Our client a young man in his 20s with a family history of schizophrenia was suffering from episodes of psychosis. After several weeks of increasingly concerning manic behaviour, his parents contacted emergency services for assistance. Police arrived at the family home, served a police order on our client and took him to the nearest mental health unit for examination. He was released the following morning and took an uber home. His mum let him inside, he collected some personal belongings from his bedroom and took his mum’s mobile phone before leaving home. This conduct gave rise to breaches of the police order and stealing.
With no where to go, our client, still in a state of psychosis, ended up at a popular shopping centre carpark late in the evening. He believed people were trying to rob him, including the complainants who were simply returning to their parked car after trip to the shopping centre. They alleged our client demanded their car keys whilst brandishing a knife – our client believed they were trying to rob him and produced a knife to protect himself. He took off on foot without any further interaction with the complainants and was arrested by police soon after. Police body worn camera footage of his behaviour on arrest was consistent with our client labouring under a distorted sense of reality. A small pocket knife was seized from him, along with a satchel containing personal belongings, including $65,000 in cash. He was charged with attempted aggravated armed robbery and possession of property reasonably suspected to have been stolen/unlawfully obtained.
Our client spent a month in custody before we could secure his release on bail. While he spent the next few months in/out of mental health units as an involuntary patient, we went to work. We prepared several affidavits and compiled documents to persuade the prosecution the cash was lawfully obtained. We issued several FOI requests for his medical records over the years, including the records relating to his (premature) release from hospital on the day that the offences were allegedly committed. We reviewed the evidence thoroughly and identified the weaknesses in the prosecution case. We provided the prosecution with a written proposal and were ultimately successful, with a reasonable degree of tenacity and perseverance, in securing the prosecution agreement to discontinue the cash charge (and return the money to our client) and substitute the robbery charge with an offence of being armed in a way that may cause fear. By the time of sentencing our client had finally received a formal diagnosis of schizophrenia and was being managed by a mental health care team in the community. He was placed on a Community Based Order and fines were imposed for the minor charges. Despite having the benefit of spent convictions for past offending, our application for spent convictions on all charges was granted.