DUE: Wednesday 1st December 2021 11pm
HYPOTHETICAL CASE: STATE V KAYDEE
NB: PRETEND YOU ARE A JUDGE DELIVERING SENTENCE FOR THE CRIMES
Suppose that the following case takes place in the hypothetical jurisdiction of Pacifika where the offence of manslaughter carries liability for up to 25 years’ imprisonment. Suppose the standard range/tariff, within which most sentences will fall, is from 4 years’ supervision by a probation officer up to 10 years’ imprisonment. There are no relevant sentence precedents in Pacifika for the facts of this case.
WHAT HAPPENED?
On Friday 6th November 2020 at about 3pm, Kaydee Anthony entered Bendigo Bank to withdraw some cash. Upon arrival, she was stopped at the entrance and was confronted by Julie Graham. Kaydee was in a defacto relationship with Smith Aaron and she had just recently found out of his infidelity with Julie. During the confrontation, it eventually unfolded that Julie was not happy with Kaydee because the latter kept a tight leash on Smith thus preventing her from seeing him.
Kaydee became furious at the audacity of Julie’s confrontation that she started swearing at Julie. They exchanged a few swear words at each other before Julie slapped Kaydee on the face. Julie then challenged Kaydee for a fist fight outside the building and whilst cursing each other, the two security guards then removed them away from the building.
Whilst outside, Kaydee immediately pulled Julie’s hair and started punching her causing Julie’s nose to bleed. Julie then retaliated and threw punches at Kaydee which landed on her lower chin. The two then exchanged successive punches at each other and was cheered on by the small crowd around them. Kaydee then kicked Julie’s leg causing her to lose her balance and fell with her head hitting the side of the concrete pavement and could not get up as she was then unconscious. After seeing this, Kaydee rushed to Julie’s side to check on her and realized that, although unconscious, Julie was breathing heavily and abnormally. She immediately called the ambulance. She called out to the crowd to help Julie but no one came and so she sat by Julie until help came.
The ambulance arrived and Julie was rushed to the Hospital where she was pronounced dead about 30 minutes later of arriving i.e. at about 4.15pm Friday 6th November 2020. The postmortem was conducted a month later by Pathologist Dr Ray Julius who noted the cause of death as ‘severe haemorrhage in the brain due to blunt force trauma’.
Kaydee was charged with manslaughter. Her lawyer advised her to consider pleading guilty to the charge and she agreed to do so which was communicated to the Prosecution. She has spent 13 months in remand waiting for the conclusion of her case.
QUESTIONS
PART 1:
* Students may rely on Nauru’s Crimes Act 2016 to answer the following questions
- Explain why did the State decide to charge Kaydee with ‘Manslaughter’ rather than ‘Murder’ [Distinguish the elements of the offences]?
- If Julie had not died but had sustained injuries to the head, what other offences could be considered as appropriate charge(s)?
PART 2:
Following the guilty plea, you are instructed to prepare sentencing submission on behalf of Kaydee who is seeking a non-custodial sentence. The following are your instructions:
Instructions
- The Director of the Office of the Public Legal Defenders has instructed you to prepare a sentencing submission based on the hypothetical scenario above.
- The substance of your sentencing submission must reflect inter alia what is prescribed in the two-stage sentencing method discussed during COJ03 Topic 2 and COJ02 Topic 7. Hence your sentencing submission must identify the following:
- Maximum penalty for the offence
- Sentencing tariff or range derived via case law(s)
- Starting point given the tariff
- Aggravating features of offending resulting in addition of terms
- Mitigating features of offending resulting in deduction of terms
- Any special deductions e.g. guilty plea, time spent in custody awaiting trial etc. (vii) Final custodian term [ then argue for non-custodial sentence].
- Kaydee has provided the following background:
- She is 36 years old born on 14th October 1987
- Has 3 children (ages 14 years, 3 years and 9 months old) from her previous defacto relationship
- The infidelity has affected her relationship thus forcing her to be the sole and the primary provider for the three children
- This is her first encounter with the court system
- She is terrified by the prospect of custodial sentence because not only may it affect the custody of the three children but she will also lose her job as a Teacher
- She has no one else she can rely on for her children’s wellbeing and the only person with parental rights wants nothing to do with the children.
- She is involved with a lot of community work and has given you letters of support from the community’s president and priest both outlining her good character.
- There are no closely comparable cases to this one in Pacifika, so that the submissions will be based on general sentencing principles, not on precedent cases. This is not a research exercise. The exercise is designed to test your understanding of sentencing principles and ability to apply them. There is no need to adhere to the formalities of a courtroom. Just outline the arguments you would make, using your own words.
- Other instructions:
- Deadline: 1st December 2021 11pm via dropbox on moodle (NO EXTENSION)
- You have also been duly warned about plagiarism and dishonest practice. If anything is unclear, you are highly advised to seek clarification from the facilitators.
- Do not leave your work last minute!
- Word limit : 1400 – 1800
- Submit your assignment together with the student’s plagiarism sheet (vi) Assignment to be uploaded in Microsoft word and not pdf.
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