Our client was charged with the attempted murder of his partner in 2020 following a verbal altercation at their home in Port Hedland.
He had been in an unhealthy relationship with the complainant for the better part of a year when he returned home one afternoon to discover she had been dishonest about her relationship with another man. Our client intoxicated himself with copious amounts of alcohol and modafinil tablets with the intention of committing suicide. Instead our client fell into a state of psychosis, causing him to black out. When he came to, he discovered he had stabbed the complainant multiple times but had no memory of having done so.
When interviewed by police, our client accepted he did the acts which caused the injuries but explained to police that he had no intention of killing the complainant and had no memory of the offending. Our client was subsequently charged with attempted murder and his then lawyer made an offer to the police to accept a plea of guilty to a charge of doing grievous bodily harm. The offer was rejected by the prosecution.
Our firm was later engaged to act and we procured a psychiatric assessment of our client and made an offer to the prosecution to accept a plea of guilty to an alternative of offence of doing grievous bodily harm with intent to do grievous bodily harm. The prosecution declined, and offered no explanation for refusing the proposal. We advised our client to proceed to trial on the charge of attempted murder.
Following a five-day trial in the Supreme Court, which involved graphic testimony from the complainant and medical experts, as well as complex psychiatric evidence, we were able to persuade the jury they could not be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that our client was capable of forming an intention to kill, returning verdicts of not guilty on attempted murder.
The jury found our client was guilty of the alternative offence of causing grievous bodily harm, with intent to cause grievous bodily harm – the very offence we offered to plead guilty to before the trial, to spare the complainant and expert witnesses from giving evidence and the public expense in conducting a week long trial.
Where our client was facing a lifetime term of imprisonment for the offence of attempted murder, he was ultimately sentenced to serve a 9 year term of imprisonment with eligibility for parole.
