Subjective features
32The offender was born on 27 November 1978 and is now aged 35 years. He is one of four sons of Italian parents. He has two older brothers and a non-identical twin brother. He was living at home with his parents until his incarceration. He told Ms Anita Duffy, who assessed him in August 2012, that his parents were "very excitable and negative people". He could recall fights and arguments between them since he was young. He was not physically abused by them but he continually felt on edge by the fighting. In addition his father would often scream at him.
33He completed Year 10 and left school at the age of 16. He then worked in a factory and later in a fruit market. He has also worked as a builders' labourer before becoming self employed as a handyman. He has always been employed since leaving school.
34He told Dr Stephen Allnutt, Dr Wayne Reid and Dr Susan Pulman that he had been taking smoking marijuana and using amphetamines since either 14 or 16. However, he told Ms Duffy, that he had never used illicit drugs.
35He told all of the professionals who examined him that he started drinking at about 14 or 16 and would often drink to intoxication. He told Ms Duffy that he began gambling when he was about 16 but did not mention this to the others who examined him. It is consistent with what he told the police.
36The relationship he had with Sharon Shafique was his first serious relationship. He was with her for two to three years and lived with her for about 12 months.
37When Ms Duffy assessed the offender she administered a number of tests. The offender's assessment on the Weschler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence placed him in the Low Average range at 85. Ms Duffy said that his scores in the Vocabulary and the Similarities subtests indicated relatively limited word knowledge, verbal expression and a tendency to think in rather concrete terms.
38Ms Duffy administered the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory III. This is a comprehensive personality questionnaire comprising the measure of basic personality characteristics, more severe personality pathology as well as a number of clinical symptoms more transient and reactive to current circumstances.
39Across the basic personality scales the offender revealed a strong Depressive feature as well as Dependent, Passive/Aggressive and Self-Defeating traits. Ms Duffy said:
Mr Panetta's profile indicates an enduring pattern of thoughts, attitudes, behaviours and self-concepts related to depression. He may perceive himself as worthless, vulnerable, inadequate, unsuccessful and guilty and may frequently engage in self-criticism. He tends to view events in his life in a defeatist or fatalistic manner, expecting the worst. The Negativistic or Passive/Aggressive elevation flavours his depression with some resentment. He may vacillate between being bitter and resentful towards others versus being intropunitive and self-deprecatory.
The Dependent elevation indicates a strong need for affection and support by others, and therefore, to gain approval, [he] tends to be submissive and conciliatory rather than assertive or argumentative. He looks to others to lead and care for him and in this way gives up responsibility for making decisions. Underlying his insecurity are feelings of low self-esteem. In his eagerness for acceptance and approval, he can be extremely agreeable and submissive, subjugating his own needs to those of others. He may be perceived as gullible, humble, docile and passive, and therefore more vulnerable to manipulation or domination by others. Internally, he may have a limited range of competencies in reducing tension and stressors.
40Ms Duffy said that on scales measuring more serious clinical symptomatology the offender's results lay just below significance on measures of Thought Disorder and Major Depression.
41Dr Stephen Allnutt examined the offender on 19 April 2013. In his report of 24 April 2013 he noted that at the time the Defendant had confessed to the police he was demonstrating significant symptoms of depression. Dr Allnutt said that the symptoms were characterised by
poor sleep, reduced appetite, reduced energy levels, reduced motivation, impaired concentration, loss of interest in usual activities, anhedonia; these symptoms had occurred in the wake of the index injury and according to him as a consequence of unresolved feelings of guilt in regard to his behaviour at the material time.
42By the time Dr Allnutt examined him the offender had experienced an amelioration of those symptoms but was manifesting residual symptoms of a resolving depressive disorder. He was taking the anti-depressant Zoloft on a daily basis. He was also continuing to experience mild panic attacks that had their onset at the time of his incarceration.
43The offender was assessed by Dr Susan Pulman, a clinical neuro-psychologist and forensic psychologist, on 16 and 28 October 2013. Dr Pulman administered a number of tests to the offender.
44That testing showed that his pre-morbid intellectual functioning was estimated to fall within the low average to average range. His current intellectual functioning fell within the low average range and at the fourth percentile. His General Ability Index fell in the low average range at the tenth percentile. There was some variability in the sub-test scores with his performance varying from Borderline on the task of non-verbal conceptual reasoning to Superior in the task of immediate attention span.
45Dr Pulman administered the self report Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scales (DASS-21). The offender's scores on each of those scales were in the Extremely Severe range. However, she said that those scores were inconsistent with his presentation during interview. She did not find, having administered the Test of Memory Malingering, that he was not endeavouring to do his best in the tests administered, unlike Dr Reid who found that the scores achieved by the offender when he had administered that test showed that he was not performing to the best of his ability. The scores in that test raised concerns about the reliability of the scores in the memory tests.
46In his assessment of the offender on 16 October 2013 Dr Reid found that the offender scored in the extremely low range for non-verbal intellectual functions (63) placing him at the first percentile for persons of a similar age. Dr Reid also noted that the offender presented with depressed mood, was slow in his responses, his affect was flat and he offered little in the way of spontaneous speech. Dr Reid thought, from the history he had obtained both from the offender and from reading earlier reports, that the offender appeared to have longstanding problems with attention, low self esteem and a past history of drug and alcohol abuse. Dr Reid was of the opinion that his level of depression was having a significant impact on his cognitive abilities.
47Some care must be taken in relation to all of the reports because, with the exception of the assessment by Ms Duffy, those reports were prepared after assessments designed to see whether the offender was fit to stand trial. Nevertheless, in general terms, they disclose a fairly similar picture of the offender being of low-average intelligence, with personality problems related to self-esteem, drug and alcohol issues, and suffering from depression.
48Ms Duffy noted that the offender expressed remorse and regret over his actions which she said appeared to have arisen from a series of errors in his judgment fuelled by misinformation from the woman Nadia. Although the offender did not give evidence before me, and I note the care that needs to be taken in such circumstances in accepting expressions of remorse given to psychologists and psychiatrists, the expressions of remorse to Ms Duffy are entirely consistent with all that has happened in the matter since the offender confessed to his crime. I refer again also to what Dr Allnutt reported that I have set out above. My observations of him during the sentencing hearing served to confirm that he was extremely remorseful for what he had done.
49The offender has a minor criminal history involving some property and driving offences. Some of these were committed whilst he was a minor and the last offences were in 2000. The Crown concedes that these do not disentitle him from being considered as a person of prior good character.