I would say, I think we've come a long way now in 2026 around understanding postnatal depression. And even postnatal doesn't even necessarily have to happen when the child's an infant. It can happen as the child becomes a teen or. So I think we're getting better at understanding how parenting can trigger other, I guess, conditions. Conditions, yeah. Thank you.
- [11:05]
A
Well, and also I remember from my pregnancy, which was a very long time ago now, but the doctors saying if you have suffered depression, for example, in the past, there's a higher likelihood that you will suffer postnatal depression. So, yeah, it's all linked. But anyone who's ever had a child will know what a. It just blows your life up. I mean, I don't think anyone can warn you how much it's gonna blow your life up.
- [11:27]
B
Right. And you're operating a lot of time with low energy exhaustion. So how are you meant to think rationally when you're depleted emotionally? If you have got depression that hasn't really been addressed, or anxiety, and it
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A
brings up things from your own childhood as well.
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B
Absolutely.
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A
So in someone like Catherine Knight, that's a potentially disastrous combination, especially if you've been.
- [11:48]
B
Your sense of worth has been challenged in that you've been abused and sexually abused. I can't imagine how you would see yourself and think of yourself. So when you become a mother, you would be questioning, what kind of woman am I, what kind of care am I, what can I really give these kids? And that would play with your mind, too, and blow up.
- [12:07]
A
So, in 1976, and I think this was the first time that Catherine's mental illness became very clear to everybody. She took her only baby at that stage, her first child, and she left the baby on the train tracks, like in the middle of the train tracks, and she walked away. And by a miracle, a man heard the baby crying and rescued the baby. So obviously evidence of postnatal depression. Yeah.
- [12:34]
B
And I wonder also if it's the first signs of borderline personality. They often.
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A
I think she was diagnosed at that point.
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B
Had she diagnosed. Yeah, because I would say that they act impulsively. They're not. They disassociate, so they disconnect in terms of judgment, and they're just on autopilot in a way, and not thinking about the consequences. There's no empathy as well. So I would say you're right, there's postnatal. There must be a combination of things there. But at least, I guess, obviously it's a blessing the baby survived. And also, it's probably this terrible cry for help, or at least there was a bystander that could then redirect her for treatment, because, as I understand it, she didn't get any criminal.
- [13:08]
A
No, no, she wasn't charged. So. But also no intervention, or if there was insufficient intervention. This is the 70s, 1976. So you would think now, looking back, that that was the turning point, perhaps, you know, where someone should have said. Could have said, this woman is in desperate need of very serious support, mental health support, and it could have stopped everything that came after that. But as it was, it seems as though there was very little intervention. Baby was given back to her and she went on to have more children. And, yeah, it became a footnote in her history. But you would hope these days that there would be a very serious, ongoing treatment after something like that. Right.
- [13:47]
B
There'd have to be. I think there's a real deeper understanding now around postnatal and the triggers of women's offending and breakdowns. And I just. I mean, I'm thinking back to 70s, 80s, 90s. There's probably not just a lack of awareness, but probably From a society's point of view, we just sort of wanted to put it under the rug or maybe deal with it with some sort of shock therapy or whatever they did back then. But now at least there's, I think, you know, a stricter regime around treatment. But even now we get it wrong. I had a client who this was 2000 and tens where she had had murdered her husband, but she was a serious victim of physical abuse. Neighbors would hear him abuse her all the time. And so there's no doubt about that. And she had been hospitalized because she'd had an episode of psychosis from the abuse she was enduring from him. And they watched her for a few days and then thought, okay, she's good now, let her out. And then the murder happened. So there was a real question mark over, was that enough treatment? Should there have been more supervision? And so this wasn't even that long ago, relatively speaking.
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A
And to me, why would, what is a possible good reason to send her back into that home ever at all?
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B
Correct.
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A
It's not functional.
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B
Yep.
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A
David Kellett was the father of the baby we're talking about. During the marriage, it's alleged that she frequently assaulted him, struck him with frying pans, burnt his clothing and possessions, and regularly threatened further violence. So again, I don't, we weren't there. I don't know what else is going on in the home, but certainly accusations were made at the time that she was a domestic abuser. How have things changed in that regard? I mean, we're always growing and learning and accepting the truth, I think, about domestic violence. But again, in the 70s, to think about a woman being the abuser in
- [15:38]
B
a home, yeah, I think it would have been, it would have been unimaginable. I think even now we still got a very skewed understanding as a society of what domestic violence is. We often think it's a male perpetrator against a female partner, but it can be a female partner against a male partner. It can be in same sex relationships. It can be between a mother and a child, it can be between siblings, it can be elder abuse with grandparents. So many types of domestic violence that I think we at the moment still neglect or ignore. I think we need to really get on top of what constitutes domestic violence if we're going to prevent it. So I've had male clients that come to me saying they have been physically abused by their female partner or even emotionally abused, and I'll direct them to go make a complaint to police. And often the police will laugh at Them. And still.
- [16:26]
A
Yeah, yeah.
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B
I've had the men ring me up and go, they pretty much shooed me out and said, you'll be right.
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A
Oh, my God.
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B
So I think there's a real lack of awareness around the fact that domestic violence evolves. And it can start off with something simple. When I say simple, it can be, for example, a partner demanding to check your phone every day. And then it can escalate to being hit with a fry pan, to then going through what Catherine Knight's husband had to endure.
- [16:51]
A
And I can imagine in the 70s. And these men that she's marrying, they're tough guys. They're minors. They're, you know, in these very. Or work at the abattoirs. They're in these very masculine industries. And she's quite masculine is my sort of vibe. Do you think? She. She talks a lot about her sex drive. She talks a lot about how she wants lots of sex. And sometimes she attacks these men because they won't give her enough sex. And so it's a very masculine environment, all told. It must have been really difficult for them to say. They wouldn't have said, she's abusing me. Cause they wouldn't have had that vocab at the time. But imagine them telling each other, oh, yeah, and she's hitting me with a frying pan.
- [17:30]
B
Still say it's weak to speak. They wouldn't want to admit that. I think there'd be a mockery made of it. And in terms of her sexual aggression, often victims of sexual abuse do develop that sort of behavior. They don't know any better. And sexual aggression means control. It means sense of validation. So I'd say there's a bit of that going on for her at the time. But also, again, people with borderline personality disorder can be sexually aggressive because there is. It's impulsive again. And, yeah, you talk about masculine energy. I think there's this need to overpower, be overbearing. Yeah, yeah.
- [18:05]
A
She's a fascinating human being. And whenever you see photos of her, she just really hanging out with the blokes. Bloking it up is the way I would describe it, isn't she? But she never struggles to find partners.
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B
No.
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A
These guys find that hot initially. They fight, you know, she's not struggling to get masculine to get male partners.
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B
I wonder why that is. I wonder if she's so resilient.
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A
And I wondered if her sexual aggression was attractive at first.
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B
Could be. Cause she's. She's not vulnerable. She's. Well on the surface, and she's intriguing. Cause she's such a strong character.
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A
Yeah. And back in the day, women weren't very sexually confident. They were taught not to be. You know, they were taught not to enjoy sex or certainly not admit they did. And then here's this lady going, no, I'm right into it, you know, and
- [18:54]
B
she's working in Avatar. So, Yeah, I imagine there weren't that many women.
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A
No. In the environment. Yeah. So she. You cycle through a couple of husbands. What, and they report it. Must be them reporting it because they'd be the only witnesses that she's violent with all of them.
- [19:12]
B
I can't imagine neighbours speaking up if they heard noises. Because, again, it would have been unheard of to have a man being abused by a female.
- [19:20]
A
They would have assumed the opposite. I think if you hear that noise.
- [19:23]
B
Yeah, I agree. And yeah, there would have been limited evidence. I mean, now there's so many ways police can get evidence. It's, you know. You know, that's based on word against word. But now we've got phone records, social media posts, cctv, DNA. There's just so many ways now to track if there has been violence. Violence and who's committed it.
- [19:44]
A
And better understanding in interviews as well.
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B
Oh, yeah, true. They ask the right questions these days. Yeah.
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A
Yeah. Okay, so let's get to Pricey. So I think there's three husbands before we get to John Price. And I call him Pricey because that's what everyone called him. Right. And he just sounds like a fantastic guy. He's a guy who's rattling around Aberdeen, a town in New South Wales where there's a big abattoir and that's where she's working. And I think Pricey was a minor and he was divorced, but he had a couple of kids living with him. He owned his own house. He seemed like a fantastic guy, didn't he?
- [20:18]
B
Yeah, no, he did. And I think from what I understand, the evidence shows that there were other episodes where he forgave her or he. Yeah, he put it down to a. That's her. That's her character. That's a Chaos supporter. So great guy.
- [20:30]
A
I think the story about the stolen first aid kit is really demonstrative of who she was too. As you said, this impulsiveness, you know, that he. When I say stole, everyone agrees it was out of date. It was. They were gonna throw it out. There was this old first aid kit at work and he thought, I'll take it home. He brought it home. So she took photos of it and put him in to his bosses. She was angry with him one day and she got him sacked from his job at the mine that he'd had for years. That he loved, that everyone loved him. And then he took her back after that. Even I think that goes to show
- [21:05]
B
the extent of the manipulation. Manipulators will control and commit little acts like that to. To show you where you're at on the hierarchy and who they are in terms of.
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A
They'll do anything. Yes.
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B
And so it's obviously, I think his esteem had just deteriorated or he must have been in a blur or under a spell eventually. A lot of victims of violence are where they. They can't rationalise anymore. They believe what they're being told. So she would have made him feel like he is an offender, he's a bad person, he needs to be reprimanded.
- [21:39]
A
Also, he ended up isolated from his friends, didn't he?
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B
Yeah. Which is also classic DV behaviour.
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A
There's two pubs in Aberdeen, I believe, the top pub and the bottom pub. And when he took her back that time, he had to switch pubs because his friends were so appalled. I mean, that's. I get where they're coming from. But also isolating someone makes their situation so much worse.
- [22:00]
B
Yeah. Because they've got no support networks or systems anymore around them. The only support person is the offender. Yeah. Yeah. It's classic behaviour.
- [22:08]
A
I believe he was frightened for his own life towards the end there. What examples of that have you come across?
- [22:16]
B
Yeah, the evidence showed that he'd made certain claims to neighbours about, you know, if you find me dead, it's her. And I know to the children as well, he'd sort of hint that things aren't safe or that he felt unsafe.
- [22:30]
A
There's two ways about this. We can talk about what happened that night or we can talk about it from the police's perspective, which is probably the evidence that you've read. Cause it's quite extraordinary, isn't it, when you step through it the way they did tell us about that.
- [22:42]
B
So they got a call from. It was staff member at the victim's job. They were worried he hadn't turned up. And it was quite surprising. Cause he was, you know, a good employee.
- [22:53]
A
Well, again, that told me that. So he got the sack from the job he'd had forever at the mines and he's obviously found another job straight away. And they. And it was very highly thought of at the new job. So all anyone ever talks about is what a wonderful guy Pricey was. So these people at the new job have already been worried that he hasn't come to work. And rather than thinking, oh, he's unreliable, he's a deadbeat, they've gone up, something's wrong, Something's up.
- [23:18]
B
Yeah. For them to wonder, like one day away from work. Yeah. So police did a welfare check and then that's when they actually walked in on the pot of boiling water and a decapitated head in it. And she was about to serve dinner.
- [23:32]
A
Well, the first thing they saw was the. What they called a pelt hanging from a doorway. What was your understanding of what the pelt was?
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B
So she had. Cause she worked in the abattoir. She developed such precise skills in terms of being able to. I hate to say this, but fillet, a carcass and skin. A carcass that she'd actually perfectly skinned. They say a pelt because from head to toe it was almost like a draping blanket. And the pathologist said that when they were doing an autopsy and trying to reconstruct what had happen, they were able to perfectly put the pelt back on the carcass because it was so precisely done, like flawless. So they found this on a hook. So she actually bought a hook that's similar to the ones at the abattoirs. Which goes to show there was a level of premeditation there as well, that she planned this. So they found this draping skin on the hook and then pot of. Pot of boiling water with carrots and all sorts of ingredients. And that's what they walked in on when she was about to feed her own children, the deceased, so.
- [24:40]
A
And his children, more to the point, she wanted to feed his to his children.
- [24:45]
B
Yeah. In a way, she's trying to make a mockery of them and punish them. Yeah.
- [24:51]
A
Oh, yeah. It's. Again, I feel like no one's used to this, but we're used to men committing terrible cruelty crimes overkill. But there still is something about a woman commit. We hold ourselves to a higher level.
- [25:08]
B
Well, I think we're just known as, again, the nurturers, the caregivers. And we're meant to be gentle in nature. You know, they talk about suicide where a woman usually commits suicide through drug poisoning. Something not as aggressive or as violent as using a knife or jumping from
- [25:24]
A
a building or shooting herself or whatever.
- [25:26]
B
Yeah, yeah. So when that happens, that's very rare and very surprising as well.
- [25:29]
A
That's why poison is such a popular. Not popular, but it's not uncommon for women to use poison.
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B
That's right.
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A
But this is as. As violent. As any crime I have ever heard of.
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B
Violent, gruesome, planned and vindictive. Yes. Cruel.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And I think that's why it's such a shocking case, because it is unheard of. It is rare anywhere in the world to hear of a woman behaving like this.
- [25:56]
A
There was lots of. There was blood throughout the house that suggested that he had tried to run away.
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B
He did.
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A
Like blood on light switches and things like that.
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B
She tried to drag his body and he couldn't make it.
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A
Yeah, yeah. So he was asleep when he was attacked, by all accounts. What led up to it? Did she ever describe what put her in her mind to do something like this?
- [26:18]
B
From my understanding of the evidence, she suspected he was having an affair and she was angry and I think at one point he said he wanted to end the relationship. So for her, again, going back to borderline personality disorder, where they really fear abandonment, this would have been her way of keeping a leash on him. She wouldn't have liked the fact that he might be leaving. She saw it as rejection and rather than have him leave her, it was better to. So the evidence shows that he started off in a fetal position in the bed. You're right. He has then tried to drag himself away. And as soon as he did that, she then cut his spine to make sure he couldn't even move. Yeah.
- [26:56]
A
The only other person I've heard doing that is Ivan Milat. That's the kind of genre of human we're talking about here. Oh, good Lord. And the thing about this is it's such a long process. This isn't I snapped and killed somebody. This is. It must have taken her an hour, hours to commit the crime and then do what she did to the corpse and then start cooking it.
- [27:24]
B
And her lawyers were trying to convince the court that she had suffered from, I guess, a form of psychosis where she disassociated and had amnesia, is what they were saying. And the court rejected that. And because I think there were so many elements of planning and constructed conduct, I've represented clients that have committed murder in a state of psychosis. And it doesn't make any sense. When you see the behaviour they're captured on cctv, for example, talking to the wall, carrying on. You can tell they're seeing and hearing things. Even the way the crime comes about, it's very unexpected. So there's a real difference between psychosis and rage, where it happens impulsively or snap moment, as opposed to something like hers, where it was so methodical, you know, to purchase a Hook to then to do what she did in terms of lapel, use that word, to then plan that meal for the children and then to actually lie to police that she had blacked out. Because what the court picked up on as well is that she was very clear on certain memories right up until the interview. And that's not a sign of psychosis or blacking out. You know, she was selective in her memory.
- [28:40]
A
God, there's just so much there. And also, I think the legal definition of mental illness, of being unfit, of not, you know, all of those things are so important because to us, most of us think, well, you'd have to be mad to do that. But that doesn't cut it in court when you're trying to use mental health as a mitigating circumstance, right, to say, I shouldn't have to go to jail for the rest of my life, I should go to a psychiatric facility or whatever. So it's interesting to hear you say this doesn't sound like a psychosis.
- [29:11]
B
So the evidence showed it wasn't. They had various psychiatrists assess her, and a couple of them said there was disassociation. A couple of them, I think, mentioned psychosis, but the court wasn't happy in terms of the extent of it. And so what happens with mental impairment and fitness is that without getting into really complicated legal jargon, if you're deemed unfit to plead, that means you're unfit to partake in a trial. That means, who are you right now? So if I was brought to court right now for trial and psychiatrists felt that I just did not have the mental capacity or cognitive ability to understand what was happening right now, I'd be deemed unfit to stand trial.
- [29:50]
A
But what if you were like that when you committed the crime?
- [29:52]
B
So that's a mental impairment defence. So that's the other type of, if I can say unfitness. So with mental impairment, there has to be some very solid psychiatric evidence, and usually prosecution call their own experts as well, to support the fact that you just could not understand at all that what you were committing was a crime or even a wrongdoing. So I had a client, for example, who had severe schizophrenia and he was at a train station here in Melbourne and was pushing people onto the train tracks. But there was all sorts of evidence to suggest that he was hearing voices. The police, when they entered his house, found graffiti on the wall in his own blood where he's sending the demons off and begging for the demons to let him be. And the prosecution's psychiatric expert and the defenses were both on the same page, that he had no idea what was going on. Like he could. He could not control his actions, he could not even understand what he was doing was wrong. He was being told by these voices that these people were evil and he needed to save the world and rid them. So that is mental impairment. Whereas in her case, it can be seen as mitigating. So it's not a full defence at all, because she did know what she was doing was wrong. That's the difference. That's what they determined. Another factor they need to think about is, is jail going to weigh heavier on this person? So there's a number of factors they need to consider. So hers went into that category. But even then, the sentencing judge, and in fact, the Court of Appeal as well, just thought, no. Like the other factors were so aggravating that we couldn't even give her any kind of parole period because of. Notwithstanding her mental health issues, everything else was far too severe.
- [31:33]
A
And, yeah, we absolutely cannot assume that she won't offend again.
- [31:36]
B
That's right. They said she was an absolute danger because of the past behaviours. Yes.
- [31:41]
A
Okay, so she got life without parole.
- [31:43]
B
Yes, she did. And her team appealed it because what had happened was, up until the 11th hour, she was going to run a trial. And then on the day one of the trial, she changed her instructions to plead guilty. So ordinarily, when you plead guilty, you get a discount on sentence because you're showing some remorse, you're sparing the court and taxpayers of, you know, expense and time on a trial. You're not subjecting witnesses to cross examination. So that was put on her behalf that she should at least get this discount. And the court said, no, it's just way too extreme here.
- [32:18]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. She's one of those people we don't need walking among us, frankly. Is it right that usually defence teams don't want the accused to take the stand?
- [32:29]
B
It's risky. We prefer that they don't. Usually we get them to give evidence when there's just no other evidence of their version. So if they give an interview to police, they partake, partake in the interview with police and they give their version. If that version's solid and credible and stacks up in line with all the other evidence, then I would not want my client to give evidence on oath that interviews great, we can rely on that. Otherwise, if there's other evidence that supports our client's version, like phone records or conversations with other people, you know, movements like you might, for example, if there's an Armed robbery at a bank and you know, you can see the car's movements and there's alibis and things like that. Then I don't need my client to give evidence. I'd rather them stay put and assert their right to silence and just run the defence based on the weaknesses of the case and other supporting.
- [33:23]
A
Because cross examination has got to be,
- [33:25]
B
oh, nerve wracking unbearable. Yeah. I feel for everyone that's subjected to that.
- [33:29]
A
It's terrible, incredibly risky.
- [33:31]
B
Cross examination's an art.
- [33:33]
A
Yeah.
- [33:33]
B
And I saw a Supreme Court justice present an event recently where he said that he still does it at the dining room table just to keep his skills up, which sounds fun as dinner party guest, but it's an art form. So the main rule is never ask a question you don't know the answer to.
- [33:53]
A
Yes.
- [33:53]
B
So if you're going to get a question fired at you, you can assume there's other evidence to back up.
- [33:58]
A
Yes.
- [33:59]
B
And so as much as witnesses want to lie or minimise, you will get caught out.
- [34:04]
A
What do you think about that idea though? I mean, I've spoken to victims families who will say I, our offender pled guilty and so we didn't get a lot of answers that we wanted. We feel like we missed out on some stuff for not having a trial. What's your experience there?
- [34:21]
B
Well, that's interesting. Well, in terms of answers from the accused, depending on the case strategy, often we'll advise our clients to not give evidence. So you might not get answers from the accused. Obviously you'll get answers from various witnesses giving evidence.
- [34:36]
A
Yeah, you'll get it teased out, the crime teased out.
- [34:38]
B
But the thing is with trials you're not necessarily there to find the truth. It's not a fact finding exercise. We're not trying to gather information, we're trying to establish if someone is guilty beyond reasonable doubt. So what the prosecution presents and elicits through its witnesses, it's not necessarily designed to get more answers for the victims. Unfortunately, and I know this sounds cruel, but the prosecution's job is to put enough out there to convince the jury this crime happened beyond reasonable doubt. Whereas defence's role if we're fighting the case is to elicit information or challenge the evidence as to its credibility or reliability to show the jury that they cannot be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt. So we're not there to pretty much pose an alternative case theory or at least we're not there to convince the jury of no, this is actually what happened where there just convinced the jury that you cannot be satisfied that the prosecution's theory is the correct one, that, you know, you have to have some doubt there. So I don't think often the trial is the best way, let alone a plea, to get all the answers. For a victim, the incentive in pleading guilty for an accused person is that discount. I mean, sometimes in her case, if she'd known she was never going to get a discount, she would have run the trial. So there's an incentive there at least to spare everyone of a trial, especially
- [36:06]
A
because this is a family case. We're talking about her children, his children, who she had lived with for years by this stage. So the victims are very much enmeshed and no doubt do not want to go on any further than it has to. What did she appeal? Did she appeal her conviction or her sentence?
- [36:24]
B
Yeah, the sentence. So she. She wanted the. A parole term, so she got life without parole, basically. Her team said that there wasn't enough weight placed on the fact that she did plead guilty and that all her mental health challenges.
- [36:43]
A
That's where I was surprised that she. Not that she got life in jail, but that she wasn't sent to a psychiatric facility because, as I said earlier, she's got history of serious psychiatric problems dating back to her teens. So I was surprised that they didn't look at all of that and say, this woman is severely mentally ill. That
- [37:00]
B
would have been if they ran a mental impairment defence. So they didn't do that. But, yeah, if she had been found guilty by, sorry, not guilty by way of mental impairment, that means they end up being hospitalised for a significant time. However, with accused people that get sentenced to jail, they are assessed in jail and often put in a psych facility there. So I'm not sure if she's there now, but I did read, however, that she's in mainstream prison at the moment as a mentor.
- [37:30]
A
Right.
- [37:31]
B
Yeah. So I laugh at that because I thought, God, what kind of mentor is she? But, yeah, I don't know initially what had happened. Cause the jail, once it's outside the court, that's it. It's up to the jail now to classify her and decide what's best for her and best for the community.
- [37:43]
A
Yeah, we forget that that that sort of assessment is ongoing when someone's in jail.
- [37:47]
B
Yes.
- [37:53]
A
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