Hoffmann may have ‘frontal lobe abnormality’, or just be ‘pretending’, court hears

Darwin mass shooter Ben Hoffmann may have a ‘frontal lobe abnormality’ that meant he did not understand killing four people in a shotgun rampage was wrong, a court has heard.

DARWIN mass shooter Ben Hoffmann may have a “frontal lobe abnormality” that meant he did not understand killing four people in a shotgun rampage was wrong, a court has heard.

Hoffmann pleaded guilty to murdering three men and the manslaughter of another during a bloody killing spree through the streets of Darwin in June 2019.

In the first day of a sentencing hearing in the Supreme Court on Friday, psychiatrist Siva Bala said it was “more likely than not” that Hoffmann suffered from the abnormality as a result of his anti-social personality disorder.

“The frontal lobe is a part of the brain that is understood to consider higher order functions, reasoning thinking, inhibiting impulses, considering alternatives, shifting or changing plans and so on,” he said.

“Individuals with frontal lobe dysfunction are more likely to be disinhibited, impulsive, less likely to tolerate frustration, cope with anger, and more likely to use aggression as a way of reacting to what they perceive as threats.”

Under cross examination by Director of Public Prosecutions, Lloyd Babb SC, Dr Bala said he believed Hoffmann had been deprived of the capacity to appreciate the wrongfulness of his actions on the night.

“I want to put to you that that is incorrect,” Mr Babb said.

“That at all times during the offending, he appreciated the wrongfulness of his actions, what do you say to that?”

But Dr Bala replied “not in the standard of ordinary people”.

“He was driven by various delusions that affected his ability to appreciate the wrongfulness (of his actions),” he said.

Mr Babb reminded Dr Bala that prior to the killings Hoffmann had said to another man, “If police or anyone say anything, tell them I’m delusional” and asked if that was common in people who are psychotic.

“No, it’s not common,” Dr Bala replied.

“It does tend to argue against him being so psychotic that he didn’t know what he was doing or what he was saying.”

Mr Babb asked Dr Bala if “it tends to suggest that he had it in his mind that he may in the future pretend to have been delusional”, and he agreed it was “a very strong possibility”.

“I put it to you that on the balance of probabilities, the more likely explanation is that he was not psychotic at the time but in fact his thinking was affected by his methylamphetamine intoxication?” Mr Babb said.

“My view is that is a very strong competing alternative and it was very close to the line, so I had to come down one way or another,” Dr Bala replied.

A blood soaked Ben Hoffmann outside NT Police's Peter McAulay Centre during his murderous shotgun rampage in June 2019.

Another psychiatrist, Alan Jager, who assessed Hoffmann in the days after the shootings, told the court he also determined the killer was “not able to understand his conduct was wrong”.

But he said he was not asked to consider why Hoffmann “spared some people and executed others” at the time.

“If asked to postulate now, he was certainly looking for particular individuals, by the time I saw him, he was uncertain as to whether the individuals that he had harmed were indeed guilty, in his mind, or innocent,” he said.

“I did not ask him why he spared some people and not others and I suppose we could enter into conjecture as to whether he, at some level, realised that they weren’t the people that he wanted to harm a the time, but really, your guess is as good as mine at this point.”

Mr Babb asked Dr Jager if Hoffmann could have been “feigning” psychosis and he agreed it was “possible to attempt that, but over time, one is usually caught out”.

“It’s possible to mimic psychosis and that can be kept up for a brief time but not necessarily a long time,” he said.

Dr Jager testified that he believed Hoffmann’s psychosis had possibly begun as early as the previous month, when he took his mother out for Mother's Day and was “talking in riddles”.

“The question you’re really asking me is whether he was an angry man who did these things and pretended to be psychotic or not,” he said.

“On the balance of the facts that I saw, there was evidence that he was psychotic – that doesn’t stop him from already being an angry man.

“And we know that when one is psychotic, one tends to have an exacerbation of the underlying personality characteristics.”

Ben Hoffmann in the dock during his trial.

Lester Walton was the final psychiatrist to take the stand on Friday, where Hoffmann’s lawyer, Patricia Petersen, asked him whether there were prospects for rehabilitation.

“Well that’s an interesting question, it depends what opportunities he’ll have in prison, of course,” he said.

“Perhaps what you could say, generally, is that males’ propensities towards violence do tend to wane simply with the passage of time, it might have something to do with lower testosterone levels, we don’t know for sure.

“But on an actuarial basis, the older men are, the less likely they are to behave violently, so regardless of any rehabilitation, that favourable prognostic factor does exist.”

Hoffmann faces a mandatory life sentence with a non-parole period of between 25 years and life for the killings of Hassan Baydoun, Michael Sisois, Rob Courtney and Nigel Hellings, among other offences.

He returns to court for further evidence and sentencing submissions on July 25.