R v Stylianou [2005] VSC 13 (8 February 2005)

Last Updated: 22 February 2005

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF VICTORIA

Not Restricted

AT MELBOURNE

CRIMINAL DIVISION

No.1449 of 2004

THE QUEEN
v
CHRISTOPHER STYLIANOU

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JUDGE:	BONGIORNO J
WHERE HELD:	Mildura
DATE OF HEARING:	22-26, 29, 30 November, 1-3, 7-9 December 2004 and 31 January 2005
DATE OF SENTENCE:	8 February 2005
CASE MAY BE CITED AS:	The Queen v Stylianou
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION:	[2005] VSC 13

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CRIMINAL LAW - Sentence - Murder - Drug involvement - Prior convictions for dishonesty and violence - Murder of domestic partner - 19/15.

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APPEARANCES:	Counsel	Solicitors
For the Crown	Mr P McDermott	Director of Public Prosecutions
For the Accused	Mr J Desmond	Victoria Legal Aid

HIS HONOUR:

1. Christopher Stylianou, on 9 December 2004 you were convicted by a jury in this Court of having murdered Narelle Carr on 11 January of that year. It is now my duty to sentence you according to law.
2. At the time of the event for which you are about to be sentenced you were 36 years of age. Narelle Carr was somewhat younger and the mother of a young child, Letitia, of whom you were not the father. You lived in a de-facto relationship with Narelle Carr and had done so since your release from gaol some months before her death, having been previously in such a relationship with her before going to prison.
3. During the months immediately preceding Narelle Carr's death it seems that neither you nor she worked in any gainful employment although you were both caught up in a terrible spiral of illicit drug taking which must have been expensive to maintain. The source of your and Carr's income to maintain your drug habits is nowhere revealed in the evidence before the Court and, in any event, is irrelevant to the considerations I must bring to bear on the sentence I am about to impose. However some indication of the extent of your drug taking, at least, can be gained from the psychiatric report of Dr Danny Sullivan of 27 January 2005 which has been tendered to the Court by consent. You told Dr Sullivan that you first used marijuana at the age of 9 and that you began smoking it regularly at about the age of 16. He said that you told him marijuana use became a problem when you were about 21 and that you were smoking about one ounce daily. You told Dr Sullivan that you had not been a heroin user but in the 11 months preceding Narelle Carr's death you had used an oral preparation of morphine (provided to you by Carr who had obtained it illicitly) and amphetamines. You told Dr Sullivan that the "benefit" of the amphetamines was increased alertness and energy and what you described as "an edge". You said that in the past you had used cocaine about 50 times and that you had taken LSD and ecstasy. Dr Sullivan also noted that you told him that you had inhaled volatile solvents, including paint thinner and glue in your teenage years.
4. The extent of Narelle Carr's drug taking is, of course, not before the Court. However, it seems to be accepted by those who knew her, that she had serious problems of addiction to illicit drugs just as you did.
5. The relationship between you and Narelle Carr in the months immediately preceding her death was, on the evidence before the Court, dysfunctional and marked by frequent violence. Your mother gave evidence of having to protect Narelle Carr's child Letitia in circumstances where she was concerned for her welfare due to violent incidents between you and Carr. It seems also that the violence between you was not all directed by you towards Carr but that rather each of you took out your dysfunctional frustrations by displaying violence to the other.
6. The precise circumstances in which you killed Narelle Carr are not altogether clear. Your record of interview is a confused and, at times, contradictory account of what occurred on the early evening of 11 January 2004 at the flat you shared with her. What is clear however is that she died as a result of manual strangulation, probably after an argument with you over one or other of the matters over which you regularly argued and in respect of which there was regular violence or threats of violence between you. You concede in your record of interview that you held her by the throat on the floor of the flat in a strangling motion for some 30 or 40 seconds. It was this action which undoubtedly caused her death.
7. Immediately after you killed Narelle Carr you rode off on your bicycle to get yourself a drink at a local liquor outlet. In the course of doing so you had a number of conversations on your mobile phone with an ambulance telephone operator, which conversations were in evidence before the jury. You also had a conversation on an unrelated trivial matter with two police officers as you rode towards the liquor store. Although at the time you spoke to the police you were actually in mid conversation with the ambulance officer, you said nothing to them about the events which had recently occurred between you and Narelle Carr notwithstanding that, at that time, it appears that you were unsure as to whether she was dead or alive.
8. Later, after the police arrived at your flat and were seeking to gain entry as a result of their having been alerted by the ambulance service you again left the scene on your bike. Subsequently, you sought to dispose of what you thought might be incriminating articles at the home of an acquaintance and tried to implicate another person in an absurd attempt to inflict a stab wound on your body to enable you to try to set up a case of self defence - a case which, along with an allegation of provocation, the jury properly rejected.
9. In the circumstances your subsequent arrest and the charge of murder laid by the police were inevitable and predictable consequences of all that had gone before.
10. You come before the Court as a person who at the age of 37 has acquired almost 100 prior convictions from some 17 Court appearances. These convictions range from malicious damage and theft to motor car offences and include convictions for the use, possession, cultivation and trafficking drugs of dependence and, most significantly, for violence. They demonstrate an unwillingness or an incapacity to comply with those community standards which the law prescribes and they deprive you of any credit in the sentencing process for having been, in the past, a law abiding citizen. Apart from your convictions for violence, your record has no particular significance in this case and, those offences themselves are comparatively minor when one considers the offence for which you are about to be sentenced. Insofar as I have taken them into account it has been only to deprive you of any discount on your sentence due to a previous law abiding life.
11. In the course of a plea on your behalf your counsel urged me to find that the crime that you committed was not accompanied by any degree of planning but was, rather, spontaneous. He submitted that you were probably drug affected at the time and that you had no real opportunity to fully consider the nature and quality of your act.
12. I accept that this crime was not committed with any degree of planning and that, for sentencing purposes, the degree of pre-meditation involved should be limited to that necessary to form a murderous intent immediately before the act was committed. I also accept that you were probably drug affected at the time this act occurred, as it would appear that you had been so affected on a regular if not continuous basis immediately before 11 January 2004.
13. Your counsel urged me to accept that you did not flee the scene of the crime immediately afterwards and that this was, in some way, to your credit. Whilst this is factually correct the steps which you did take to try and conceal or diminish your part in the death of Narelle Carr were at least equally as significant as flight, in the usual sense, might have been.
14. Mr Desmond submitted that although you continue to deny that you killed Narelle Carr you have genuine remorse for her death. I find this submission impossible to accept. All of your actions since Narelle Carr died have indicated the opposite. Initially you attempted to avoid responsibility by trying to set up the defence to which I have referred. Your interview with the police was considerably less than frank and your conduct of the trial involved, at one point, a scenario which included your being kidnapped and ultimately rested upon attempting to raise a doubt as to your guilt by pointing the finger of blame at someone else. None of these actions bespeak remorse. They suggest the opposite. I do not accept that you have any genuine remorse with respect to this crime and you will be sentenced accordingly.
15. Mr Desmond said that your participation in the interview with the police was frank. I disagree. Although you admitted to choking Narelle Carr, if not killing her you also raised a number of other matters the veracity of which must be in considerable doubt. Your interview was, considerably less than frank.
16. Mr Desmond pointed to some provocative behaviour on the part of Narelle Carr which, although not amounting to provocation in the legal sense so as to reduce your crime to manslaughter, should be taken into account in sentencing. Mr Desmond referred to the fact that in your record of interview you claimed to believe that Narelle Carr had been unfaithful to you and that because she had on previous occasions threatened you with violence that that should be somehow taken into account. Not only is there no evidence to support any belief on your part as to your former de-facto's infidelity the violence which she may have exhibited towards you on prior occasions neither justified your murderous attack upon her nor, was it in any sense sufficiently proximate in time to constitute any other form of exculpatory circumstance.
17. Finally, Mr Desmond urged me to take into account the fact that you were a drug addict at the time this offence was committed and that that should reduce your moral culpability for this crime. I accept that you were a drug addict in January 2004 but have some difficulty in accepting that this reduces your moral culpability for this crime having regard to the fact that the jury found that at the time you killed Narelle Carr you had an intention to kill her or inflict really serious injury upon her. However, the fact that you are a drug addict of some long standing is a personal circumstance which, along with the other personal circumstances to which I am about to refer, will be taken into account in fixing the sentence which I am going to impose.
18. Your life history is derived, in this case, largely from the psychiatric report of Dr Danny Sullivan to which I have already referred and the evidence given by your mother before me on the plea made on your behalf. The history which you gave to Dr Sullivan is not, of course, on oath and is untested as to its veracity. However, it has not been contested by the Crown and accordingly, with some reservation, I am prepared to accept it as a broadly true statement of fact with respect to your early life, upbringing and subsequent history. I note particularly Dr Sullivan's statement that you told him that Narelle Carr had stabbed you in the buttock just before she died. This statement is clearly false and called into question the veracity of the rest of your account. Hence my expressed reservation in respect of what you told Dr Sullivan generally.
19. You told Dr Sullivan of your birth, a congenital urinary problem which you had and your schooling at Brunswick North Primary School and Moreland High School. You also told him that you had been sexually abused by neighbours and by two "business people". It seems that this allegation was never investigated nor any complaint made about this sexual abuse to anyone in authority although you told Dr Sullivan that you had previously told a psychologist of it.
20. Your schooling was uneventful apart from the fact that you were regarded as "a pest" and were frequently the subject of detentions because of behavioural problems. You did a plastering apprenticeship and worked in a number of trades in the building industry and, at one stage, were regarded as sufficiently talented at football to play in the Carlton Under 19 Team.
21. Your forensic history as related to Dr Sullivan commenced with a detention in a youth training centre in 1986. This followed an assault which your mother described in her evidence as being quite significant although I note that Dr Sullivan considered that there was no clinical or historical indication of any acquired brain injury arising from it. It cannot explain your extensive criminal record or, more importantly, this offence.
22. You told Dr Sullivan that in 2001 you had been admitted to the Mildura Hospital with drug induced psychosis and it would appear that on a number of occasions whilst you have been in prison you have been either reviewed psychiatrically or given psychiatric treatment including anti-psychotic medication. Indeed Dr Sullivan considered that at the time you were interviewed by the police you may have been exhibiting psychotic behaviour.
23. Dr Sullivan concluded that when he examined you on 31 December last year he considered you to qualify for a diagnosis of poly-substance dependence and that in the past you had probably suffered from a chronic drug induced psychosis perpetuated by ongoing substance use. He regards your progress in prison as having been relatively unremarkable and that your behaviour does not appear to have been so disturbed as to warrant recurrent psychiatric assessment. He considers that you should remain under outpatient psychiatric review for the foreseeable future and that you ought to receive education about drug and alcohol use to provide you with skills for being drug free upon your eventual release.
24. The effect of your crime on Narelle Carr's family has been, of course, significant. I have read the victim impact statements filed by her mother and her siblings. As one would expect, they attest to their grief and loss at her death. They will be taken into account as appropriate and insofar as they contain relevant and admissible factual information.
25. You took Narelle Carr's life in circumstances where, it might ordinarily have been expected, you should have been caring for her. She was your de-facto wife and was not only considerably junior to you in years but also much smaller than you in physical build. Your attack on her was cowardly. It occurred in circumstances which exhibited two of the greatest scourges that this society currently has to contend with, namely domestic violence and drug abuse. It deserves the severest condemnation.
26. In fixing an appropriate sentence in your case I am required to take into account the maximum sentence for this offence, namely life imprisonment. The sentence which I impose must punish you to an extent and in a manner which is just in all the circumstances. It must seek to deter you and other people from committing offences of the same kind. It must establish conditions to facilitate your rehabilitation if that is possible. It must denounce the conduct in which you engaged and it must protect the community from you so far as can be achieved consistent with justice.
27. The sentence I am about to impose will mean that you will spend most of your middle years in gaol. When you are eligible for parole you will not be the same person you are today; you will have been changed by the prison environment in which you will live. It is to be hoped that that of itself will bring you to a realisation that living your life in disregard of the welfare of fellow human beings is not only wrong and destructive of those with whom you come into contact but is also destructive of yourself and likely to lead to even further imprisonment.
28. The community and those with whom you may have an intimate relationship will certainly be protected from you for the period you are in gaol. It is to be hoped that it will not need to be protected from you after you are released and that you will have realised that there is no profit from your point of view in continuing to break the law as you have done in the past. Because of your extensive prior criminal history your sentence will permit a parole period, and hence supervision, for up to four years depending upon when you are released, thus, it is hoped, giving you some added assistance in achieving appropriate rehabilitation before you complete your sentence.
29. The sentence of the Court is that you be imprisoned for 19 years. It is further ordered that you serve a minimum of 15 years before being eligible for parole. I declare that the period of pre-sentence detention which you have served in respect of this sentence up to today is 394 days and I direct that this declaration and its effect be entered in the records of the Court.
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