Shock new data reveals legal loophole allowing lesser jail terms for coward punch killers
Alarming new data has revealed just how few of Victoria’s coward punch offenders have been convicted since laws were introduced eight years ago.
Police & Courts
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JUST a quarter of Victoria’s coward punch perpetrators have been convicted under the state’s historic one-punch legislation since it was introduced eight years ago.
World-first research from the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine, commissioned by the Stop the Coward Punch Campaign, found there were six one-punch-specific convictions in the state between 2014-2020.
This only made up a fraction of the 25 total coward punch perpetrators convicted statewide since 2012.
Most were convicted of manslaughter charges instead – avoiding the 10-year minimum sentence carried by the one-punch legislation
The findings come after Caterina Politi, whose son David Cassai died after he was attacked on New Year’s Eve in 2012, began lobbying the Victorian Attorney-General to tighten the law.
It can currently only be applied if the victim of a coward punch attack is unaware they are about to be hit and the perpetrator knows the victim isn’t expecting it.
Ms Politi said that this had resulted in perpetrators in several high-profile attacks avoiding the minimum sentence because the circumstances of the attacks did not technically fit within the requirements of the legislation.
The VIFM also found that most convicted coward punch perpetrators Australia-wide received manslaughter sentences at an median of seven years in jail.
Stop the Coward Punch Campaign founder and champion boxer Danny Green said this punishment “wasn’t good enough”.
He used this week’s Coward Punch Week to call for “more states and territories (to pass) coward punch legislation like in Victoria”.
But VIFM deputy director Associate Professor Richard Bassed said the low proportion of perpetrators charged on specific one-punch laws, compared to manslaughter and murder, highlighted “the potential ineffectiveness of these laws specifically intentioned to convict such perpetrators”.
“Future reforms of legal responses to these assaults must be evidence-based and involve consultation with the community, judicial officers, legal counsel and police involved in the delivery of laws to date,” he said.
A/Prof Bassed said figures reflecting a decline in fatal one-punch assaults indicated education and awareness had been “one of the most successful strategies” to prevent deadly assaults.
“Australians now know one punch can kill,” he said.
“Future campaigns should continue to target the demographics identified as highest risk to perpetrate or become a victim of a coward punch – that is males, aged between 25 and 45 years.”
The VIFM examined about 7300 trials, 5341 clinical forensic case files and 204 coronial investigations from 1990-2020 to also find:
PERPETRATORS (98.6 per cent) and victims (92 per cent) were predominantly male;
A DISTINCT age gap existed between coward punch perpetrators (26 median age) and victims (41);
MOST assaults involved a single perpetrator and victim (71.3 per cent) and occurred in public (65.1 per cent) between 6pm-6am (74 per cent);
ALCOHOL and/or drugs were present in 55 per cent of cases; and,
JAIL sentences ranged from a high of 20 years for murder and a low of one year for causing injury or assault, with most fatality offenders jailed for manslaughter (60.4 per cent) at a median sentence of seven years.
AFL coward punch victim calls for tougher laws
Seven years on from a coward punch that changed his life, Paul Brown ponders how other innocents can avoid the physical and emotional pain he went through.
At age 46, the former Geelong AFL player suffered bleeding on the brain and a cracked skull when 19-year-old Mohammad Al Wahame hit him outside a kebab shop in Shepparton, regional Victoria.
“I do agree with Danny (Green), every state and territory should have a one-punch law enforcing a 10-year minimum. Maybe that’s it (the solution),” he said.
“Maybe it comes back to responsible service of alcohol or how far we go with drug enforcement. Then again, mine had nothing to do with alcohol, it was wrong place wrong time.”
He settles on “educating boys” that one punch will “ruin lives” as integral to making sure fewer people experience what he did in October 2015.
Al Wahame was sentenced to six years in jail with a non-parole period of four years.
“People say that’s not long enough,” Brown said.
The father of four – including daughter Millie, who’s on the Bulldogs’ AFLW list, and son Tom, who was drafted to Richmond last year – considers himself “one of the lucky ones”.
He notes that since he can’t remember the attack, “I have no post-traumatic stress disorder”.
He’s also no longer in physical pain, but ongoing brain fatigue continued to impact him and his family.
He had to give up his role in a Shepparton business. But as of eight months ago, he has a new one: running the Beechworth Holiday Park in Victoria’s northeast.
“It’s what I needed, I think,” he said. “It’s not a job – I love it.”
samantha.landy@news.com.au
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