(l) The deceased's heart had stopped by the time ambulance officers arrived. Resuscitation was unsuccessfully attempted.
9 I return to the timing on Saturday morning, the day Mr Guzzetti died. The neighbour estimates the time of the "shelf crashing" as 8.15am. The time is fixed by her husband's driving lesson, which commenced at 7.45am and concluded at 8.45am. Her husband arrived home at or about the time that the wailing was first heard. There is an understandable inconsistency between the estimated time of 8.15am, on the one hand, and the estimated 10 minutes of silence and arrival of her husband, on the other. The foregoing is in no way a criticism of the witness, but has implications. Taking the evidence as it best fits the Crown case, there was a gap of 57 minutes (from 8.15am to 9.12am) between the crash and the call to emergency services.
10 There was a smudge of blood on the balustrade of the stairs, between the ground floor and the first landing, blood splatters on the architraves next to the stairs and on the wall adjacent to the stairs and next to the kitchen. There was also a part of the juice extractor on the floor next to the deceased, which juice extractor had DNA from the deceased on it and Mr Leung's fingerprint from his index finger. The deceased was found at the foot of the stairs, as earlier stated, being cradled by the accused with a pillow under his head.
11 Thereafter, the accused continued to behave hysterically and, at one stage, was required to be restrained, for his own safety, and that of others, and not for reasons of misconduct.
12 The house was, with one exception, in no disarray. Upstairs the beds had not been made, but otherwise the house was clean and tidy. Upstairs was in a state inconsistent with the occurrence of a physical altercation. Downstairs was in a like state, with one exception: the juice extractor component was on the floor adjacent to the stairs and the deceased, and something, the Crown submits the juice extractor component, had hit the wall in the kitchen above the doorway (and below the clock about 2.5 metres high). There were plaster and brick chips on the floor as a consequence. The component, as already stated, had on it the DNA of the deceased, not Mr Leung. The DNA was found on the spout, which the Crown suggests, in the scenario that this was the murder weapon, could be used as a handle. The single fingerprint was not in a position that would allow an inference to be drawn that it was used by Mr Leung as a weapon. Nor was it, of itself, consistent with a component being held by Mr Leung, as distinct from having been pushed or touched.
13 There were relatively fragile pieces of furniture and sculptures in the house, some near the stairs, that were intact and undamaged. Whatever occurred, it occurred on or near the staircase and to some extent in the kitchen (the room next to the staircase toward the rear of the house).
14 Lastly (except for the medical evidence to which I will shortly turn), both Mr Leung and the deceased were dressed in pyjama pants and a top. The deceased had slippers on his feet, being Italian leather slip-on shoes with no back. There was another slipper (of similar kind) in the hall on the other side of the stairwell than where the kitchen was situated (i.e. toward the lounge and dining areas and the front of the house). Presumably this other slipper belonged to Mr Leung.
Medical and Scientific Evidence
15 The medical evidence is at best ambivalent. The Crown called Dr Rodriguez, a neuropathologist, and Dr Botterill, a forensic pathologist, who, at the time, was a Senior Staff Specialist at the Department of Forensic Medicine and who performed the autopsy on the deceased. Further, the accused called Professor Hilton, forensic pathologist, interposed just prior to the close of the Crown case, because he was otherwise unavailable.
16 Dr Rodriguez testified to brain injuries suffered by the deceased, caused by blunt force injury, being a knock to the head either by the application of force to the head by a blunt object or the head hitting a hard object, e.g. a stair or a wall, etc.
17 Dr Rodriguez accepted that the brain injuries, of themselves, would not necessarily cause death and "there is some doubt as to exactly why this person died at the time he did", but considers there is a direct link to the blunt force injuries [Transcript page 271, lines 10-13]. If, he says, the injuries were to have caused severe diffuse axonal injury (DAI), then the deceased could not have cried out or sung. Further, Dr Rodriguez agrees "that the exact cause and mechanism of Mr Guzzetti's death cannot be stated beyond reasonable medical doubt". Dr Rodriguez was unable to say whether the deceased died from brain injuries.
18 The blunt force injuries to the head could, Dr Rodriguez says, be caused by falling down some stairs. Dr Rodriguez deferred to Dr Botterill as to cause of death because he, Dr Rodriguez, was looking only at the brain and no other part of the body, and he may, in some cases, in determining cause of death, by a process of eliminating other causes, arrive at a conclusion that a seemingly minor, otherwise non-fatal injury, was the cause [Transcript page 217, line 15; and page 276, line 40].
19 I turn then to the evidence of Dr Botterill. He prepared a 13-page report which incorporated Dr Rodriguez's findings. Dr Botterill concluded that the "direct cause of injury was blunt force head and neck injury". He could not be certain whether it was a combination of the two or one or the other. "There was blunt force head injury and blunt force neck injury, both of which have the potential to result in death … [but he] … can't say the relative contribution of both [sic: read each] but … [believed] … that it's most likely that both together have resulted in the death" [Transcript page 334, lines 22-28]. According to Dr Botterill's report, the deceased was 71 years of age with no past medical history.
20 Subsequently, Dr Botterill discovered (and the Court accepts) that the deceased had blood pressure problems for which he had been prescribed medication, traces of which were found on analysis. The deceased's brother, Mr Enzo Guzzetti, who came from Italy to give evidence, also testified that the deceased had osteoporosis in the knees.
21 The injuries included: tears over the skin of the right side of the chin; brazes [sic] and bruises over the skin of the right side of the floor of the mouth; multiple skin tears and bruises over the front of the neck and the upper front of the chest; bruising beneath the skin at the back of both sides of the head; a tear in the lining of the inside of the mouth near the right lower lip; and other findings, including those of Dr Rodriguez, namely, blood over the surface of the brain, and also bruises under the skin of the right arm, left forearm, the right wrist and the knuckles of both hands. There were also bruises to the left back and hip region. The deceased also had excess fluid in the lungs, enlargement of the heart and scarring of the kidneys. He had a 50 percent occlusion of one branch of the coronary artery system.
22 Dr Botterill concluded:
"Although any one of the individual injuries might be associated with a simple fall, the extent of distribution of the injuries is more in keeping with multiple blunt force injuries. It is possible that the neck bruising and chest injuries are related to application of force to the neck but discrete ligature marks or eyeball haemorrhages were not identified." [Transcript page 336, line 46.]
23 An explanation of the foregoing was given by Dr Botterill. A simple fall was explained as a fall in which the head was hit once. A complex fall (i.e. when the head was hit more than once) would include a fall down stairs. Strangulation usually causes burst blood vessels in the eyelids and eyeballs, which were not present. It is possible to have strangulation without them. Likewise, there was no fracture of the hyoid bone (which sits above the langio cartilages). Nor was there damage to the langio cartilages, to which damage occurs even more often in a strangulation.
24 The head injuries are not inconsistent with being hit over the head with a blunt instrument. They are also not inconsistent with being hit on the chin by the juicer component, falling back and hitting the head. The head injuries are also not inconsistent with falling down the stairs.
25 The bruising to the neck is not inconsistent with strangulation. Although, given the absence of petechial haemorrhages (the eyelids and eyeballs) and the absence of damage or fracture to the langio cartilages or the hyoid bone, it is an unusual strangulation, if it be one. It may be consistent with pressure on the carotid artery, at the battery point, causing the heart to slow and/or stop. The bruising to the neck is also not inconsistent with falling down stairs if there were protruding items into or onto which the deceased fell. However, as to the last-mentioned possibility, the injuries are remarkably widespread. Innocent possibilities would also include contact with the metal juice extractor, either at the bottom of the stairs or because the deceased was holding it and came in contact with it on the way down the stairs or at the bottom of the stairs.