Eight teens committed for trial over alleged pack murder of Declan Cutler

A 13-year old boy is among the youngest Victorians to face trial for murder over the alleged pack stabbing of Reservoir teenager Declan Cutler.

A A 13-year-old boy is among the youngest Victorians to face trial for murder after he and seven other teengagers were committed to face a jury over the alleged stabbing murder of Declan Cutler, 16.

The eight accused boys — aged 13 to 17 — each pleaded not guilty to the alleged pack murder in a children’s court on Thursday.

The decision of a magistrate to commit the youngest alleged offender, 13, meant that a jury could find he was criminally responsible for the killing, in Coburg on March 13.

Declan had left a Reservoir party in the early hours of that Sunday morning to avoid a confrontation when he was allegedly set upon by a group and stabbed four times before dying within minutes.

The magistrate’s call to commit the boy came despite him being under 14, which under the law presumes he would not have had the knowledge to hold criminal intent.

It followed a psychologist’s earlier rejection of the presumption of “doli incapax” — translated from Latin to mean “incapable of evil” — after she found that the boy knew the killing was morally wrong.

Reservoir teenager Declan Cutler was allegedly set upon by a group and stabbed four times before he died.

The 13-year-old is among the youngest to face the Victorian Supreme Court for murder charges.

In June, a boy pleaded guilty to murdering a stranger when he was just 14, in an “extremely violent and persistent” stabbing attack in South Yarra, in September 2020.

The boy pursued victim Peter Kane, 40, on Malvern Rd, punching, kicking and stabbing him as he tried to get away, eventually leaving him in the street to die.

He was sentenced to 15 years’ jail.

Two other boys, both aged 13 and 6 months, were charged with the June 2020 Deer Park alleged pack murder of Solomone Taufeulungaki, 15, but their murder charges were later downgraded and they were dealt with in a children’s court.

Meanwhile, a lawyer for another boy tried to argue there wasn’t enough evidence for him to stand trial for Declan’s murder.

But the prosecutor told the children’s court that while the case against that boy was circumstantial, it relied upon evidence of his clothing captured on CCTV, phone records and communications with witnesses that he was due to attend the Reservoir party.

The magistrate determined it was a matter for the jury, and committed him along with his seven other co-accused.

All eight charged boys appeared one-by-one via video link from youth detention, where they were asked by the magistrate how they pleaded to the charge of murder, each stating, “Not guilty”.

When the magistrate tried to give them alibi cautions — noting they must give evidence to police within 14 days if they had an alibi — three boys said they didn’t know what an alibi was.

The magistrate explained: “If someone was charged with a crime and the crime was in Melbourne … (but they say) ‘I was in Sydney’, that’s an alibi: ‘I was somewhere else, it wasn’t me’.”

Asked if he understood, one boy replied, “Yes, Your Honour”.

The children’s court earlier heard that Declan would have died within minutes of being stabbed three times to the chest and once to the back, with the attack captured on CCTV.

Police at the time described the crime as “one of the most violent and brutal attacks” they had ever seen.

The case will return to the Supreme Court for a pretrial hearing on October 11.