Mason Lee: Appeal process adds three years to killer’s sentence

Extra time has been added to the sentence of the man responsible for the tragic death of Mason Lee, after the Attorney-General appealed the original prison term. However, another appeal in relation to the Caboolture toddler’s death was not successful.

THE man responsible for the tragic death of Caboolture toddler Mason Lee will spend a minimum of four extra years behind bars after the Court of Appeal found his original sentence was inadequate.

In March, Attorney-General Y’Vette D’Ath called for an appeal of the nine-year prison sentences handed to Mason’s mother Anne Maree Lee and his stepfather William O’Sullivan, arguing their sentences were manifestly inadequate.

The Court of Appeal today dismissed the appeal against Lee but upheld the appeal against O’Sullivan, increasing his head sentence to 12 years’ imprisonment.

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Under the previous sentence, O’Sullivan would have been eligible to apply for parole after having served just six years of the nine year sentence.

But the new 12-year sentence triggers legislation that sees O’Sullivan named a Serious Violent Offender, meaning he will be forced to serve at least 80 per cent of that sentence or just shy of 10 years behind bars.

The news was welcomed by Ms D’Ath who said the decision was proof that tough new laws introduced this year were working.

Mason Lee.

William O'Sullivan

“We’re very pleased to see an increase in both the head sentence and the parole eligibility period which sees this person serving almost 10 years before they can even apply for parole, which shows that we can get some justice when it comes to the death of young vulnerable children which is why we changed these laws in the first place,” she said.

“Of course nothing we do will bring Mason Jet Lee back.

“We don’t want to see these tragic deaths, we don’t want to see children’s lives being taken away in these horrible circumstances but we certainly welcome an increase in the sentencing, remembering when we initiated the research and report by the Queensland Sentencing Advisory Council, they found the average sentence for child manslaughter was around three years.

“We have now got a 12-year sentence and we welcome that.”

In June of 2016, O’Sullivan, Mason’s stepfather, struck the neglected little boy so hard that his organs ruptured and left him to die a slow and painful death over the following days, refusing to seek help.

The Court of Appeal found the previous sentencing decisions that were relied upon to determine the sentences in this case concerned sentences that were imposed under a different statutory regime.

“There have been the successive legislative changes to the laws that must be applied in the exercise of the sentencing discretion in these cases,” the appeal judges wrote.

The judges said the sentence needed to reflect community denunciation of crimes of this type

“In this case, the respondent’s fatal assault on Mason was preceded and then followed by a cruel neglect of Mason’s pain and his self-evidently urgent needs,” they wrote.

“The successive amendments to the Penalties and Sentences Act, as well as to the other legislation discussed, demonstrates the community’s deep repugnance and its intolerance of actions which cause the death of a child, particularly one like Mason, whose tender age left him absolutely vulnerable within the respondent’s home and without any chance of being saved from death by the intervention of outside witnesses.

“For these reasons, the sentence must serve the purpose of denunciation in a demonstrable fashion.”

The court dismissed the appeal against Lee’s nine year sentence, saying she was less culpable than O’Sullivan who inflicted the fatal blow and who had Mason is in his primary care in the days before he died.

“A mother’s neglect of her child, which results in her child’s death, is an appalling offence,” they wrote.

“However, manslaughter constituted by neglect, even when it is the terrible neglect in this case, is not to be compared with an unlawful killing of a child by a deliberate violent act.”

Originally published as Mason Lee: Appeal process adds three years to killer’s sentence