Blake Davis and Hannah Quinn acquitted of Jett McKee murder
Blake Davis’ body shook uncontrollably and he sobbed into his hands after a jury found him guilty of manslaughter.
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Blake Davis’ body shook uncontrollably and he sobbed into his hands after a jury found him guilty of manslaughter.
He braced for a likely jail term — something his legal team said he was dreading as he was “seriously assaulted” last time.
Davis was released on bail ahead of his sentencing on February 21, 2021, under the condition he would wear an ankle monitor and report to the police station daily.
His barrister Margaret Cunneen “strenuously opposed” the prosecution’s earlier application for her client to be jailed as he awaited sentence.
Crown Prosecutor Chris Taylor said Davis posed a serious risk of fleeing the country.
Ms Cunneen said her client Davis was abused in the four months he spent in custody for this case from August to December 2018.
“Mr Davis requires treatment in order to prepare himself for custody,” Ms Cunneen said.
“It would be a dreadful thing for him to enter custody now having gone through the degradations and the serious assaults he has received in the past.
“Surely in 2020 the courts aren’t so merciless that they would put him back into custody where he suffered some dreadful things, without the chance to become psychologically prepared.”
It was not necessary for him to start his sentence today, she said, considering he had been on bail since November 2018 with no issues.
Ms Cunneen said he would not flee the country ahead of his sentence, because both his mother and brother’s house would be forfeited if he did not show up to court.
His partner Hannah Quinn hung her head, shaking it back and forth after she was found guilty of being an accessory to manslaughter.
She would be sentenced the same date as Davis.
The pair hugged their family after the decision and shook their heads in disbelief.
Justice Natalie Adams told the court Davis would inevitably serve a jail term after the decision today.
Mr McKee’s family did not speak to the media as they left the Darlinghurst Court on Tuesday.
ACTOR, GIRLFRIEND ACQUITTED OF MURDER IN SAMURAI KILL
An actor and his girlfriend have been cleared of murdering an armed and ice-addicted intruder who burst into their house after a jury accepted they had acted in self-defence.
But Blake Davis was convicted of the manslaughter of aspiring rapper Jett McKee after hitting him in the head with a samurai sword. His girlfriend Hannah Quinn had already been acquitted of murder on the direction of the Supreme Court judge.
In emotional scenes, she was found guilty of accessory to the fact of manslaughter as the families of the accused and Mr McKee watched in court.
The jury had been told that if the prosecution had not proved beyond reasonable doubt that what Davis did was not a reasonable response in the circumstances, it could return a verdict of manslaughter.
The verdict shows the jury thought he had used excessive force to defend himself and his girlfriend.
The case was seen as a further test of the law that means a person can defend their home, following a chillingly similar case in Newcastle where a jury last year acquitted chef Ben Batterham of murder when he chased and held down a man he caught in his baby daughter’s bedroom.
Davis’ counsel, Margaret Cunneen SC had told the jury how important the law of self-defence was. She said Davis had grabbed the first thing he could find — the sword — when he heard his girlfriend screaming and went to save her life.
“If you can‘t pick up the nearest weapon you can find, and go out to try to save that person, then that’s not the law that we want in this community,” Ms Cunneen said.
The jury had been told that if the prosecution had not proved beyond reasonable doubt that what Davis did was not a reasonable response in the circumstances, it could return a verdict of manslaughter.
Davis, 31, and Quinn, 26, were in his Forest Lodge apartment in August 2018 when Mr McKee burst in wearing a balaclava, armed with a replica gun and knuckledusters and carrying pepper spray and cable ties.
Mr McKee was desperate for money with a baby on the way and crippling gambling debts. He had once lost $5500 in an hour at the casino, the court was told.
It was not the first time Mr McKee, 30, had been involved in a home invasion.
Previously he had stayed outside while a friend, known in court as Mr O’Connor, broke in and bashed a man with a crowbar, the court heard.
Ms Cunneen told the jury that Mr McKee and Mr O’Connor were “very dangerous people”.
“There was no exaggeration from these two young people about the degree of threat they felt from just what Mr McKee had said about other people and what they‘d do to them,” Ms Cunneen said.
“This fellow was ready to do anything in the house and he would have done anything on the street to spare himself from answering to the authorities.”
He punched Mr Davis, 31, unconscious with the knuckledusters while threatening: “Give me your f**king money or I’ll kill you.”
As kindergarten teacher Quinn, 26, screamed, Mr McKee grabbed her handbag and she chased him into the street to get it back. He had threatened that he knew where their families lived and they would be targeted.
Davis, who appeared in Fat Pizza and Housos, ran into the street after them.
Justice Natalie Adams had told the jury that the law recognises the right of a person to act in self-defence from an attack or a threatened attack to themselves or someone else even to the point of killing them.
She said it was for the Crown to disprove Davis was acting in self-defence when he hit Mr McKee with the samurai sword.
The judge also told the jury not to look at what happened without the benefit of hindsight.
She said they had to decide whether what Davis did at the time was reasonable in the circumstances as he perceived them then.
Quinn’s counsel, Tom Hughes, described Davis’ actions as sheer bravery, not murder. When he had come to after punched insensible by Mr McKee, he heard his girlfriend screaming and ran outside.
“You ran towards Hannah‘s screams. You ran to the defence of another,” Mr Hughes told the jury.
“You ran to defend and protect the woman you loved and just as your great grandfather had over a hundred years earlier you did not hesitate to come to the defence of something that meant something, that you, as he, held dear.
“For him king and country and a way of life and for you the woman you loved and I for one see in that response bravery, gallantry, valour and courage pure and shining.”
Davis, a Kung Fu fan who collected samurai swords, maintained he had never meant to kill Mr McKee.
The couple sold small amounts of cannabis and Mr McKee had thought they had money he could steal.
The prosecution case was that after the attack the couple, who were small time cannabis dealers, went on the run over the weekend before giving themselves up to police at Newtown.
Mr Hughes said they weren’t running to escape arrest but out of fear of Mr McKee and his associates coming after them and their families.
Last year, Mr Batterham, 36, was awarded costs after a Supreme Court judge said he should never have been prosecuted.
He was acquitted the murder or manslaughter of Richard Slater, who broke into his Newcastle home in 2016. Like Mr McKee, Mr Slater was high on a “potentially lethal” dose of the drug ice.
Mr Batterham found him ransacking his daughter‘s bedroom at 3.15am. He chased him in the street, tackled him, put him in a chokehold and repeatedly punched him in the head until police arrived.
Justice Des Fagan in the Supreme Court found the decision by prosecutors to pursue charges against him were “unreasonable”.
He said medical reports had strongly supported the conclusion Mr Slater‘s cardiac arrests after the struggle and subsequent death were caused by his ice use and a heart condition had developed as a result of that drug abuse.
Justice Fagan found that Mr Batterham had acted lawfully and reasonably in chasing Mr Slater when he found him in his home.
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