Woman who caved in man’s face has prison sentence slashed
SHE hacked and stabbed a sleeping man 70 times in a frenzied attack that caved in the face of her victim. Now Victoria’s Court of Appeal has slashed her sentence.
Law & Order
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A MATTOCK-wielding woman who brutally hacked a man 70 times to death as he slept has had three-and-a-half years slashed from her sentence on appeal.
But not all three Court of Appeal judges could come to a unanimous decision.
Bonnie Sawyer-Thompson, 22, had argued her 10-year jail term for killing Jack Nankervis in her Morwell unit in 2014 was “manifestly excessive”.
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Court of Appeal justices Chris Maxwell and Pamela Tate agreed and, by majority, today reduced her jail term to six and a half years.
They set a non-parole period of five years, meaning she could be freed as early as next year.
Their decision came despite, in dissent, Justice David Beach saying her sentence was a “far cry” from manifestly excessive.
Sawyer-Thompson was the last Victorian convicted of the now-abolished defensive homicide charge.
She was initially charged with murder but pleaded guilty to the downgraded charge.
Aged just 19 and high on ice, Sawyer-Thompson repeatedly hit Mr Nankervis, 23, with a mattock and knife with such force that his face was caved in beyond recognition.
In March, defence counsel Rebekah Sleeth told the Court of Appeal justices Sawyer-Thompson did it on orders by her abusive boyfriend Phillip “Cutty” Mifsud, who had threatened to kill her family if she didn’t.
Ms Sleeth said Sawyer-Thompson’s moral culpability was less because her acts were “born from terror”.
“She believed the only way she could extinguish the threat … was to kill,” Ms Sleeth said.
“She was instructed to use two weapons and followed that order.”
Sentencing judge Michael Croucher put Sawyer-Thompson’s actions at “the upper end of the range of seriousness”.
Justice Croucher said the attack on Mr Nankervis was “ghastly and disturbing in its execution” in that he was “hacked and stabbed repeatedly … well beyond what was necessary to kill him”.
Appeal justices Maxwell and Tate said: “With great respect to his honour, we consider that this was a mischaracterisation of the seriousness of the offence, which in turn affected his honour’s view of the applicant’s culpability.
“It was not in dispute that the violence which the applicant inflicted in Mr Nankervis was grossly excessive. The extent of the injuries was deeply shocking.
“But the key question was what the applicant’s actions revealed about her state of mind.”