DPP v Wills [2020] VSC 155 (25 March 2020)

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DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS

v

TRAVIS WILLS

JUDGE:	COGHLAN JA
WHERE HELD:	Melbourne
DATE OF HEARING:	5 March 2020
DATE OF SENTENCE:	25 March 2020
CASE MAY BE CITED AS:	DPP v Wills
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION:	[2020] VSC 155

CRIMINAL LAW – Sentence – Manslaughter – Accused stabbed deceased six times – Not premeditated – Young offender – Disadvantaged background – Continued substance abuse – Prospects of rehabilitation – Sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment with a non-parole period of 7 years.

APPEARANCES:	Counsel	Solicitors
For the Crown	Mr J Lewis with Ms A M French	Ms A Hogan, Solicitor for Public Prosecutions

For the Accused	Mr R Backwell	Sarah Pratt and Associates

1 On 20 November 2019 after a trial lasting 16 days you were convicted of the manslaughter of Raichele Galea.

2 You had killed Ms Galea on 30 June 2017. On 30 January 2018 you were arrested and charged with the murder of Ms Galea, you were presented on a charge of murder put either as intentional murder and in the alternative as unintentional murder in the course of a failed armed robbery (s 3A Crimes Act 1958).

3 You were acquitted of murder on either basis and convicted of the statutory alternative of manslaughter. It follows that the jury were not satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that you intended to kill Ms Galea or to cause her really serious injury; or that you killed her in the course of attempting to rob her while you were armed with a knife. I will return to the facts later in these reasons.

4 You have in many interviews with the police asserted your innocence and you continue to do so. There was material before the jury from which the jury could have concluded that you had admitted to others that you were responsible for the killing. The jury must have accepted that you had made those admissions. The alternative perpetrators were your mother and your aunt, both of whom gave evidence at the trial. I am satisfied that neither of them gave truthful accounts as to what had occurred on the night of 30 June 2017. You have implicated both of them by suggesting that they had separately confessed to you.

5 On the plea, I received a victim impact statement from Margaret Galea, Raichele’s mother. Her grief is profound and her life has been altered dramatically by the loss of her daughter who was 44 years of age at the time of her death. It can only be hoped that she will be able to see life more positively in the future. This sentence will bring to an end one phase of this ongoing saga. It will be of little consolation to the friends and family of Raichele Galea. I have taken the victim impact statement into account.

6 It should be borne in mind that I am required to sentence you in accordance with the law and the principles set down for sentencing accused persons. The maximum term of imprisonment for manslaughter is 20 years. You have been convicted of manslaughter and it follows that you are to be sentenced for the unintentional killing of Ms Galea.

7 As I have already indicated it is difficult to establish the facts of this case. The following matters appear to be clear enough. You, your mother Sandra, your aunt Debra and your partner Monique Stones spent a good part of the early evening and evening of Friday the 30^th June 2017 at the unit of Debra Wills at 2/148 Matthews Road, Corio. Prior to that you, your mother and your partner had been drinking at your mother’s house before going to Corio Village Shopping Centre and then onto your aunt’s house.

8 Whilst at your aunt’s house you, your mother and your aunt drank alcohol, smoked cannabis and took a Serapax tablet or tablets. You and Monique Stones left the unit but not long after returned with Julie Carter but she did not stay for long. Zac Wills, Debra’s 16 year old son, was at the unit but he remained in his room playing video games.

9 At about 8.30 pm you went to his room. Monique Stones remained in the living room. It seems reasonable to assume that by that time your mother and your aunt were intoxicated as a result of the alcohol and drugs they had consumed.

10 A conversation between your mother and your aunt about your aunt’s older son Christopher began. The gist of the conversation was that Christopher was not the father of his infant child. During that discussion your mother said to Monique Stones, who was pregnant with your child, that in the event that it turned out you were not the father of the child the baby would be treated as family anyway.

11 Not surprisingly Monique Stones was upset by the comments which I suspect were probably not meant to convey the plain implications which they did. Monique Stones went to find you in Zac’s room. She was upset and you wanted to know why and the two of you went outside the unit. When you returned a few minutes later you punched your mother and she fell and hit her face near the right eye on the kitchen table.

12 Raichele Galea had been at work at SKM Recycling Geelong on the 1.00 pm to 9.30 pm shift. After finishing work, Ms Galea went to the Corio Village Shopping Centre where she withdrew money from the ATM at 9.36 pm. She arrived at the unit at about 9.47 pm and parked her car next to your car immediately outside the unit. Her visit had not been arranged.

13 What happened after that is somewhat confused but it seems that when Ms Galea came into the unit Zac, who had come from his room, after he heard the confrontation in the lounge room was trying to calm you down and tried to get you outside the front door but you pushed past him and went back into the unit.

14 When you came back in you had some discussion or argument with Ms Galea and then attacked her. You pushed her to the couch continuing to say something to her. The attack lasted between 10 and 15 seconds. You stabbed her twice to the back, twice to her right hand and twice to her right leg. Although the wounds were clearly stab wounds, apart from the fatal stab wound, the other wounds were not life threatening. The fatal wound, however, was a wound through the right thigh which was 12 cm deep. Most importantly the wound was such that it transected the popliteal artery and vein. They are major blood vessels taking blood to the lower leg and returning it to the heart.

15 That wound was fatal. Raichele Galea also had blunt force injuries to her face, left ear, neck, chest, both arms, both hands and both knees. There is no adequate explanation on the evidence to explain those injuries.

16 Apart from you, there were three eyewitnesses to what had occurred. Your mother, your aunt and your cousin, Zac. The evidence of your mother and aunt was unhelpful in the extreme and I do not believe they made any real attempt to tell the truth. They each deny any part in the stabbing and each deny that the other played any part in the stabbing. It follows that it must be you who stabbed Ms Galea. Your cousin did, somewhat reluctantly, give evidence which implicated you and although I believe that his evidence was less than satisfactory, it is his version of the narrative which I set out. It is very difficult to say what happened but I conclude that you were very angry over the incident involving your mother and you then took offence at something Ms Galea said to you which lead to the attack.

17 After the attack, Zac took you out of the unit and you left the area in your car with Monique Stones.

18 Your aunt’s neighbours had heard something of what was going on, including hearing you yelling aggressively and one of your neighbours called ‘000’ twice at 10.02 pm and 10.20 pm.

19 When Zac returned inside he saw Raichele Galea on the floor and decided to leave and go to his girlfriend’s house. After going to his room to prepare to leave he came back into the loungeroom and saw that Ms Galea was bleeding and your aunt was trying to get your mother to call ‘000’.

20 Zac left at 10.14 pm and ‘000’ was called by your aunt at 10.16 pm. Police and ambulance arrived at about 10.23 pm. The ambulance officers were unable to revive Ms Galea and she was declared dead at 11.01 pm.

21 Shortly after leaving the unit you rang Julie Carter and gave her a description of events which included that you had punched your mother and thought that you had broken her jaw. You also said that you ‘had taken one of auntie’s customer [sic] hostage’.

22 Over the next few hours you tried to contact your father on a number of occasions. It emerged from the messages you left that you knew that somebody was dead. Zac had already told you that Raichele ‘was not alright’. Sometime later you and Monique Stones picked up Zac from his girlfriend’s house. He asked to be taken home to get some clothes.

23 Before you reached his house, you got into the boot of the car and remained there for more than an hour. In that time Monique Stones and Zac went to the house where Zac was told a woman was dead and both your mother and aunt had been arrested.

24 Next, after getting back in the car, you went to your mother’s house where your sister was living. You told your sister that someone was dead and that ‘Deb did it’. You said that you were outside the house when it happened.

25 The next matter of importance, is that you, with Monique Stones, Zac and Zac’s girlfriend, went to the Geelong Police Station at 1.27 pm on 1 July. You made a statement in which you advanced a version of events omitting any reference to the incident involving Ms Galea and gave details of a false alibi. After making the statement you were charged with murder and perjury. You were later interviewed and continued to deny that you had been present at the unit at the same time as Raichele Galea.

26 Surveillance devices were installed in various premises and vehicles. For convenience I will refer to the materials as it is summarised in the Summary of Prosecution Opening and in evidence at your trial:

27 It appears that you knew of the listening device in your car and the one at Debra’s unit and you were seeking to put out material to your own advantage. That material in [88] above is the genesis of the notion that the killing was a result of a robbery gone wrong. It did not seem to me that when the rest of the evidence was examined that there was much, if anything, to support the armed robbery. The jury were not satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that it was so and it would not be open for me to be so satisfied.

28 Although it is theoretically possible that the acquittal on charge 2 (unintentional murder) could be explained by the jury not being satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that although there was an attempted armed robbery, the fatal injuries were not caused in the course of it. I regard that possibility as so remote that it would not be open to me to find that armed robbery was the motive for the killing. It has not been urged on me by the prosecution that I should approach the case in that way.

29 You were arrested on 30 January 2018. You said that both your mother and aunt had on separate occasions admitted responsibility for the murder and you denied any involvement in the murder.

30 I proceed on the basis that the killing was not premeditated and that you had no actual motive for killing Ms Galea. You were very angry with your mother for what you assumed she had said to Monique Stones. Ms Galea arrived in circumstances where she could not have known what had happened earlier. I am satisfied that you took affront for something she said to you and that you took your anger out on her. That is, she had nothing which warranted you attacking her. In that way, in particular, the killing was entirely unnecessary and pointless. It was an expression of your unbridled anger.

31 Your Criminal Record has been filed with the Court. You were born on 1 January 1997 and are now 23 years of age. You had appearances in the Children’s Court when you were 14 for dishonesty offences and intentionally damaging property. In 2013, when you were 16, you were again charged with intentionally damaging property, intentionally destroying property, recklessly causing injury and breaching a Family Intervention Violence Order. You were released on probation.

32 A few months later you were charged with intentionally damaging property, making a threat to kill, threat to inflict serious injury and unlawful assault and possessing a controlled weapon and released on probation.

33 In 2014, when you were 17, you were charged with recklessly causing injury, intentionally damaging property, recklessly causing serious injury and criminal damage. You were released on a Youth Supervision Order for 12 months. Just a year later you were charged with theft of a motor vehicle and carrying a controlled weapon without excuse and fined $600 without conviction.

34 At the end of 2015, when you were 18, you were charged with making a threat to kill and assault with a weapon and fined $750. Almost all of the proceedings up until that date were in the Children’s Court.

35 In April 2016, when you were 19, you were charged with criminal damage, two counts of contravening a Family Violence Intervention Order, making a threat to kill, assaulting a police officer, possession of cannabis and possess a prohibited weapon. It appears that you were fined a total of $1,750 and released on an adjourned undertaking with a treatment condition. Finally, in December 2016, you were charged with possessing cannabis and possessing ammunition without a permit and fined $400.

36 Although your offending has not been particularly serious it has been persistent and there are a number of matters involving damage to properties, threats to kill and some actual violence. You appear to have a significant problem with anger management. You have been afforded many opportunities by the Court and have taken little advantage of them. These matters will not have much influence on your sentence but they do go to your prospects of rehabilitation.

37 The events which brings us here occurred on 30 June 2017. You were then 20 years of age. Your youth is an important consideration in sentencing you as is your overall background.

38 On the plea I received a very detailed psychological report from Consultant Psychologist Carla Ferrari dated 31 January 2020. I also received a number of certificates for courses which you have taken whilst in custody. About 30 certificates were tendered on your plea, as were a copy of the results of a number of drug tests, all of which were negative.

39 As part of your background, both your mother and aunt were directly involved in the events leading to the death of Ms Galea. Your father and two sisters were indirectly involved in the events after the death.

40 Ms Ferrari reported that you are the oldest of three children and your sisters Chantelle and Fiona gave evidence on your trial. Although you appear to have had contact with your father, you were essentially raised by your mother, who was a long-term heroin addict. You reported to Ms Ferrari that you were born with Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome — a methadone baby — and remained in hospital for three months after birth. You then grew up in a household which was part of the drug taking scene and you were exposed to examples of violent behaviour from drug dealers including the use of firearms. You say that your mother told you it was just part of the lifestyle which you had been born into.

41 You report that at the age of 14 you were the subject of a random sexual attack in a public toilet. Although you have attempted to repress the memories of that event, it was re-enlivened when you were attacked by a cell mate. You responded to that attack which led to you being placed in solitary confinement.

42 Your mother’s continued drug taking led her into a series if short term relationships and probably prostitution, and her expenditure on drugs was to the detriment of you and your sisters.

43 How much of a relationship you had with your father is not clear to me. Such relationship as there was, was marked by violence as your father was an alcoholic and although you tried to restore some relationship with him at about the time of these events, he lapsed into the use of methamphetamine.

44 You had to look after your sisters and your mother because of her drug addiction which substantially interfered with your childhood.

45 You lived with your grandmother for several years from the age of 13, but were forced a few years later to return to live either with your mother, or where your mother had been living, because you thought it was better that your sisters went to live with your grandmother.

46 Your grandmother died when you were 17. By that time, you had been using marijuana and selling it to your cousin Kane who was an amphetamine dealer who introduced you to that drug. Kane died in custody after being arrested for what I have assumed was drug dealing. The two deaths had a significant affect on you.

47 Your schooling was largely unsatisfactory and you appear to have had behavioural problems. You finished up at St Augustine’s which was then an alternative school for children with emotional behavioural issues. You left during Year 8. By that time, you lived with your father for a few years and you attended Create in Corio. You were supporting yourself by selling cannabis.

48 You did get a job at age 19 working in a metal factory but that lasted only 4 months, probably through no cause of yours. You then worked as a labourer for 5 months and were seeking to qualify as a scaffolder when you were arrested in January 2018.

49 You are a unit billet and have an interest in becoming a Peer Educator and you hope to complete your VCAL and other courses. You have an ambition to take on a university degree.

50 For present purposes, although you have had other relationships you were at the time of the death of Ms Galea in a relationship with Monique Stones who was then pregnant with your child. You regarded her as a positive influence on you.

51 You have a son, Maxson. His birth was complicated and you had little contact with him because of Department of Health and Human Services involvement. You decided to end the relationship with Monique Stones at the beginning of this year.

52 Your mental health has been problematical. At an earlier age you were diagnosed with Attention Deficient Hyperactivity Disorder (‘ADHD’). You were prescribed Ritalin which your mother took from you and used for her own purpose. At 16 you were diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (‘PTSD’) but you have never been treated for it.

53 You reported to Ms Ferrari a history of anxiety and depression. Although you were at Headspace for a time you have not received psychiatric or psychological treatment. You reported to Ms Ferrari that prior to 2017 and the development of your relationship with Monique Stones you had made numerous attempts at self-harm, including attempts of suicide by hanging.

54 You reported that your mother is bipolar and suffers depression, and your father suffers from depression. There is no material to support that report.

55 Whatever is your mental health position, your life has been marked by substance abuse from age 11 particularly prescribed medication given to you by your mother. By age 13 or 14 you were a daily user.

56 Up until Maxson was born you used cannabis, a habit which you started when you were 12. You used hallucinogenics between the ages of 16 and 17 and used methylamphetamine for 12 months before your grandmother’s death. You have abused alcohol since you were 13 and you were consuming very large amounts of alcohol at the time of these events.

57 You are or were on methadone in prison and you have been abstinent from alcohol and drugs of addiction. At the time of these events, the only family support you had was from your aunt Debra who you were assisting to sell cannabis. You and Monique Stones were either homeless or close to homeless.

59 Ms Ferrari went on to set out the general effects that your conditions could have on an individual’s behaviour. She said these conditions individually or collectively taken together with your youth would have had an adverse effect on your behaviour.

60 I was not asked to apply principles 1, 2, 3 and 4 of Verdins,^[2] but I was asked to have regard to principle 5.

61 Ms Ferrari reported that you were ‘likely to experience the custodial environment as more onerous than other offenders’.^[3] She based that conclusion largely on your youth and recent experience in custody ‘as well as his depression and anxiety symptoms which require treatment’.^[4] I do not regard those findings sufficient to attract the operation of that principle.

62 I am satisfied that your state of intoxication on alcohol or drugs or both was a major feature of your offending and that you well understood the effect that alcohol and drugs had on you. It is impossible, therefore, to assess what part your underlying conditions might have played in your offending. Your underlying conditions, and your alcohol and drug taking, are almost certainly a result of your upbringing and, as I will set out later, that has to be taken into account.

63 You have done at least reasonably well whilst in prison and have abstained from alcohol and drugs for the first time since you were 11 or 12 years of age. You were young at the time of the offending and I have taken that into account. You have taken steps to try and handle your personal relationship in a way which you regard as being least damaging to your son.

64 That approach appears to be more considered than your previous approach to such matters. You will have no real contact with your partner and your son in the foreseeable future and I have also taken that into account. I have taken into account the courses which you have completed and your wish to improve your education and take some responsibility whilst you are in prison.

65 You do not accept that you were the person who committed the offence. It follows that you lack remorse. I was urged to regard your prospects of rehabilitation as reasonable because Ms Ferrari assessed you as having a moderate risk of reoffending if you continue substance abuse, fail to address your mental health and alcohol abuse issues and if you do not improve your educational and employment situation. Ms Ferrari also suggested that you might benefit from treatment.

66 I was asked by your counsel, Mr Backwell, to have regard to improvements in your insight. Insight falls to be considered in two ways. First, insight into the cause of your behaviour. It does seem that you do now have some insight into the negative features of your relatively young life. Second, insight into your offending. Since you do not accept you committed the offence, it is trite to say that you have no insight into the offending and what might have caused it. In your case, insight at least into what has negatively driven your earlier life is of significant value to you.

67 I do accept that you have prospects of rehabilitation. It is not possible to say how good those prospects are.

68 You are going to be imprisoned for what must seem to you is a long time, but as I have said, I do regard you as having prospects of rehabilitation. In the end what you achieve is a matter for you. Progress in prison will, as a first step, determine if and when you get parole and then what might befall you in the future.

69 The fact that you are removed from immediate contact with you mother, father and aunt, is to your advantage.

70 Your disadvantaged background and your youth are the most significant features in your favour when sentencing.

71 In the prosecutor’s written submissions reference was made to what was said by Redlich and Tate JJA in Marrah v The Queen^[5]. That paragraph reads:

72 I do not regard this as a case where it might be said that your disadvantaged background increases the importance of protecting the community from you. I do regard it as operating in this case to reduce your moral culpability.

73 The prosecution submitted that this was a serious example of a serious crime. I am not helped by the ‘serious example’ characterisation. Ms Raichele Galea has lost her life for no discernible reason. That it is very serious. The act or acts leading to her death are such that the jury found it to be an unintentional killing. The fatal wound was an unusual one and other parts of the body are more vulnerable but I have not ignored the stab wounds inflicted to the back and the other injuries. This stabbing was of itself apparently rapid and random.

74 I am obliged to have regard to just punishment, denunciation and both general and specific deterrence.

75 You are sentenced to be imprisoned for 10 years and I fix a non-parole period of 7 years before you are eligible for parole.

76 I declare 786 days as already having been served pursuant to this sentence. I order that this declaration be entered in the records of the Court.

^[1] Psychological Report of Ms Carla Ferrari, Consultant Psychologist dated 31 January 2020, [103]–[104] (‘Report’).

Supreme Court of Victoria

DPP v Wills [2020] VSC 155 (25 March 2020)