R v Camilleri [2021] NSWSC 221 (12 March 2021)

Last Updated: 12 March 2021

Supreme Court New South Wales

Case Name:	R v Camilleri
Medium Neutral Citation:	[2021] NSWSC 221
Hearing Date(s):	17 February 2021
Date of Orders:	12 March 2021
Decision Date:	12 March 2021
Jurisdiction:	Common Law
Before:	Wilson J
Decision:	1 For the manslaughter of Rita Camilleri, on 20 July 2019, the offender is sentenced to a term of imprisonment for 21 years and 7 months commencing on 20 July 2019 and expiring on 19 February 2041. The non-parole period is one of 16 years and 2 months imprisonment, which will expire on 19 September 2035. 2 I direct the Registrar of the Supreme Court to send copies of all psychiatric and other health reports that are annexed to the affidavit of Amanda Coultas-Roberts of 25 June 2020, together with a copy of Ex. S1, with the warrant of commitment, to the Governor of the prison in which the offender is detained. 3 The offender is warned that, upon release, the Crimes (High Risk Offender’s) Act 2006 (NSW) may apply to her.
Catchwords:	CRIME – SENTENCE – sentence after trial – trial for murder – verdict returned to manslaughter on the basis of substantial impairment – multiple disorders including autism and an intellectual disability – crime of extreme violence – use of multiple weapons – innumerable injuries inflicted – decapitation of deceased – crime committed in deceased’s home in the presence of a young child – offer to plead to manslaughter before trial rejected by the Crown – question of extent of discount to acknowledge offered plea
Legislation Cited:	Crimes (High Risk Offender’s) Act 2006 (NSW) Crimes (Sentencing Procedure) Act 1999 (NSW) Mental Health (Forensic Provisions) Act 1990 (NSW)
Cases Cited:	Director of Public Prosecutions (Cth) v De La Rosa (2010) 205 A Crim R 1; [2010] NSWCCA 194 R v Keceski (unreported decision of the NSWCCA, 10 August 1993) R v Magro [2020] NSWCCA 25 R v Oinonen [1999] NSWCCA 310 Veen v R (No 2) (1988) 164 CLR 465; [1988] HCA 14
Category:	Sentence
Parties:	Regina (Crown) Jessica Camilleri (Accused)
Representation:	Counsel: A McCarthy (Crown) N Steel (Accused) Solicitors: Solicitor for Public Prosecutions (Crown) Legal Aid NSW (Accused)
File Number(s):	2019/00225633
Publication Restriction:	There can be no publication of any information that could identify Child A

JUDGMENT

1. HER HONOUR: In Veen v R (No 2) (1988) 164 CLR 465; [1988] HCA 14 the High Court referred (at 478) to the possibility of human imagination conjuring a crime that is worse than the case before the court. It is difficult in this instance to do so. The unlawful killing of Rita Camilleri on 20 July 2019 must be regarded as one of the most serious instances of manslaughter it is possible for any imagination to conjure. It was a crime of extraordinary viciousness and brutality, made all the worse by having been committed in Mrs Camilleri’s home, by her own daughter, in the presence of a very young child.
2. Jessica Camilleri, the offender, was found guilty of her mother’s manslaughter after a short trial commencing on 30 November 2020 when the offender was arraigned on a charge of murder, and ending on 10 December 2020, when the jury returned a verdict of not guilty to murder but guilty of manslaughter pursuant to s 23A of the Crimes Act 1900 (NSW). The basis for the jury’s verdict was an acceptance that, at the time of her mother’s killing, the offender was substantially impaired by an abnormality of the mind leading her to have a diminished capacity to control herself, and that her impairment was so substantial as to warrant her liability for murder being reduced to manslaughter.
3. Whilst that question was in issue at trial, the facts were not disputed in any material way. Those facts are now to be determined by the Court, consistent with the verdict of the jury.

The Circumstances of and Surrounding the Killing of Mrs Camilleri

4. In July 2019, then 25 year old Jessica Camilleri was living in the family home at St Clair with her mother. No-one else resided in the home, the offender’s parents having separated, and her older sister having married and moved away. Mrs Camilleri was the sole carer for the offender.
5. On 19 July 2019, Mrs Camilleri took the offender to St Marys Police Station to have police speak to the offender about a series of telephone calls she had made early that morning to a man who was unknown to her. As the offender frequently did, she had dialled a random telephone number and spoken to the person who answered the telephone. She had then called in excess of 30 times, commencing at a very early hour and waking the man, and ending with a call or calls in which she told the person she hoped he got cancer and died.
6. Mrs Camilleri wanted a police officer to speak to the offender about her conduct and caution her. Senior Constable Ayley Ross spoke to the offender, explaining to her that she could not telephone people in the way that she had that morning, and warning her about her future conduct.
7. Adding to the stress of that day, the following day, 20 July 2019, a number of incidents occurred which led to an increase in tension between the offender and Mrs Camilleri. Firstly, a young relative was at the house with Mrs Camilleri. The offender resented and was jealous of the child, whom I will call Child A, and was unhappy with his presence in her home that day. It seems she was resentful of the attention that Mrs Camilleri gave to Child A, and the time her mother spent with him.
8. When a neighbour, Ms Heard, requested immediate help in getting to a doctor’s surgery on experiencing some chest pain that morning, the offender’s level of resentment escalated. She blamed Child A for causing delay as Mrs Camilleri organised herself to assist her neighbour. The offender was observed by Ms Heard to be quite hysterical, and she referred to Child A repeatedly as a “little bastard”. The neighbour told the offender to calm down. In the car during the drive to the doctor’s surgery, the offender berated her mother for having Child A to stay, telling her “You have that little bastard too often”.
9. When waiting for Ms Heard at the surgery there was some incident in which a man in the street looked at the offender, something for which she blamed her mother. When Ms Heard emerged from the doctor’s surgery she saw that the offender was yelling and throwing her arms about; Child A was crying, and Mrs Camilleri was trying to calm the offender. The offender was angry about the incident with the man, swearing and screaming at her mother, whom she accused of “always embarrassing” her.
10. Ms Heard said that the offender was very demanding of her mother, and frequently verbally abusive to her.
11. By evening, after Mrs Camilleri, the offender, and Child A had returned to the family home, the offender’s condition was such that Mrs Camilleri called a home doctor service. The symptoms reported on asking for a doctor to attend the family home included stomach or gastrointestinal problems. When Dr Eliza Azam arrived at the house at about 9.25pm she could hear the offender on the telephone speaking to a fast food supplier. The front door was ajar, and Mrs Camilleri soon came to the door. She asked the offender to hang up the phone so that the doctor could examine her, but the offender ignored her mother, and continued with her conversation, apparently negotiating the delivery of food, and trying to persuade the attendant to say “I love you” to her.
12. Dr Azam waited by the front door for 10 minutes or so, during which time she thought the offender continued her telephone conversation, ignoring all efforts by her mother to have her stop. The doctor saw nothing about the offender that was consistent with stomach upset and, the offender having ignored the doctor’s requests to her to end her telephone conversation, she left.
13. The next person to attend the St Clair family home was a police officer, at about 11.40pm that night, responding to a number of calls to the Emergency Operator. By that time, Mrs Camilleri was dead, Child A had a laceration to his face and other injuries, and the offender was wandering about on the footpath covered in her mother’s blood.
14. What happened between Dr Azam’s departure and the arrival of police can only be pieced together from crime scene evidence, the evidence of Dr Jennifer Pokorny, Forensic Pathologist, and, with a degree of caution, the offender’s accounts to others of what took place.
15. It seems that, at some point after Dr Azam left, and after 10pm when the offender’s older sister spoke with her mother on the telephone, Mrs Camilleri became so concerned at the offender’s behaviour that she decided an ambulance should be called and the offender taken to hospital. The offender did not want to be taken to hospital. She feared any sort of institutionalisation and wanted to remain at home, going so far as to say on one earlier occasion to a family friend, Jade Arena, that she would rather kill someone than return to a psychiatric hospital.
16. When Mrs Camilleri tried to telephone for the ambulance, the offender sought to physically restrain her from doing so, and there was a struggle over Mrs Camilleri’s mobile phone, a struggle in which the offender gained possession of the handset.
17. Mrs Camilleri made her way to the offender’s bedroom, intending to use the offender’s mobile phone to make the call. The offender followed her and, again, sought to prevent her from doing so. Crime scene evidence establishes that there was a struggle in the bedroom. Again, the offender, who was much larger than her mother, prevailed. I am satisfied that the offender knocked her mother to the floor and then dragged her by her hair into the kitchen, where she took up one and then more kitchen knives. Restraining her mother, very likely with the weight of her body, she directed an indeterminate but very high number of knife blows at her mother’s head and neck, ultimately decapitating Mrs Camilleri at the C2 vertebra, at the top of the neck.
18. The neck wound was described by Dr Pokorny as “ragged [and] somewhat pulped [...] with innumerable overlapping stab wounds in the upper neck [being] at least 100 stab wounds and incised wounds present over the entire surface of the head”. This included injuries to the whole of the surface of the face and head. There was a stab wound into the right eye that entered the lining of the brain, and the tip of Mrs Camilleri’s nose had been cut off, probably with an upwards stabbing blow that ultimately pierced the bony plate upon which the brain sits. The tongue had been cut off with multiple overlapping stab wounds, the wounds having a generally upwards trajectory. Dr Pokorny thought that the removal of the tongue was, either intentionally or otherwise, associated with the complex decapitating wounds to the neck rather than separate to them. There were some superficial wounds to the abdomen.
19. It is clear that Mrs Camilleri tried to defend herself against the attack by her daughter. Dr Pokorny noted 33 stab and incised wounds to the right hand and at least 62 such injuries to the left hand, many of which overlapped. The distribution of the wounds marked them out as defence injuries. There were some bruises and wounds to the left arm and some abrasions to the right arm that were suggestive of the use of a serrated knife.
20. An air embolus within a blood vessel in the neck showed that Mrs Camilleri had been in an upright or semi-upright position and breathing at some point during the attack at which time she suffered a wound to a significant vein in the neck. She probably died soon after that wound was inflicted.
21. Both of Mrs Camilleri’s eyeballs had been removed from the eye sockets and there were associated stab wounds extending into the brain.
22. Four knives broke during the attack upon Mrs Camilleri, with seven knives in total used by the offender.
23. At some point during the knife attack, possibly when Mrs Camilleri was still alive, Child A awoke and, seeing what was happening to Mrs Camilleri, and despite his very young age of four years, rushed to help his relative. I am satisfied that Child A with extraordinary bravery in one so young and so small, jumped onto the offender and tried to stop her from further hurting Mrs Camilleri. He also took up the cardboard lid of a toy box and struck out at the offender in an attempt to defend his relative.
24. The offender pushed Child A off, wounding him with the knife she was wielding in the process. He sustained a deep wound running down his cheek, parallel with an ear, and lacerations to his head and hands. The cheek wound required surgery, and the head wound had to be sutured. Piles of vomitus later located in the lounge room suggest that Child A withdrew there, clearly physically sickened by the trauma of what he had seen.
25. After Mrs Camilleri had been decapitated, the offender picked up her mother’s head and went out into the street. The head was later found by police officers where the offender had dropped it, on the footpath of St Clair Avenue, in the vicinity of Rochford Street. Blood stain evidence suggested that the offender had dropped her mother’s head in the street, picked it up again, gone further along the street, and again dropped it, where it rested until recovered by police.
26. The offender, wearing a nightdress and with bare feet, and completely covered in her mother’s blood, went to the home of a neighbour and asked for emergency services to be called. She herself telephoned the Triple 0 operator using a mobile telephone and asked for the police and an ambulance to be sent. Although she then hung up, the operator called back, and that call was still connected when police officers arrived.
27. Senior Constable Anthony D’Agostino spoke with the accused, and directed her to remain where she was. As they waited for other police to attend and secure the scene, the accused gave the officer an account of what had happened, which was recorded by a police body-worn camera, the recording being Trial Ex. C. The offender claimed that her mother had been the aggressor, and had tried to kill her with a knife. She asserted that what she had done had been done to defend herself against her mother’s attack upon her. She repeatedly complained that her mother had broken her finger. It is likely that what the offender described is what she herself had done. She said, in part:

“Mum [...] grabbed me by the hair dragged me from my room all the way to the kitchen, she got a knife out of the cupboard and tried to stab me with it coz I think she’s had enough. She was pulling me by the hair she’s ripped out all my hair, there’s hair everywhere, [...] and she stabbed me and she broke my finger.”

28. It is notable that the offender had no material injuries.
29. I am completely satisfied that Mrs Camilleri was not in any sense or at any time the aggressor, and nor had she been in the past. There was evidence given at trial, which I accept, that Mrs Camilleri coped with the offender by placating her, giving in to her demands, and conducting herself in a generally submissive way to her daughter. I am satisfied that the attack upon Mrs Camilleri was entirely unprovoked, and represented nothing more than an expression of the offender’s rage at her mother for her attempt to call an ambulance.
30. Much later, when speaking with Professor David Greenberg, a forensic psychiatrist, the offender acknowledged that she did not act in self-defence. Rather, she described what she did as “hacking like a butcher”, and continuing to stab Mrs Camilleri and twist her head until she had managed to remove the head from her mother’s body.

The Gravity of the Crime

31. As I observed at the outset, this is as serious an example of manslaughter as it is possible for such a crime to be.
32. What the offender did was to carry out an extremely violent, sustained knife attack upon her mother, which must have extended over a period of many, many minutes, and which involved the use of seven separate knives, four of which broke due to the force with which they were used. She did so intending to kill Mrs Camilleri, and intending at some point during the attack to do that by removing Mrs Camilleri’s head.
33. The focus of the onslaught was upon her mother’s head and face, with over 100 individual blows landed, many on Mrs Camilleri’s right cheek. Mrs Camilleri was conscious and trying to defend herself for long enough to have sustained over 90 defensive injuries, and a knife wound to a vein in her neck. She must have been in extreme pain, and both shocked and terrified at what was being done to her by her own beloved child.
34. This savage attack occurred in Mrs Camilleri’s home, where she should have been safe, and able to peacefully go about her life. It occurred in the presence of a four year old child, whose relationship with Mrs Camilleri would have made all the greater the horror of what he witnessed.
35. When the child tried to defend his relative, the offender did not stop the attack, but pushed Child A away, carelessly wounding his face, and causing other injuries to his head and hands. It is reasonable to infer that there will also be deep if unseen psychological wounds.
36. Although the offender gave an account of things she did to her mother’s body after death, her claims are largely in conflict with the evidence of Dr Pokorny, which is plainly to be preferred. I am satisfied to the criminal standard, however, that the offender removed Mrs Camilleri’s already injured eyes from the eye sockets, and squeezed and prodded at least one eyeball. The removal of Mrs Camilleri’s eyes does not appear to have been an act of deep and uncontrolled rage; rather, at this stage, the offender was indulging a sort of macabre curiosity sparked by her obsessive viewing of horror movies. This adds somewhat to the overall gravity of the crime.
37. The damage done by a crime such as this, inflicted by one family member upon another, with such destructive and mutilating brutality, is very great indeed. Mrs Camilleri’s life was cut short in the most horrible manner imaginable. The lives of others have been forever changed, as the Court heard when victim impact statements were given by those whose sufferings have been greatest.
38. Since the offender fully understood the nature and wrongness of her actions, her moral culpability remains relatively high. Her disabilities and the direct role that those disabilities played in the offending is what prevents the offender’s moral culpability from being assessed as at the very highest level.
39. I accept that the crime was entirely spontaneous but in the context of a sustained attack, that feature is of diminishing relevance. Although manslaughter can be constituted in many circumstances, this is amongst the gravest examples of it.

The Offender’s Personal Circumstances

40. The offender was born on 12 October 1993. She is the youngest of two daughters to her parents.
41. It became apparent to the offender’s mother and others when the offender was quite young that there was something wrong in her development and she has seen numerous doctors, psychiatrists, and other health professionals over the years. Diagnoses have varied, with autism, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (“OCD”), depression, and schizophrenia among the many conditions she has been thought, from time to time, to suffer with.
42. As a child the offender attended school, including placement in a learning support unit. The offender’s sister gave evidence at trial of these early years, when the offender had been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (“ADHD”) in primary school, and was in a special learning class. The offender found it difficult to make friends or get along with other children, and she got into fights. She was bullied at school, and frequently responded with outbursts of violence, principally directed to girls and often involving hair pulling. The offender was suspended in year 9 for biting the arm of a boy and attacking his girlfriend, and expelled in year 10 after assaulting a female student.
43. After being expelled from school in 2010, the offender participated in a vocational programme, Novo Transition to Work, but she was involved in violent altercations with others there, and police were called. She had to leave the programme.
44. The offender was also difficult at home and, after a fight with her father, she lived with her grandmother for a time. This arrangement ended after she assaulted her aunt. She returned to live with her mother.
45. Mrs Camilleri provided every support to the offender throughout her life, and did everything that she could to ensure that, whilst the offender was occasionally hospitalised, she was never institutionalised or placed in any other publically provided facility for persons with learning or developmental disorders or psychiatric illnesses. The pressure upon Mrs Camilleri in the care of her daughter was intense, and her devotion to the offender caused difficulties in the family. Her marriage broke up and, after her husband left the family home, only Mrs Camilleri and the offender lived there.
46. The offender’s daily activities included watching television and movies. She frequently watched horror movies, and two particular films, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Jeepers Creepers, were films that she watched on DVD over and over again. The offender’s sister sometimes removed the DVDs, because she regarded them as unsuitable viewing, but the offender typically became enraged at the loss of the DVDs, and Mrs Camilleri would restore them to the offender to keep the peace.
47. The offender developed an obsession with contacting strangers by telephone, sometimes on hundreds of occasions if they were men and she liked their voices. This is a subject to which I will return.
48. In the months before Mrs Camilleri was killed the offender was prescribed a number of anti-psychotic medications, anti-depressants, and mood stabilisers, but Mrs Camilleri frequently expressed concerns as to the lack of efficacy of these many medications.
49. In June 2018, the offender’s behaviour was increasingly challenging and a psychiatrist, Dr Chaudhary, diagnosed her with an “intellectual disability, poor anger control, impulsive behaviour, OCD and high anxiety levels”. Hypnotherapy four times weekly commenced at about this time. Reviewing the medical notes Professor Greenberg observed that it was apparent that the offender:

“... had high anxiety levels and lack of insight causing frustration to build up and her ability to tolerate stress decrease causing her to lash out without thinking about the consequences”.

50. In November 2018 the offender was admitted to hospital. She was prescribed an anti-depressant and also Valium. On discharge the offender insisted that she would not take any further medication, and she ceased taking the anti-depressant in December 2018. Although Dr Chaudhary thought that the offender was “doing very well” in January 2019, by April the offender refused to take prescribed medication at all. She began seeing a naturopath instead.
51. Only three or so months later the offender killed her mother.
52. With the death of Mrs Camilleri, the offender has lost not just her mother, but her carer, protector, and only real friend. She is now isolated from family and others who would formerly have supported and assisted her.

Psychiatric Evidence

53. As I have observed, the evidence at trial established that the offender has been seen and assessed by numerous health professionals over her life, with many different diagnoses of her conditions made.
54. Since the only issue at trial was whether the offender had available to her the partial defence of substantial abnormality of mind, she was further psychiatrically assessed for the purposes of the trial. The Crown called Professor Greenberg, who assessed the offender on a number of occasions; the offender called Dr Richard Furst, like Professor Greenberg a forensic psychiatrist, and who has similarly assessed the offender over multiple interviews.
55. Both Professor Greenberg and Dr Furst are highly qualified and appropriately experienced, and I have no hesitation in accepting the evidence of each. There was no material distinction in the evidence the doctors respectively gave as to the offender’s mental state; such difference as there was seems to me to have been one of description or nomenclature rather than substance.
56. Both doctors were of the view that the offender has a number of disorders, including autism and a mild level of intellectual disability, and OCD or features of it. Professor Greenberg also diagnosed “intermittent explosive disorder”. Dr Furst accepted that the offender on occasion acted from an uncontrollable rage, but regarded that as a feature of her other disorders, rather than as a distinct condition.
57. Whether called intermittent explosive disorder (“IED”) or seen as a symptom of autism or OCD, I accept as the jury clearly did, that the offender is substantially impaired as a consequence of her multiple disorders, and she experiences episodes of violent rage which she is unable to control. It was her inability to control herself that led her to attack her mother, and which grounded the verdict for manslaughter; there is no question that the offender understood the nature of her acts when she was stabbing her mother, and also understood that it was very wrong, and criminal. That is clearly demonstrated by her attempts to falsely claim afterwards that she had acted in self-defence.
58. Professor Greenberg concluded that, as well as an Intellectual Disability Disorder, an Autism Spectrum Disorder, and an IED, the offender had traits of personality problems with narcissistic features, and features of OCD, depression and anxiety, and ADHD. He told the jury at trial that the offender:

“is prone to explosive outbursts where there is a failure to control impulsive aggression behaviour in response to subjectively experienced provocation which would not typically result in an aggressive outburst”.

59. In describing the offender’s obsession with horror movies and its relation to the crime, Professor Greenberg stated:

“Associated with these acts of aggression, anger, vengefulness, Ms Camilleri has had a fascination with horror movies where there was extreme violence including acts of decapitation and cannibalism. It could be hypothesised that she likely identified with these macabre acts as a way of dealing with her own feelings of low self-esteem, humiliation, disempowerment, low self-concept and poor sense of tolerance frustration”.

60. Professor Greenberg found that the offender experienced rage attacks which are explosive in nature and her “capacity to control herself was substantially impaired by her abnormality of mind arising from her underlying conditions” when she killed Mrs Camilleri. He regarded it as likely that, on the evening of 20 July 2019 a “triggered event” that involved a coalescence of stressors occurred. It was Professor Greenberg’s opinion that the offender’s loss of control was complete, and endured for the whole of the attack upon her mother.
61. Dr Furst was also of the view that the offender had multiple psychiatric disorders, namely, Low Functioning Autism, a mild intellectual disability, and OCD. His evidence at trial was substantially consistent with that of Professor Greenberg.

The Question of a Discount on Sentence

62. The offender argues that, because she made an offer to the Crown prior to trial of a plea of guilty to the charge of manslaughter, of which she was found guilty by the jury, she should be given a discount of 25% upon the sentence that would otherwise be imposed upon her, consistent with authorities such as R v Oinonen [1999] NSWCCA 310 and R v Magro [2020] NSWCCA 25.
63. She also argues that an additional discount should be available to her because her trial was efficiently conducted, with only a few witnesses required to be called, and no issue taken with her responsibility for Mrs Camilleri’s death.
64. The Crown points to Division 1A of Part 3 of the Crimes (Sentencing Procedure) Act 1999 (NSW) (“the Crimes (SP) Act”) and submits that, applying the provisions, the offender is entitled to a discount of 10% on the sentence that would otherwise be imposed upon her, with the burden of establishing on balance that a discount should apply falling on the offender.
65. The range of discounts available to offenders who plead guilty to an offence is governed by Division 1A of Part 3 of the Crimes (SP) Act. Section 25A(2) makes the application of the discounts given in the Division mandatory. The date of committal for trial is an important one for the application of the Division. The offender was committed for trial on 27 March 2020.
66. Section 25E(3)(b) provides for a discount on sentence of 10% where a plea to an offence different to that charged was offered by an offender to the Crown after committal, but 14 days or more before trial, and the offender was subsequently found guilty of the offered offence. That is the offender’s situation, in that an offer was made by her to the Crown on 12 May 2020 to plead guilty to the offence of manslaughter in full discharge of the indictment for murder. The Crown rejected that offer and a subsequent similar offer, and the matter proceeded to trial. The jury’s verdict was to manslaughter.
67. The Division makes allowance for a person who was unfit to be tried but was subsequently found fit. Section 25D(5)(a) provides for a discount on sentence of 25% where the person was committed for trial, found fit to be tried and, as soon as reasonably practicable thereafter entered a plea of guilty. This provision does not, however, apply to the offender because she was not found fit to be tried (the issue falling away upon further investigation by medical professionals) and she did not enter a plea, but rather offered a plea to a different charge.
68. As Counsel for the offender submits, the provision appears to be somewhat anomalous in that regard. Since the offender offered to plead guilty to manslaughter as soon as reasonably possible after she received expert advice as to her fitness, the plea was rejected, but the jury subsequently returned a verdict of guilty to that charge, arguably, the legislation should – but does not - provide for a discount on sentence of 25%.
69. In this instance, I am not persuaded that, despite the provision in s 25E(3)(b) the offender should receive a discount on sentence which is greater than that provided by statute. A 10% discount represents a level of discount which is adequate to acknowledge the offender’s willingness to plead guilty to manslaughter once the issue of fitness was resolved, and the utilitarian value of the offered plea, but does not offend against the principle embodied by s 25F(2), which provides for a reduced or no discount where it is determined that the level of culpability in the commission of the offence is so extreme that the community interest in retribution, punishment, community protection and deterrence could not be met by a sentence incorporating the discount. It is not strictly necessary to make a finding of that nature here, since the offender will receive the discount mandated by the Division. My conclusion is that no greater discount should be awarded.
70. For the same reason, I do not propose to allow an additional quantified discount on sentence to acknowledge the facilitation of the administration of justice inherent in the efficient conduct of the trial. A reduction in sentence of 10% overall is sufficient.

Remorse

71. A plea of guilty or an offer to enter a plea of guilty can sometimes operate as evidence of remorse. I do not regard it as such in the present instance. In reality, once the offender was advised that she did not have a complete defence available to her and that she was fit for trial, her best and only sensible option was a plea of guilty to manslaughter. The Crown could readily establish her liability for the death of Mrs Camilleri, and the offered plea did not in that sense make up for any gaps in the Crown case.
72. In any event, considerations of remorse and what remorse may or may not say about rehabilitation are largely irrelevant in the present instance, due to the offender’s autism.
73. Immediately after killing her mother the offender’s concern was for herself. She invented an account of having been attacked by her mother in an attempt to avoid responsibility for what she had done. In interviews with police officers she repeatedly asked about her own future, and what would happen to her, perhaps reflecting the narcissistic traits that Professor Greenberg identified.
74. Professor Greenberg did not consider that the offender had any real capacity for remorse. He noted that she:

“raised details of her mother’s killing in a concrete matter of fact manner [and] tone without any emotion or remorse. [...S]he stated that she wanted to suffer because she had killed her mother. However, there is no evidence of any emotional component to that statement”.

75. Dr Furst considered that at the time of the offence, the offender had “no remorse”. However, he thought that she may now have some regret for her conduct, after being tried over her mother’s death. Although she told Dr Furst that she blamed Dr Azam for what happened to her mother, she also said that the trial was “particularly difficult in relation to details of what she did to her mother in July 2019.” She said the body worn camera footage, Ex. C, was “awful and disturbing”.
76. In the report of 10 February 2021, Ex. S1, that Dr Furst prepared for the sentence proceedings he noted that, when he assessed the offender on 21 January 2021, she was:

“more emotional about the loss of her mother than she had been when assessed last year and appeared remorseful in this respect”.

77. Later, in his report, Dr Furst said the offender:

“stated that at the time of the offence on 20 July 2019 she was ‘in a rage’ and had ‘no remorse’. However, she said she now feels remorseful. She said she had written a letter to her family members to explain her actions and the impact of losing her mother. Ms Camilleri added, “It didn’t hit me at first. Then it hit me like a tonne of bricks. Like a mountain. Every night, I cry and cry. I know it’s all my fault...it’s all my fault my mother is not here anymore”.

78. When her family gave their victim impact statements to the Court during the sentence proceedings, the offender seemed uninterested rather than saddened at what were, objectively, deeply moving accounts of loss and enduring grief.
79. Generally, I regard the issue of remorse as neutral. In the absence of any evidence from the offender, it is not possible for the Court to make a direct assessment of her feelings about her crime. Her expressions of regret to Dr Furst may evidence remorse, but equally, they may evidence no more than the offender’s appreciation of just how much she lost when she killed her mother. In any event, having regard to her Autism Spectrum Disorder and her limited emotional range, it is not reasonable to judge her capacity for remorse by ordinary standards. I accept that, to the extent she can, the offender regrets what she did.

Mental Illness and Sentence

80. The offender submits that her psychiatric disorders and disabilities should operate to substantially reduce the sentence that would otherwise be imposed upon her for manslaughter, both because her level of impairment is greater than that required to make out a defence of substantial impairment, relying on the judgment of Mahoney JA in R v Keceski (unreported decision of the NSWCCA, 10 August 1993), and in the ways discussed by McClellan CJ at CL in Director of Public Prosecutions (Cth) v De La Rosa (2010) 205 A Crim R 1; [2010] NSWCCA 194, at [177].
81. The Crown concedes that the principles enunciated in De La Rosa apply, but noted that the last of those principles, considerations of the protection of the community, is of particular significance.
82. As to the extent of the offender’s impairment and its relationship to the partial defence, it must be borne in mind that the offender has already had her liability for what would otherwise have been a conviction for murder, carrying a maximum sentence of life imprisonment and attracting a standard non-parole period of 20 years, greatly reduced to that of liability for manslaughter, carrying a maximum sentence of 25 years imprisonment and not attracting any standard non-parole period, solely because of her substantial impairment.
83. In my opinion, only a very substantial level of impairment could have been accepted as lessening the offender’s liability for a crime of such extreme and extended savagery as this was. I am not persuaded that anything in R v Keceski requires any amelioration of sentence beyond that which flows from the proper application of the De La Rosa principles.
84. Those principles are enumerated as follows, omitting the citations given in the original:

“Where an offender is suffering from a mental illness, intellectual handicap or other mental problems the courts have developed principles to be applied when sentencing:

1. Where the state of a person's mental health contributes to the commission of the offence in a material way, the offender's moral culpability may be reduced. Consequently the need to denounce the crime may be reduced with a reduction in the sentence.
2. It may also have the consequence that an offender is an inappropriate vehicle for general deterrence resulting in a reduction in the sentence which would otherwise have been imposed.
3. It may mean that a custodial sentence may weigh more heavily on the person. Because the sentence will be more onerous for that person the length of the prison term or the conditions under which it is served may be reduced.

4. It may reduce or eliminate the significance of specific deterrence.
5. Conversely, it may be that because of a person's mental illness, they present more of a danger to the community. In those circumstances, considerations of specific deterrence may result in an increased sentence”.

85. It is clear that this is an offence to which the offender’s impairments materially contributed, and there can, as a consequence, be some amelioration of moral culpability. However, as I earlier noted, the reduction in the offender’s moral culpability cannot be complete since she well understood the nature of her act, and also well understood how very wrong it was.
86. I accept also that she is an inappropriate vehicle for general deterrence, and that she will find prison a very difficult environment, that is, even more so than would a prisoner without her disabilities. There is already some evidence of that from Dr Furst in his February report, Ex. S1, to the effect that the offender has been bullied by others in prison.
87. A sentence importing some element of specific deterrence is of some application, since the offender can learn and no doubt understands that her past and future incarceration is a direct consequence of her conduct. A much increased sentence of imprisonment is unlikely, however, to have any impact on her future capacity to control herself.
88. Conclusions as to general deterrence, the experience of custody and so on, all point to amelioration of sentence. The remaining feature, however, points in the opposite direction. There is a real issue here of the offender’s future dangerousness, and a requirement to consider what is needed for the protection of the community.

The Question of Future Dangerousness

89. The offender has a very limited criminal history, with one conviction for assault from October 2019, post-dating Mrs Camilleri’s death. Although she has the benefit of that absence of a criminal record at the material time, her limited history appears to be the product of diversions from the criminal justice system, rather than a reflection of the complete lack of any history of violence.
90. At trial, the offender’s sister told the Court that the offender was physically violent to others, and that police were involved on occasion. She was aware of an incident in which the offender had attacked their aunt, grabbing her by her hair and pulling her down a set of concrete steps. Another incident involved an assault on the witnesses’ former mother-in-law, where the offender approached the lady from behind and pulled her hair violently. She had to be physically pulled away by Mrs Camilleri, who prevented the assault from going further.
91. The offender told Professor Greenberg, and medical notes record, that she had assaulted a number of other people in the community. Professor Greenberg drew the following history of assault alleged against the offender from medical and police notes:

(1) In September 2012 she assaulted a lady with a baby by grabbing hold of the woman’s hair and pulling it;

(2) In December 2012, a woman at a supermarket checkout counter was assaulted when the offender, without provocation, walked up to her and pulled her hair;

(3) As mentioned earlier, in June 2013, the offender had an argument with a student in her Nova Employment class. When another student sought to calm the situation the offender lunged at her, grabbed her hair and pulled it;

(4) In July 2013, the offender pulled the hair of a woman whilst in the waiting room of a doctor’s practice. The offender told police that the female had been staring at her and that she “just saw red”.

(5) In September 2013, the offender attended Westmead Hospital Emergency Department after suffering a panic attack. In the waiting room, the offender approached a woman, who she thought was staring at her, and grabbed the woman by the hair.

(6) In March 2016, the offender called out to a woman getting off a bus near her St Clair house, asking for help. When the woman approached, the offender grabbed the woman’s hair and dragged her to the ground.

92. Professor Greenberg noted the offender’s previous criminal charges (although not convictions), including four separate incidents of common assault from December 2013 to February 2018, which seem to have been dealt with pursuant to s 32 of the Mental Health (Forensic Provisions) Act 1990 (NSW).
93. Further, before Mrs Camilleri’s death the offender became obsessed with telephoning strangers, and frequently threatened those strangers, some with decapitation.
94. Of particular relevance is the offender’s campaign of harassment against Natalie Naylor who received over 20 phone calls and 22 messages from the offender in October 2015. Ms Naylor reported that the offender’s messages included a number of threats to kill her and her husband, including:

“I will come over to your door with a knife in my hand and slit your throat myself...
I will come over to your house with a knife in my hand and I will shred off your head to your neck and I will shred off your head to your neck and you will have no head left...
I will fuckin’ ram that knife right through your neck and cut off your whole head”.

95. A second victim of this sort of behaviour was Matthew Layfield, who was the unwilling recipient of as many as 100 telephone calls per day in the 12 months before Anzac Day 2019. Having begun to telephone Mr Layfield, the offender managed to match a phone number with his business and began to call numbers associated with it, including Mr Layfield on his work number, and a number of his colleagues and family members.
96. Although the offender typically commenced the calls with an apology for their frequency, she quickly became aggressive and said things to those she called such as “I will stab you and cut your head off with a knife”.
97. Mr Layfield, his business colleagues, and his family endured about 12 months of these seriously harassing phone calls, including a call placed to Mr Layfield’s wife in which the offender told her that she would cut off her head and flush it down the toilet. These hundreds and hundreds of calls were made despite Mrs Camilleri’s constant attempts to stop the offender from placing them.
98. In light of what the offender did to her mother, it is deeply troubling that the threats made to others were often threats of decapitation.
99. Since entering custody, and despite the close supervision provided in a custodial environment, the offender has been both criminally charged and institutionally penalised for offending behaviour.
100. On 9 September 2019, at Silverwater Women’s Correctional Centre the offender threw a cup of tea over another prisoner following a disagreement about the trading of food items. The offence appears to have been planned and deliberate, in that, following the unresolved discussion about food, the offender left the other inmate’s cell, went to a kitchen area, took up a foam cup of tea, returned to the other inmate, and threw the tea at her. When interviewed by police who attended the prison in response to the complaint, the offender said she had thrown the tea because she was upset. The offender was convicted of this offence, with no separate penalty imposed by the Local Court.
101. On 1 October 2019, the offender was penalised by Corrective Services for an offence of fighting, from 10 September 2019. She assaulted another inmate on 14 October 2019 and was given 5 days in the cells. On 3 November 2019 she disobeyed a direction, and on 31 July 2020 she damaged property, being required to pay over $200 in compensation. Another assault offence of 21 November 2020 saw the offender sentenced to 7 days in the cells.
102. It is of concern that, in a highly regulated environment such as a gaol, the offender has assaulted others.
103. In Ex. S1 Dr Furst opined that the offender’s risk of re-offending fell within the moderate to high range. He said:

“Overall, Ms Camilleri has a moderate to high loading of both static and dynamic risk factors with a relative dearth of individual protective factors. Therefore, her risk of reoffending likely falls in the moderate to high range”.

104. He thought, however, that the various risk factors could be managed:

“However, I also note Ms Camilleri is reasonably personable on a clinical level, is not inherently antisocial, does not use drugs, and her identified risk factors can most likely be managed over the longer-term through provision of multi-agency services under a comprehensive mental health and behaviour support plan”.

105. Although the offender will likely be engaged with community mental health or disability services when released from custody, Dr Furst noted that:

“treatment measures dating back to her childhood have thus far been largely ineffective in relation to ‘treating’ her impairment and the disability associated with her mental disorders, leaving Ms Camilleri socially isolated and dependent upon her mother, Rita Camilleri, for many years, with Rita now tragically deceased”.

106. The inefficacy of treatment to date is a feature that points to the offender as an ongoing risk to others, as does her own resistance to compliance with treatment regimes. Her crime being directly linked to her psychiatric and developmental disorders, and those disorders being treatment resistant, the offender’s prospects for rehabilitation are very limited in my assessment.
107. Upon her eventual release from prison the offender will not have the support and supervision of her mother, and she will not have her mother to ensure that she attends medical appointments, and takes prescribed medication. She will not have a calm and safe family home to go to upon release. What stresses she may face can only be imagined. The possibility of a violent outburst against someone in the community looms large. The protection of the community must be a significant consideration.

Special Circumstances

108. There is evidence upon which the Court could make a finding of special circumstances pursuant to s 44 of the Crimes (SP) Act, and the offender urged the Court to do so. That is a discretionary decision for the Court and, in the present circumstances, I do not propose to exercise the discretion in the offender’s favour. A finding of that nature would reduce the non-parole period below that which the seriousness of this crime requires. In any event, as a consequence of the ordinary operation of the sentencing ratio, the offender will have a lengthy period in which she can, if released to parole, be supervised, and assisted to reintegrate into the community, insofar as that is possible. More is not necessary.

Conclusion

109. There is a real tension in meeting the multiple purposes of sentencing set out in s 3A of the Crimes (SP) Act when sentencing a significantly disabled offender. The offender’s disabilities are such as to attract sympathy; her conduct is such as to attract the strongest condemnation, and punishment.
110. Returning to Veen (No 2), with which I commenced these remarks, the High Court said, of a time when manslaughter carried a maximum penalty of life imprisonment:

“There is an anomaly, however, in the way in which the mental abnormality which would make an offender a danger if he were at large is regarded when it reduces the crime of murder to manslaughter pursuant to s. 23A. Prima facie, a mental abnormality which exonerates an offender from liability to conviction for a more serious offence is regarded as a mitigating circumstance affecting the appropriate level of punishment. Historically, that was the effect of the provision on which s. 23A was modelled, that is, s. 2 of the Homicide Act 1957 (UK). That section affected the operation of the existing law in two respects: first, by providing a defence to the crime of capital murder, it protected a qualified offender from the death penalty and, secondly, it provided a modified defence to many mentally abnormal offenders (especially the ”uncontrollable impulse” offenders) who were not entitled to the more restricted defence of insanity according to the M'Naghten Rules ... But that provision has never been regarded as requiring in all instances the imposition of a penalty less than life imprisonment.”

111. This is an instance when the offender’s disabilities cannot require a sentence substantially less than the maximum sentence available. In light of the extreme gravity of this crime, the very great harm done, and the need to protect the community from the offender, a stern sentence is called for.
112. Before sentence is imposed I wish to extend my sympathy and the sympathy of the Court to the offender’s sister and her family. I recognise that no sentence imposed upon the offender can make good their loss, or diminish the grief they feel. The family also has my thanks to them for the dignity with which they have conducted themselves during proceedings that can only have been deeply harrowing for them.

Sentence

113. For the manslaughter of Rita Camilleri, on 20 July 2019, the offender is sentenced to a term of imprisonment for 21 years and 7 months commencing on 20 July 2019 and expiring on 19 February 2041. The non-parole period is one of 16 years and 2 months imprisonment, which will expire on 19 September 2035.
114. I direct the Registrar of the Supreme Court to send copies of all psychiatric and other health reports that are annexed to the affidavit of Amanda Coultas-Roberts of 25 June 2020, together with a copy of Ex. S1, with the warrant of commitment, to the Governor of the prison in which the offender is detained.
115. The offender is warned that, upon release, the Crimes (High Risk Offender’s) Act 2006 (NSW) may apply to her.

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