R v Muliaga [2026] VSC 145

1. Rimoni Muliaga, on 18 September 2023, driven by jealousy, you stabbed your wife, Lise, multiple times with a kitchen knife. You did so in front of your children in the backyard of your brother's house, where you and your family had been staying. You stabbed her because you mistakenly believed that she was having an affair with your brother, Leuma Muliaga. On 1 December 2025, you were found guilty of her murder. Notwithstanding your personal circumstances, to which I will return, your crime was an act of the most serious domestic violence against an innocent and unarmed woman. It warrants serious condemnation.

1. You were born in Samoa on 1 June 1981 and are now 44 years old. You were the fourth of nine children. At school, you had difficulties with learning but your cognitive deficits were not formally identified at that time. When you were 11 years old, you went to live with your grandparents in Auckland in New Zealand. They and your cousins physically abused you, and you ran away on several occasions to avoid this abuse. You believe you first obtained treatment for your mental health in your early twenties, but are not able to recall the details.
2. You commenced a relationship with Lise in 2009 and married in or around 2010. You had five children who were aged between 5 and 14 years at the time of Lise's death.
3. In 2013, your closest and older brother, Leuma, moved to Australia, and this had a 'devastating' effect on your mental health. You used to run away and spend time outside places where Leuma used to live.
4. Medical notes indicate that you saw nurses and doctors, including psychiatrists, in New Zealand between October 2022 and July 2023. You complained of hearing voices, including voices telling you to leave your family and to commit suicide. You were thought to have depression with psychotic features or symptoms, including relating to beliefs that Lise was cheating on you. The last attendance, on 7 July 2023, indicated that you had been formally diagnosed, in New Zealand, with schizophrenia. There is no indication that these symptoms arose in the context of your taking of illicit substances.
5. On 21 July 2023, you and Lise and your children relocated to Australia.

B The circumstances of the offending and its immediate aftermath

1. At first, you stayed with your sister, Ete Muliaga, at her home in St Albans. While staying with Ete, you and Lise would argue. After these fights, Lise would go for a walk. Lise told Ete, and I accept, that you would occasionally punch yourself in your own head to, in your words, 'punch the voices out'. I will return to your mental health shortly.
2. Some weeks later, in September 2023, your family moved to stay with your brother, Leuma, and his wife, Marama Randell, in Melton South. You stayed in a 'bungalow' or granny flat at the rear of their house. Marama had set up a kitchen in the bungalow for your family, that included a set of kitchen knives that she had put in a drawer.
3. On 14 September 2023, Lise made a note in her diary indicating that you and her had identified the need for you to obtain some help from a mental health service.
4. On the morning of 18 September 2023, you had been arguing and 'bickering' with Lise. You had accused Lise of having an affair with Leuma. You had held this suspicion, which was completely unwarranted, for some time. Marama confronted you about your suspicions and told you not to accuse Lise again of sleeping with Leuma as it 'never happened'. Shortly afterwards, Lise left the house and went for a walk, which, as I said, is what she tended to do when you had been arguing.
5. Leuma had been at work that morning and was returning to the house around 12:45pm when he saw Lise standing in the park up the street from their house. Leuma returned to the house, then he and Marama left the house briefly for a coffee. When they returned, Leuma spoke to you in the kitchen; he said that you seemed 'good' and 'normal'.
6. When Lise returned from her walk, she went to the bungalow, where you were with three of your children. You argued with Lise. You then attacked Lise with a large kitchen knife. You stabbed her four times, twice to the right shoulder, once to the left upper chest and once to the left breast. She had a frightening and violent death. This took place in the presence, or near vicinity, of three of your children -then aged 12, 7 and 5 - and they all saw either the stabbing itself or its immediate aftermath.
7. This was a violent attack that continued despite Lise trying to defend herself, causing her to suffer 'defensive type' cuts to her arm. The stab wound to Lise's upper chest was around 9.5cm in depth, transected two major blood vessels causing significant blood loss, and perforated the chest cavity damaging one of her lungs. It cut through two of the ribs. It was this stab wound that led directly to Lise's death.
8. It is not clear when you armed yourself or whether the knife came from the house or from the bungalow. If you obtained it from the house, that could indicate that you took it some time prior to the stabbing and in preparation for the stabbing, which could indicate a degree of planning. Marama initially provided a statement saying that the knife had come from the house but in her oral evidence said it came from the bungalow. Although she then conceded that her memory was probably better at the time she made her statement, I am not satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that you obtained the knife from the house in preparation for the stabbing. Accordingly, I sentence you on the basis that you collected the knife from the bungalow in the course of your fight with Lise spontaneously and immediately before you stabbed her.
9. After the stabbing, one of your young daughters ran to the house screaming. Leuma, Marama and the children went into the backyard. Lise was sitting on the ground with the knife sticking out of her shoulder. Leuma saw that Lise was bleeding heavily, and also had a wound on her chest. You were standing over Lise with your back to your family. Marama screamed at you asking 'what are you doing' and you ran to the front of the house and up the street. Marama followed you. Eventually, you stopped running. You told Marama that the reason for the 'incident' was that Lise and Leuma were sleeping together. Marama described you as 'quite adamant' in your belief.
10. In the meantime, Leuma called triple zero and began performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation on Lise. Police officers and multiple ambulances arrived. They were briefly successful in regaining a heartbeat, but it could not be sustained and Lise was declared deceased at 2:33pm.
11. Other police officers had found you walking on the street near the house and placed you under arrest, restrained you with handcuffs and sat you on the footpath. You had blood on your hands. You repeatedly said 'I need my mental health medicine' to the police officers. You said that you had not taken your medication since the previous day. Your behaviour was captured on body-worn cameras used by the police. You were clearly distressed. After being told that Lise had died, you seem surprised and became, I accept genuinely, even more distressed. Police attempted to caution you, but you kept asking police to call your wife. You underwent an assessment while in custody at Melton Police Station, and were determined not to be fit for interview due to your mental state at that time.
12. Your conviction by the jury of murder establishes that you consciously, voluntarily and deliberately stabbed your wife with the intention of causing her death or at least really serious injury. In light of your appearance on the body-worn camera footage, where you were visibly distressed and surprised by your wife's death, and despite the number and depth and location of the stab wounds, I am unable to reject as a reasonable possibility that you stabbed her without intending to kill her; it is a reasonable possibility that you stabbed her without caring, or turning your mind to, whether she lived or died. Accordingly, I sentence you on the basis that you stabbed her not with the intention of killing her but with the intention of causing her really serious injury without caring, or turning your mind to, whether she lived or died.

C Your cognitive function and mental health and R v Verdins considerations

1. I noted that your stabbing was driven by jealousy. This is confirmed not just by what I heard from Leuma and Marama, but also by what you told Dr Adam Deacon, a psychiatrist who examined you at the request of your solicitors. You told him that you had 'suspicions that something was going on' between Lise and Leuma, that you argued with Lise about these suspicions, and you did not believe her when she told you that she had been for a walk on the day she was killed. You also said to him, at various occasions that:
   1. 'I went inside the house. I came outside and she wasn't there. That's why I got angry';
   2. 'I saw my brother's car. I thought my wife went to my brother's. That's why I got angry';
   3. 'I had a dream. I opened the door in the house we are in now and seen my brother and wife in the room. That's why I got angry'; and
   4. 'I asked her where she went. She said she went for a walk. That's when I got angry with my wife and that's when I did what I did'.
2. Your experience of this level of jealousy calls attention to your cognitive functioning and to your mental health history, which is not straightforward.
3. You have been assessed by the clinical neuropsychologist, Dr Sara Fratti. She explained that you have an IQ of 61, which puts you in the lowest 0.5 percentile of the population and meets the threshold for a diagnosis of an intellectual disability. Dr Fratti also explained, and I accept, that you have impaired orientation, insight and executive functioning and that you have a 'severely limited capacity to understand, negotiate, and communicate with others' and an 'extremely rigid and concrete reasoning style, which interferes with [your] ability to make effective decisions or analyse the pros and cons of situations'.
4. As I mentioned earlier, documents obtained from health services in New Zealand indicate that you have a history of 'hearing voices' telling you to leave your wife or to commit suicide or that your wife was cheating on you. On 25 October 2022, a psychiatrist wrote that you had 'treatment resistant depression with progressive development of psychotic features (paranoid and hearing voices) associated with marked functional impairment and distress'. On 7 July 2023, you were diagnosed with schizophrenia. At Leuma's house, after the stabbing, some antipsychotic medication was found with a prescription in your name, which you had brought with you from New Zealand, and, as noted, after the stabbing you asked the police for your 'mental health medicine', which I take to be that medication.
5. However, as I have said, after the stabbing, you were examined by the psychiatrist, Dr Deacon. He saw you on three occasions and had access to the medical material from New Zealand and also in Australia. Dr Deacon noted your cognitive impairment but opined that you were fit to stand trial. He said that you understood that stabbing someone was wrong. He said that you do not suffer from schizophrenia. He said the 'voices' you described 'seemed to correlate with [your] thoughts' when you were in a distressed or agitated state, rather than being a product of a psychotic illness; they were more likely to be your own thoughts, rather than 'an entity' arising from 'outside your own mind or from an external source'. He opined, and I accept, that your conviction that your wife was cheating on you was borne from 'morbid jealousy' rather than 'a delusional thought consistent with a psychotic process' and that it was 'inconsistent with a delusional belief'.
6. Dr Deacon also explained that your 'morbid jealousy' was an unfounded, irrational belief of great intensity that caused you to become very angry and that caused a 'level of rumination and a level of distress' beyond the level of jealousy that people might typically experience in life.
7. I accept the evidence given by Dr Deacon. Also, to the extent that it conflicts with the evidence from Dr Fratti, I prefer the evidence of Dr Deacon due to his greater expertise in diagnosing and treating psychiatric conditions, and because he saw you on three occasions. His evidence was that, having assessed you over three sessions, he was able to establish a 'reasonable' rapport with you and that you were more forthcoming in answering his questions at the later assessments.
8. Importantly, however, Dr Deacon said that you do suffer from a major depressive disorder, which could have affected your ability to self-regulate and maintain self-control, and that your cognitive impairment may impact your ability to 'comprehend or understand' your own internal state.
9. Your depressive illness is severe and has been associated with psychotic features. Your cognitive impairment is also severe and puts you, as I said, in the bottom 0.5% of the population. When that is taken into account, along with the descriptions of your behaviour and the evidence of Dr Deacon, I am satisfied that your morbid jealousy and your associated difficulty in regulating your behaviour - which resulted in your stabbing your wife - arose out of or were at least contributed to by a combination of your underlying major depressive disorder and your impaired cognitive function. That is, these conditions played a causal role in your offending by impairing your ability to exercise appropriate judgment and to make calm and rational choices and to think clearly.[1]
10. In reaching this conclusion, I note and rely on the opinions expressed by Dr Deacon in his supplementary report that you appeared to have an impaired ability to think calmly and reasonably, an impaired capacity to reasonably respond to conflict, and that your 'reasoning and judgment' was likely impaired at the time of the stabbing by a combination of your intellectual disability and mental illness (that is, your depressive disorder with associated anxiety and psychotic features). In his oral evidence, Dr Deacon spoke more in terms of possibilities than probabilities, but I did not understand his evidence to be retracting from the way he expressed these opinions in his written report. In any event, to the extent that Dr Deacon's evidence treated these connections as possibilities rather than as probabilities, I consider that I am in a position to, and I do, draw a conclusion that there probably was a causative connection between your cognitive impairment and depressive illness and your offending.[2]
11. Accordingly, while in no way excusing your behaviour, I consider that your moral culpability is less than it would be had you not had an underlying major depressive disorder and impaired cognitive function, and that this is to be borne in mind when sentencing you.[3] Because, however, you remained aware of the nature and gravity of what you were doing, and its wrongness, the reduction in your moral culpability is somewhat limited.[4]
12. There must also be some moderation in the weight given to general deterrence, because the community would view your offending as being contributed to by your serious underlying mental illness and cognitive impairment.[5]
13. I am also satisfied that these conditions make it harder for you to cope with difficult or stressful situations and will make prison a greater burden on you than it would otherwise be, and that this, too, is to be borne in mind when sentencing you.[6]
14. I do not consider that these considerations reduce to any appreciable extent the importance to be given to specific deterrence. In considering the weight to be placed on specific deterrence, it is relevant that this stabbing is not the only occasion on which, on the evidence before me, you had been violent towards your wife. On one occasion while you were living in Melton South, Leuma heard banging sounds and your children crying; he went to investigate. In the bungalow, Leuma saw you on top of Lise. Leuma called out to you and you came out of the bungalow. You had a scratch on your face and seemed 'angry'. Leuma told you that what you were doing is 'not normal' and that you were physically hurting Lise. You accused Leuma of having an affair with Lise. Another morning, a few days to a week before Lise's death, Marama went to check on you and Lise in the bungalow after her son told her that you were 'fighting'. Marama saw you with your hand around Lise's neck, against the wall of the bungalow; she grabbed at your arm and you flung Marama's hand away thinking that she was one of your children. When Marama questioned what you were doing, you told her 'it's between me and my wife'. That was the first time Marama had ever witnessed you being violent towards Lise. In this way, your stabbing could not be said to be an isolated or 'one-off' event unlikely to be repeated. On the contrary, you have problems with self-regulation and turning to violence when distressed, and specific deterrence must play a significant role in the sentencing discretion because of the need to bring home to you the importance of your not engaging in such behaviour again, regardless of the level of jealousy that you might feel.

1. You pleaded not guilty. But you indicated at an early stage that you accepted that you stabbed your wife, consciously, voluntarily and deliberately, and that this resulted in her death. The only element put in issue was your intention at the time, that is, whether the Crown could prove, in light of the medical evidence, that you had engaged in consequential reasoning at the time of the stabbing such that it could be proved that you intended to kill or to cause really serious injury. Consistently with this, your counsel invited the jury to return a verdict of guilty of manslaughter.
2. By making the concessions you did, you removed the need for your children to give evidence and you shortened the trial. You are entitled to some utilitarian discount for doing this.
3. Also, I am satisfied that you accept that you are criminally responsible for having killed your wife. Such a conclusion is consistent with your invitation to the jury to find you guilty of manslaughter.
4. I am also satisfied that you regret very much what you have done. Your presentation on the police body-worn camera footage not long after the stabbing revealed a man in genuine and deep distress. This became particularly apparent when it was explained to you that your wife had died, and, when asked whether you wanted to make a phone call, you said you wanted to call your wife.
5. The question as to whether you are remorseful in the sense that you accept full responsibility for the fact that you stabbed your wife with the intention of causing her very serious injury is less straightforward. You have not expressed remorse to Dr Fratti or Dr Deacon but, as Dr Deacon observed, that was likely related to a combination of your 'grief, guilt and shame'. On balance, I sentence you on the basis that you are genuinely remorseful for what you have done. Your prospects of rehabilitation, however, depend not just on whether you are remorseful, as you are, but on whether you receive and engage with and are able to respond to treatment for your mental health and in such a way as to obtain control over your jealousy and tendency to respond with violence. For this reason, I consider that you have reasonable but somewhat uncertain prospects of rehabilitation.

1. I have had regard to the victim impact statements submitted by your five children, your niece, Marama and Leuma. Your children are, thus far, seemingly coping well due, no doubt, to the efforts that Marama and Leuma have made to make them feel loved and supported and part of their family.
2. Marama and Leuma are to be commended for the efforts they have gone to - despite the strain it has put on them and their family - while dealing with their own grief.
3. Nonetheless, your children will spend the rest of their lives without their mother and having to deal with the fact that you, their father, killed her.

1. You are not an Australian citizen and so will likely be deported on your release. This raises the prospect, if not the likelihood, that you will then have to live in a different country to your children and brother. I accept that the prospect of your deportation will weigh on you and render the burden of imprisonment somewhat greater and that this is a factor to take into account.[7]

G Synthesis of the sentencing considerations

1. The sentence to be imposed may only be for the purposes of punishing you to an extent and in a manner which is just in all of the circumstances, deterring you or other persons from committing offences of the same or similar character, establishing conditions within which your rehabilitation may be facilitated, manifesting the denunciation by the court of the type of conduct in which you have engaged, and protecting the community.[8] In sentencing you, I must have regard to the maximum penalty of life imprisonment, current sentencing practices, the nature and gravity of the offence, your culpability and degree of responsibility for the offence, the impact of the offence on the victims, your personal circumstances and the personal circumstances of the victims, your previous character, and the presence of any aggravating or mitigating factors concerning you or any other relevant circumstances.[9] My task is to arrive at a sentence that is just following an instinctive synthesis of all these features. The sentence imposed must be no greater than is required by these considerations. Because that is the task involved in sentencing you, the sentence I impose should not be seen as a reflection of the value of Lise's life.
2. Murders committed in the context of family violence are all too common in Australia. With offences of family violence, general and specific deterrence assume a particular significance.[10]
3. Further, murder is a 'category 1 offence', so a term of imprisonment is mandatory,[11] and it is also a 'standard sentence offence' with a 'standard sentence' of 25 years' imprisonment. That period is the sentence for an offence that, taking into account only the objective factors affecting the relative seriousness of that offence, is in the middle of the range of seriousness.[12] I must take that standard sentence into account.[13] It is also a 'serious violent offence', so I am required to have regard to the protection of the community as the paramount purpose of sentencing when imposing a term of imprisonment.[14]
4. I have had regard to the examples of current sentencing practices provided. Although instructive, each case, of course, ultimately turns on its own facts.
5. Your actions, borne out of unjustified and unwarranted feelings of jealousy and anger, resulted in Lise suffering a violent death at your hands. You repeatedly stabbed your wife, Lise, in the chest and upper body, and you did so in front of three of your children, who saw their mother die. The fact that your children were witness to your offending is an aggravating feature that heightens its objective seriousness.[15] Notwithstanding that your murder was spontaneous rather than premeditated, it was entirely unprovoked. Looking only at the objective features, I consider it a serious case of murder and one above the middle of the range of seriousness.[16]
6. There are, however, some subjective factors in your favour. You are entitled to a utilitarian discount for limiting the issues that had to be proved at the trial and avoiding the need for your children to give evidence. You are remorseful and suffering from guilt and shame. You have been and were suffering from a major depressive illness and a significant cognitive impairment at the time that contributed to your offending and which moderates, somewhat, your moral culpability and your suitability as a vehicle for general deterrence, and which will make your time in custody hard for you. On your release, you will likely be deported. You have no prior criminal record, and reasonable but somewhat uncertain prospects of rehabilitation.
7. Mr Muliaga, would you please stand.
8. Synthesising all these various matters, which I have spoken about in more detail earlier, and having regard to the sentencing principles that I summarised earlier, I convict and sentence you to a term of imprisonment of 24 years. The minimum term that I consider justice requires that you must serve before being eligible for release on parole is 18 years and six months and I direct that you not be eligible to be released on parole until you have served at least that time.
9. I declare that you have already served 919 days not including today's date by way of pre-sentence detention and I direct that it be reckoned as time already served for the sentence I have just imposed.

[1] R v Verdins (2007) 16 VR 269, 275 [26].

[2] See, eg, Dahl v Grice [1981] VicRp 50; [1981] VR 513.

[3] R v Verdins (2007) 16 VR 269, 275 [32(1)].

[4] Cf, eg, Green v The Queen [2011] VSCA 311 [22]-[24].

[5] R v Verdins (2007) 16 VR 269, 275 [32(3)].

[7] Guden v The Queen [2010] VSCA 196; (2010) 28 VR 288 [27].

[8] Sentencing Act 1991 (Vic) s 5(1).

[9] Ibid s 5(2).

[10] Corman v The King [2025] VSCA 302, [63] (Priest, Kidd and Kaye JJA); Pasinis v The Queen [2014] VSCA 97 [53].

[11] Sentencing Act 1991 (Vic) s 5(2G).

[12] Ibid s 5A(1)(b), s 5A(3).

[13] Ibid s 5B(2)(a).

[14] Ibid ss 6A(b), 6D(a), sch 1 cl 3.

[15] Skeates (a pseudonym) v The King [2023] VSCA 226 [60].

[16] Sentencing Act 1991 (Vic) s 5B(5).