Killer mum Akon Guode says jail sentence too harsh
A WOMAN who drove four of her children into a Wyndham Vale lake, killing three, should have been jailed for much less than 26½ years because she had been mentally disturbed, a court has heard.
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A WOMAN who drove four of her children into a lake, killing three, should have been jailed for much less than 26½ years because she had been mentally disturbed, a court has heard.
Akon Guode, 38, is seeking leave to appeal against her sentence for the infanticide of son Bol, 17 months old, the murders of twins Hanger and Madit, 4, and the attempted murder of daughter Aluel, 5.
The mother of seven, who drove into Lake Gladman, Wyndham Vale, on April 8, 2015, with the four children in her 4WD, pleaded guilty.
AKON GUODE JAILED FOR KILLING CHILDREN
AKON GUODE WANTS TO APPEAL CONVICTION
Julian McMahon, SC, representing Guode, told the Court of Appeal that a case involving both murder and infanticide was unprecedented.
A woman is guilty of infanticide if she causes the death of a child aged up to 2 in circumstances that would constitute murder, but did so while she was mentally unbalanced from effects of the child’s birth.
The maximum penalty for infanticide is five years’ jail; the maximum for murder is life imprisonment, and for attempted murder 25 years’ jail.
Guode was jailed for a year for infanticide, for 22 years for each murder, and for six years for attempted murder.
Mr McMahon said these terms were “not harmonious”, and though the law required different charges be laid for killing children older or younger than 2, it did not follow that penalties should be “so wildly different as they are here”.
The crimes were committed as a single act, and the acceptance that Guode’s “balance of mind was disturbed” meant that the “merciful disposition” in the sentencing for infanticide must also apply to the sentencing for the other charges.
“We say the public conscience would actually be shocked by the severity of the other sentences,” he said.
He argued that the infanticide sentence should dominate and inform the others which, given Guode’s lack of moral culpability, should therefore be “significantly lower”.
But the Crown argued that while the facts of the infanticide flowed to the other charges the sentencing did not, and the sentencing judge had taken account of Guode’s mental state in deciding the penalties.
After orders for concurrency were made, Guode was sentenced to a total of 26½ years’ jail with a minimum non-parole term of 20 years.
Guode, who survived war in Sudan, had been suffering from post-natal depression and had been faced with growing debts and little support.
Chief Justice Anne Ferguson and Justices Phillip Priest and David Beach reserved their decision on whether to grant Guode leave to appeal.