/

/

R v Davidson [2026] NSWSC 958 | Case summary | Zoe

NSWNSWSC

R v Davidson

[2026] NSWSC 958

Supreme Court of NSW|2026-08-11|Before: Campbell J

View on NSW Caselaw

At a glance

Source facts

Court

Supreme Court of NSW

Decision date

2026-08-11

Before

Campbell J

Catchwords

CRIME — murder — defences — mental illness — procedure where Crown and accused agree on availability of mental health impairment defence — consideration of whether evidence establishes defence — no issue of principle

Source

Original judgment source is linked above.

Catchwords

CRIME — murder — defences — mental illness — procedure where Crown and accused agree on availability of mental health impairment defence — consideration of whether evidence establishes defence — no issue of principle

Judgment

Source: NSW Caselaw (www.caselaw.nsw.gov.au). Converted to plain text by ZoeLaw. Not the official version.

Medium Neutral Citation: R v Davidson [2026] NSWSC 958

Hearing dates: 10 August 2026

Date of orders: 11 August 2026

Decision date: 11 August 2026

Jurisdiction: Common Law

Before: Campbell J

Decision: (1) On the charge that the accused, on 25 October 2024, at Gunnedah in the State of New South Wales, murdered Cheryl Anne Davidson, I return a special verdict of act proven but not criminally responsible.
(2) Under s 33(1)(b) of the Mental Health and Cognitive Impairment Forensic Provisions Act 2020 (NSW), the accused is to be detained in a correctional facility, or at such other place as may be determined from time to time by the Mental Health Review Tribunal, until released by due process of law.
(3) Under s 34 of the Mental Health and Cognitive Impairment Forensic Provisions Act 2020 (NSW), I refer the accused to the Mental Health Review Tribunal.
(4) The Registrar is to notify the Mental Health Review Tribunal, so soon as is practicable, of the making of these orders and is to provide to the Tribunal the following documentation:
(a) A copy of my reasons for verdict and the making of these orders;
(b) A copy of the exhibits tendered in these proceedings, including the agreed facts and the reports of Dr Gerald Chew and Dr Jeremy O’Dea.
(5) The Registrar is to notify the Justice Health and Forensic Mental Health Network, so soon as is practicable, of the making of these orders and is to provide to the Justice Health and Forensic Mental Health Network the following documentation:
(a) A copy of my reasons for verdict and the making of these orders;
(b) A copy of the exhibits tendered in these proceedings, including the agreed facts and the reports of Dr Gerald Chew and Dr Jeremy O’Dea.

The mental health impairment defence, in its modern expression, is contained in s 28 of the Act*.* Section 30 of the Act provides for what is referred to as a “special verdict” of act proven but not criminally responsible if the accused establishes the mental health impairment defence on the balance of probabilities.
It is important to understand that the legal consequences which follow a special verdict “are quite different from those which follow a plain verdict of not guilty on the ground that [the accused] did not do the things charged”: The King v Porter (1933) 55 CLR 182; [1933] HCA 1 at 185 (“Porter*”*). In the event I consider the evidence establishes the mental health impairment defence and I return a special verdict, the accused will not be “completely free” to re-enter the community as it were. Rather, if I arrive at this finding, I am empowered to order that the defendant be “detained in the place and manner that the court thinks fit until released by due process at law”: s 33(1)(b) of the Act. It is important to understand that I am not authorised to release the accused into the community unless I am satisfied that his safety and the safety of any member of the public will not be seriously endangered by his release: s 33(2) of the Act.
I wish to emphasise that the return of a special verdict in a case of what would otherwise be one of a most serious crime, as a matter of the practice of the courts do result in an unconditional discharge of the accused, or put it in more common parlance, an offender walking away ‘scot-free’. Such orders will be appropriate almost never and indeed one is not sought in this case. This means I will make an order for the accused’s continuing detention.
A decision that the accused be detained in custody means that he will be a forensic patient under the supervision of the Mental Health Review Tribunal (“MHRT”). The MHRT is composed of a president who is either a current or former judicial officer, a second member who is either a psychiatrist or psychologist, and the third is a person drawn from the community with appropriate qualifications and experience. Importantly, while under its supervision, the MHRT will review his case at least every six months and make orders for the accused’s continued detention, care and appropriate treatment in a hospital or prison. The MHRT may not release the accused unless it is satisfied, as required by law, that his safety and the safety of members of the public can be ensured, and it may only do so after it has given the Minister for Health and the Attorney General prior opportunity to make submissions about the accused’s possible release.
Not every case of mental illness is sufficient to satisfy the requirements of the mental illness defence absolving a person from criminal responsibility. As Dixon J, (as his Honour then was) pointed out in Porter (at 187):

In preparation for the hearing of this matter, the parties prepared an agreed facts document which was tendered and became Exhibit A. That document is a summary of the facts uncovered by the thorough Police investigation into what happened and why. I should say the “why” really follows from the psychiatric investigation of the accused’s mental state. What follows here is taken in summary form from Exhibit A and the medical reports (Exhibits B, C and 1).
The accused is the middle of three sons of the deceased and Mr Peter Davidson. Perhaps as young as four or five, but certainly by nine years of age, he was diagnosed with ADHD and Asperger’s Syndrome. At the time of the incident the subject of these proceedings, he was not under any regime of treatment, despite having previously had the benefit of a plan under the National Disability Insurance Scheme. This may well be explained by his itinerant lifestyle taking him “under the radar” of governmental or health agencies. He was not diagnosed with any psychiatric disease before killing the deceased. Having said that, on 7 July 2022 he made complaints to the Emergency Department at Gunnedah Base Hospital which in hindsight sound delusional or at least paranoid. On 13 September 2024, the deceased had telephoned the Hunter New England Local Health District seeking help for the accused and reported behaviour that may have been consistent with the negative symptoms of Schizophrenia as well as fixed delusions and significant paranoia.
In July of 2023, the accused and his younger brother, Mr Mitchell Davidson, were involved in a physical fight which required Police attendance at the family home. From this time on, it was not considered appropriate for the accused to live at home. The deceased and Mrs Wilma Moran, the maternal grandmother of the accused, assisted the accused to move into various apartments around Gunnedah, each of which he left without providing much notice, if any at all. He apparently seemed to favour the itinerant lifestyle, which led him to live as a homeless person variously in North Queensland, Sydney and Melbourne.
Mrs Moran at one stage took the accused in. While he was living there, he would express feelings of angst about someone being ‘after him’ and would barricade his door, among other erratic behaviour. Mrs Moran had understandably little success assuaging the accused’s concerns. By May 2024, the accused was living by himself, but at some stage that month, he left Gunnedah unannounced, leaving his apartment key at the post office. His messages to Mrs Moran indicated that he had left for Western Australia.
In September of 2024, Mrs Moran saw the accused outside of the Gunnedah Woolworths, which, I interpolate, must have been a surprise to her. He informed her that he had been back for about a week. Mrs Moran and the deceased would have coffee with the accused at Mrs Moran’s house, where he continued to express his paranoia about being watched. Around this time, the accused spoke to a local Church leader, as well as his uncle, Mr Trevon Moran, about his concerns about demons. He continued to sleep rough.
On 5 October 2024, the deceased organised for the accused to stay at the Gunnedah Tourist Park and helped him set up a tent there. She helped fit out the tent with a mattress and other comfort items and would assist otherwise by doing his laundry and making sure he had fresh clothes. The accused would ask the deceased to move back into the family home, but the history between the accused and his brother prevented that from being an option for the family.
On two occasions in mid-October 2024, while staying at the Tourist Park, the accused suffered falls as a result of tripping on his thongs. On both occasions, ambulances had to be called. Another guest at the Tourist Park, Ms Cheryl Priest, at the accused’s request, called the deceased, who came down and gave him a new pair of shoes. The accused refused to go to hospital with the ambulance staff.
Thereafter, the accused sought out Ms Priest for conversation, oftentimes relating to hypothetical questions and scenarios. Ms Priest heard the accused scream and cry in his tent at night. When she left the Tourist Park on 20 October, she gave him her tent, which was slightly bigger than his own, which he subsequently moved into.
On 22 October 2024, the deceased messaged the accused, imploring him to ring the mental health line. Two days later, at around lunchtime on 24 October, the accused, the deceased and Mr Peter Davidson, his father and the deceased’s husband, went for a meal at the local services’ club. In the afternoon, the accused visited Mrs Moran’s house. The deceased and the accused further spoke over the telephone that afternoon. At this time the accused seemed to be somewhat receptive to the deceased’s pleas that he seek help for his mental health.
At 6:42 pm on 24 October 2024, the accused attended McDonalds, where he charged his phone. It seems to have been part of his paranoia at this time that he was exceedingly wary of eating food prepared by others. He then called for a taxi, which was driven by Mr Vincent Winsor, who drove him at his request towards the cemetery. During that ride, the accused asked Mr Winsor about “weird lights” up on the cliff face they passed which the accused had claimed to have seen. Prior to reaching the cemetery, the accused asked to be let out at the dog park, which he was at about 7:45 pm.
The accused called for another taxi at 9:49 pm, to pick him up from the cemetery. Mr Winsor again responded, as he was the only taxi driver working that evening. Mr Winsor dropped him at the Gunnedah Rugby Club, which was closed. At 10:27 pm, the accused and the deceased had a 23-minute-long telephone conversation. Shortly thereafter, he called for a taxi again, and Mr Winsor collected him and dropped him off at a location near the Gunnedah hospital at around 11:01 pm. Around this time he sent a text message to Mrs Moran asking her to ‘reconsider’, but it is not clear to what this relates.
The accused rang the doorbell of the Emergency Department at the hospital and told the registered nurse there that he had an appointment with a psychiatrist in the clinic the following day at 2 pm. The tragic irony of this timing will not be lost on anyone. The accused asked the nurse to arrange a full body scan, and thereafter requested a chest x-ray, but reported no symptoms. It was made clear to him that he would have to wait for the morning, and he told staff there that he would wait until the morning. He was given a blanket, and he took himself outside to the ambulance waiting bay. At around 12:45 am, the accused left. He was captured on CCTV at around 1:15 am walking near the post office wrapped in a blanket. I have not dealt fully with all of the comings-and-goings at the hospital and his interactions with nursing and paramedical staff before and after midnight. Considered with his earlier criss-crossing of Gunnedah by taxi, most ordinary people would regard this behaviour as peculiar and certainly not normal.
It should also be recorded that on 24 October 2024 the accused phoned the deceased six times between about 3:30 pm and 10:30 pm, speaking with for various periods. On the last occasion which was before he attended the hospital the call lasted for more than twenty-three minutes. While I will avoid speculation, it is easy to suppose that his mental health and obtaining help would have been high on the agenda given the diary entry the deceased made the following morning.
The deceased kept a diary and most of her entries related to her son Mitchell who lived at home. On 25 October 2024, the fatal day, after Mr Peter Davidson left for work at around 7 am, the deceased wrote the following:

Around the same time, as the accused walked to the local Coles he spoke to the deceased twice on the phone for short intervals. At 7:47 am, he purchased a four-pack of steak knives and asked the attendant for a pair of scissors to help him open it, which she did not have.
As this was happening, the deceased left home at 7:55 am for the Tourist Park. She was heading there as she had arranged to the accused assist with moving as he had been told that due to overbookings, he would have to leave. She stopped at McDonald’s to pick up a coffee at the drive-through and arrived at the park at around 8:05 am. She parked in close proximity to the accused’s tent.
What occurs next is not known in granular detail, which perhaps is just as well. At 8:10 am, Ms Christine Charlton, who, I interpolate was another guest of the Tourist Park, heard a “thud”, and thereafter a woman screaming. It was the deceased. She was screaming “get off me, you know I loved you” and crying repeatedly for help. The accused’s tent was moving as though some sort of struggle was occurring inside.
Two other male guests approached the tent. The doorway being unzipped, they could see inside a large man and the body of another person, on whom there was blood. They then called the Police.
A third male guest, Mr Peter Mavir, approached the tent. He called out to the accused and asked him to come out, which he did. He was covered in blood, and in particular, blood was dripping from what appeared to be a wound on his right hand. Upon enquiring about the blood, the accused told Mr Mavir that his mum had dementia and had a fall. When Mr Mavir called out to her, the accused said she was sleeping. Mr Mavir tried to take the accused to get cleaned up, but he became increasingly resistant.
At 8:26 am or so, Senior Constable Mifsud and Constable Cooke arrived in response to the call to triple-zero. When they first saw the accused, given the presence of blood, their first thought was that the accused had committed an act of self-harm. The accused resisted engaging with the questions from Police, but he denied having hurt the deceased. The accused was holding a bag very firmly and refusing to put it down. SC Mifsud caught a glimpse inside the bag and saw a knife there, at which time the accused was placed under arrest. Constable Cooke moved towards the tent thereafter and discovered the body of the deceased there with many, many stab wounds especially around her neck and chest and a large amount of pooling blood. He returned to his patrol car to get medical supplies and then attempted CPR.
Paramedics arrived at 8:31 am. They strove admirably to save the deceased, but given the extent of the wounds, attempts were ultimately abandoned. The deceased was pronounced dead at 8:40 am. A later post-mortem examination identified 106 sharp force injuries, including to the neck, heart and liver, which were said to be the cause of death.
The accused was conveyed to the Gunnedah Police Station. The custody manager identified that it was possible the accused suffered from a mental illness and arranged for a support person to be present. During a Police interview that afternoon, the accused said, “I murdered my mother cause I was sick of her”. When the accused was later taken to the hospital for the purposes of obtaining a blood sample, he lunged for the firearm of one of his escorts. It was considered that he had self-harm in mind.

The essence of the narrative is that the Freemasons have been attempting to communicate with him in the months leading up to the incident, with the ability to read his mind and communicate directly with him, telling him what to do. The experts describe these hallucinations as “command hallucinations” which overpower the will of the schizophrenic.
There are some differences in the accounts. In the interview with Dr O’Dea, the Freemasons are largely, but not always, portrayed as benevolent, attempting to prevent him from killing his mother except on the day of the killing when the voices seemed to have changed tack. In the consultation with Dr Chew, they are the instigators of the incident and actively, consistently ordered him to harm his mother.
Little further needs to be said other than the accused’s consistent account involved experiencing ongoing voices in his head related to harming his mother, and general delusions about the influence of the Freemasons on his everyday life. The accused is not a man of limited intelligence according to the psychiatrists, but if I may express myself this way, his narrative falls into the category of ‘you can’t make this up’. The experienced experts accept the accused’s account is the product of his diseased mind.
Dr O’Dea opines that the accused has suffered from severe and chronic Schizophrenia since at least early 2022. That illness has included command hallucinations and paranoid delusions. His opinion is that the illness was active at the time of the offending, and it operated to impair his judgment such that he failed to understand that his conduct was wrong in the sense I have previously explained. Dr O’Dea also notes that since the accused has been remanded in custody and has been subject to a pharmacological regimen, his symptoms of hallucinations and paranoia have subsided somewhat, although still remain present.
Dr Chew’s opinion is substantially the same, insofar as he agreed that the accused was suffering from active psychosis due to his Schizophrenia at the time of the incident. That psychosis led to an impairment of the accused’s ability to make a judgment about the morality of his actions.
The experts concur that at the time of the incident, the accused’s ability and capacity to reason and judge his own actions was substantially impaired.

Where the mental health impairment defence is raised in a prosecution for murder, no question of intent arises for determination if the defendant is not criminally responsible for his act by reason of his mental health impairment: (Hawkins v the Queen (1994) 179 CLR 500; [1994] HCA 28 at 510, 512-514, and 517 (“Hawkins”); R v Minani (2005) 63 NSWLR 490; [2005] NSWCCA 226 at 493 [32]). And this is so, notwithstanding there may be no necessary inconsistency between suffering a mental health impairment and forming a specific intent to do very serious harm or even to kill (Hawkins at 515).
As an exception to the rule that, at all times, the onus of proof lies upon the Crown and never shifts, it is important to point out at this juncture that the onus of proving the mental health impairment defence lies upon the accused. This is because there is a presumption of sanity, which is rebutted by proof of the availability of the mental health impairment defence (s 28(3) of the Act). The standard of proof which the accused must meet, however, is on the balance of probabilities, rather than beyond reasonable doubt (s 28(2) of the Act).
Under s 31(c) of the Act, I am required to consider all of the evidence to decide whether I am satisfied that the defence is “so established”. This is a question of fact. While all questions of fact are matters for my judgment, it is of significance that both Dr O’Dea and Dr Chew agree that the accused suffers from a serious mental health impairment by reason of the disease of Schizophrenia that had the effect on him that he did not know the act of killing the deceased, his mother, was morally wrong in the sense I have explained. It is not without significance that the experienced counsel at the hearing, both the Crown Prosecutor and counsel for the accused agree that the evidence establishes the mental health impairment defence to the requisite standard of more likely than not.
While I must make up my own mind about these things, I would certainly need to have a good reason to depart from the shared opinion of the only two forensic psychiatrists who have provided evidence in the case. I accept the evidence of both Dr O’Dea and Dr Chew.
I am of the view that the accused’s neurocognitive impairment of Autism Spectrum Disorder or Aspergers Syndrome probably had some part to play in what happened and why. It is clear that his Schizophrenia went undiagnosed for many years. As I have pointed out in my treatment of the facts, and as Dr O’Dea says, he probably exhibited relevant symptoms in 2022 when he attended the Emergency Department at Gunnedah Hospital. The symptoms his mother recounted to the local health authority in September 2024, viewed through the prism of the expert reports, certainly had all the hallmarks of the deranged thinking symptomatic of Schizophrenia.
The long extract from Dr O’Dea’s record of the history he received from the accused (at [39] above) appears emblematic of the disordered thinking associated with Schizophrenia. His fantastical beliefs about the Freemasons controlling him through his phone and the content of those beliefs are best explained as a mixture of fixed delusions animated by auditory hallucinations. As I have said, these things are emblematic of Schizophrenia. Some of these hallucinations took the form of command hallucinations, where in his deluded thinking, the accused felt compelled to act upon those commands. He could not do otherwise by reason of his disease. Some of these commands might seem faintly ridiculous to the normal person, such as the command to walk to a particular destination and then return to avoid having to act in some particular way, but in the grip of his illness, the commands were terrifying to him, and he was incapable of resisting them.
It should also be borne in mind that the accused’s Schizophrenia had gone entirely untreated for years. No doubt this was due to his itinerant lifestyle, meaning he was moving from place to place frequently and therefore, as I have said, ‘under the radar’. I have formed the strong impression that for as long as it went untreated, so his condition would have continued to worsen. His behaviour over the 24 hours leading up to the killing of the deceased, to the normal mind, was simply bizarre. It was potentially a great misfortune that he had not seen a doctor sooner. Then again, part of his symptomatic decline over that 24-hour period may have been related to his anxiety about being asked to disclose his symptoms to a medical practitioner at the appointment he had reluctantly agreed to attend.
One should be slow to draw any conclusion from the nature of his acts. It is the lamentable experience of the criminal courts that sane people do dreadful things. However, considered in hindsight, the gruesome death he inflicted on his mother by stabbing her 106 times in the confines of a small tent is probably best explained by the severity of his disease and not by his comment to Police that he was “sick of her”. At best, that very unfortunate comment probably betrays the degree of his own lack of insight into his disease, a common feature of Schizophrenia.
I repeat that a person suffering from Schizophrenia who does not appreciate his actions are morally wrong may well intend to bring about the very consequences in which his actions result. However, those actions may be the product of his diseased mind, and I am satisfied that is the explanation here.
For the purposes of s 31(c) of the Act, I am satisfied on the balance of probabilities that the evidence I have considered and to which I have referred in this judgment establishes the mental health impairment defence and I bring in the special verdict of act proven but not criminally responsible by reason of his mental health impairment.
I offer the condolences of the Court to the family and friends of Cheryl Davidson. It may be that my findings provide cold comfort, but I hope they go at least some way to explaining why the inexplicable occurred. What is clear is that all of Mrs Davidson’s actions towards her son leading up to the unspeakable events of 25 October 2024 were motivated by her love for him and her strong maternal desire to help him. I am sure that all of her family and friends will remember her as the caring and loving person she was throughout her life.