R v Ridgeway

Supreme Court of NSW|2022-05-27|Before: Wilson J

JudgmenT

HER HONOUR: The offender, Lily Ridgeway, appeared for trial before this Court on 31 January 2022, arraigned upon a charge that, on 29 February 2020 at Raymond Terrace in this State, she unlawfully killed Jason Adams. On 8 February 2022, the jury empanelled to hear the trial returned a verdict of guilty to the charge on indictment. Today, the offender is to be sentenced for that crime. Manslaughter is an offence contrary to s 18(1)(b) of the Crimes Act 1900 (NSW) and it carries a maximum sentence upon conviction of 25 years imprisonment.

The Facts of the Offence

The Impact of the Crime

Because of the offender's crime a young man is dead and all of the potential of his life, all that which he could have been and done, is lost. The family of Jason Adams and others who loved him are left to bear the grief caused by his death, exacerbated as that grief is by its violence and suddenness. The Court has had the benefit of hearing from Mr Adams' mother, sister, and father, who each gave a victim impact statement, in person or with assistance, and their loss is an overwhelming one. They describe a good-natured boy and young man who enjoyed football and surfing and other outdoor activities, and who could always be relied upon to lend a helping hand to others. Mr Adams' mother, Simone Percival, referred to the hearts broken by the death of a much-loved young man. She had to endure what must have been the overwhelming pain of having to identify the body of her son. Kristy Adams, Jason's sister, referred to her grief at the loss of her brother's opportunity to meet her young son, and to have his own children at some point. She mourns what might have been and the future that her brother will never have, the chance taken from him. Mr Steven Adams described his grief as akin to the tearing of his soul. Each has been forever saddened by the loss of Jason, and I extend the sympathy of the Court to them.
There is no question that the unlawful taking of Mr Adams' life has had a terrible impact. A life has been lost to violence, and the community is the poorer.

Other Features Relevant to Sentence

Ms Ridgeway has a criminal history, which is before the Court as part of the evidence on sentence. Her first encounter with the criminal justice system was for an offence of affray, dealt with in the Children's Court in November 2014. She was again before that court for larceny, in February 2017, receiving a fine by way of penalty. Driving matters and some drug offences were finalised in the Local Court later in 2017.
On 28 November 2018, she was convicted and sentenced before the District Court at Newcastle for an offence of Aggravated Break, Enter, and Commit Serious Indictable Offence. She was sentenced to a term of imprisonment for 2 years and 2 months, with a non-parole period ("NPP") of 1 year and 1 month. The offender was subject to parole for that offence at the time of Mr Adams' death, having been released only a few months before it, on 28 November 2019. Parole was revoked on 3 March 2020, with revocation backdated to 29 February 2020, and the offender served the balance of the parole period of 10 months and 1 day in custody.
In addition to having been subject to parole when she killed Mr Adams, Ms Ridgeway was also at large on 29 February 2020, having been charged with offences of driving whilst cancelled and common assault, and convicted in her absence after failing to appear at the Forster Local Court for those matters on 25 February 2020. A warrant pursuant to s 25(2)(a) of the Crimes (Sentencing Procedure) Act 1999 (NSW) was issued on that date for the offender's apprehension. Her breach of conditional liberty and freedom whilst at large is a feature of aggravation.
Later, on 20 May 2020, the offender was sentenced for the common assault of which she had been convicted to a Community Corrections Order for 2 years, its term having recently expired.

The Offender's Case

Ms Ridgeway relies upon reports from Dr Richard Furst, Forensic Psychiatrist, and Dr Rebecca Smith, Forensic Psychologist. She has also written what was described as a letter of apology; provided correspondence from her grandmother, Ms Bailey; and tendered information concerning her role as a witness in a criminal prosecution in 2020 and 2021.
Although the offender did not give evidence on sentence, and the histories provided to the authors of the two reports, Dr Furst and Dr Smith, must be approached with caution, consistent with authority such as R v Qutami (2001) 127 A Crim R 369, there is no real reason to doubt the information given to the experts as to the offender's childhood circumstances, and the Crown does not argue that it should be doubted. Dr Furst referred to documentation held by the Department of Community Services that supports some of what the offender said, and the histories Ms Ridgeway gave to Dr Furst and Dr Smith were consistent.
The factual scenario provided to each of the doctors setting out the circumstances surrounding the death of Mr Adams was, to quote the reports, "drafted by defence", and is unlikely to accord wholly with the facts as found by the Court. That provides some qualification to the foundations of the opinions of Dr Furst and Dr Smith, although to a minimal extent only, since the Court accepts that the offender perceived Mr Adams posed a threat to her, even where no serious threat existed, and she acted on that basis.
What is known of the offender's circumstances is drawn from the reports, and evidence that was before the jury concerning the violent relationships in the offender's past together with the evidence in exhibits S3 and S4 on sentence.
Dr Furst consulted Ms Ridgeway via an audio-visual link on 22 March 2022. She told him that she was born in Newcastle and grew up there and in Nymboida and Karuah. She enjoyed school and continued at school until Year 12, doing reasonably well, until she began a relationship with Colin Glass when she was 16 years old.
The offender's childhood was one of dysfunction and disadvantage. Her father was an alcoholic and her mother had issues with gambling, drug use and mental illness. Ms Ridgeway was exposed to domestic violence in the family home, and violence more broadly in the Aboriginal community in which she was raised. She was sexually assaulted regularly as a very young child by a family member over a period of two or three years, and her younger siblings were later the victims of similar abuse at the hands of her mother's boyfriend, something the offender feels that she failed to prevent. When Ms Ridgeway was a teenager, her parents separated and she was left alone in the family home, attending school but without adult support or supervision. She began to use alcohol and drugs regularly.
On entering a relationship when she was 16 years old with a man more than twice her age, Colin Glass, she became the victim of violence at his hands, with a serious assault occurring on 2 April 2018 (T247 - T248). She was also introduced to heroin by this man, another sort of abuse.
After Mr Glass was gaoled for assaulting Ms Ridgeway, she took up with another violent man, and went with him to Queensland, where he too seriously assaulted her, on 28 January 2020 (T248). He too was gaoled. Ms Ridgeway turned to methylamphetamine use as a means of dealing with the trauma of what had happened to her.
The offender said that she had been using methylamphetamine and cannabis heavily in the days before Mr Adams was killed and had been without sleep for some 10 days.
Dr Furst concluded that it was probable the offender had an acute stress reaction or disorder because of the assault upon her in late January 2020, and that this disordered state continued until the time of the commission of the offence.
He observed that: "Childhood trauma, abuse, neglect and abandonment are well known to increase the risk of mental disorder, drug abuse and violence in later life, especially when coupled with negative, drug-using and pro-criminal family models". […] "[…] it is likely that Ms Ridgeway's experiences of emotional dysregulation, anxiety and drug use in her teenage years and adolescence were not just maladaptive emotional responses, but were responses driven by these type of brain pathways and deficits caused by the effects of long-term exposure to trauma, abuse and neglect in her childhood and teenage years, trauma networks in the brain reinforced then exacerbated by domestic violence victimisation".
Dr Furst concluded that the offender was emotionally dysregulated at the time of Mr Adams' death, because of the acute stress disorder from which she was likely suffering, probably exacerbated by the effects of drug use and lack of sleep. Her experiences of being the victim of serious violence in the past "probably made her much more sensitive than the average person" to the threat she perceived Mr Adams to offer.
The doctor regarded the offender as remorseful, insightful, and wishing to do better.
Dr Smith obtained a history from Ms Ridgeway that accords with that given to Dr Furst. The doctor described the offender's upbringing as occurring in "a particularly unstable environment characterised by parental detachment" where there was: "[…] systemic and intergenerational violence, neglect, abuse (including sexual abuse), and drug and alcohol abuse associated with inherent aboriginal disadvantage".
Sadly, the offender described having been "molested a fair bit" from a very young age, speaking of this abuse as if it were an ordinary part of childhood. It was her father and his partner who introduced Ms Ridgeway to methylamphetamine use at what must have been about age 15 or 16; the neglect by her parents of the younger children caused the offender to take over their care at a time when she was herself yet a child. Overall, Ms Ridgeway described her life as one where there had never been any "positives", but only "negatives".
Dr Smith, in common with Dr Furst, considered Ms Ridgeway had been significantly affected at the time of Mr Adams' death by her own traumatic background and feelings of being unsafe and vulnerable. She regards the offender as motivated to address her drug use issues and past trauma, displaying a positive attitude towards change.
In her letter dated this month Ms Ridgeway expressed her remorse for her actions on 29 February 2020.
Ms Ridgeway said (with any unorthodox spelling corrected): "I am so sorry for what happened that night as it all really affects me knowing that I am responsible for the loss of someone's life. It is something that will always affect me and will never sit right with me. A major contributor to that night and how it played out was that I wasn't myself mentally, emotionally, or spiritually. I had a lot of recent trauma that impacted my drug issues and I think I was just trying to numb myself and escape reality. I feel sick with sadness about what happened that night as it's not the woman I ever set out to be and a situation that I never thought I would see myself in. I hope that you can take into consideration that I was not myself that night".
Having explained the steps she has taken in an effort to better herself, Ms Ridgeway returned in her letter to her regret and remorse for what had happened. She said: "I understand that what happened that night has really affected a lot of people, especially Jason's loved ones and for that I would like to apologise for your loss and your heartache. Knowing that I am responsible for the loss of someone's life affects me a lot, it makes me feel very ashamed and sick to my stomach. I have read the victim impact statements and the poem, my lawyer gave me copies last week. I have sat them by my bedside in my cell and have been re-reading over them a lot".
Upon release from prison Ms Ridgeway will have family support and, in her grandmother, assistance where she will most need it - with drug rehabilitation. Ms Bailey has been a moving force in the establishment of a residential drug rehabilitation facility for aboriginal women, and she will be able to provide practical support to the offender in entering a rehabilitation programme.
The final evidence in the offender's case, Ex. S5, is directed to establishing that the offender has, in 2020 and 2021, provided assistance to the authorities with respect to the prosecution of an individual charged with serious child sexual assault offences. She made a witness statement in April 2020 and was prepared to give her evidence at trial in 2021, although she could not be found. It is submitted that the evidence provides a basis for a reduction on the sentence that would otherwise have been imposed upon her, pursuant to s 23A of the Crimes (Sentencing Procedure) Act.

The Sentence to be Imposed

The determination of the sentence to be imposed upon the offender requires the reconciliation of features that demand quite opposite outcomes, to meet the purposes of sentencing set out by s 3A of the Crimes (Sentencing Procedure) Act. The sentence must punish the offender adequately for her crime and hold her accountable for it; it must recognise the harm done and denounce the offender's conduct; but it must also promote her rehabilitation. Specific and general deterrence must be considered, as must the protection of the community.
The starting point is that a human life was wrongly taken, and great harm has been done. As the Crown reminded the Court in submission, that is a feature that cannot be lost sight of, no matter how compelling the offender's case on sentence: R v MD & Ors (2005) 156 A Crim R 372; [2005] NSWCCA 342.
That great wrong is to be punished bearing in mind, and giving full weight to, the offender's personal circumstances. Whilst this was an entirely needless killing, the offender's act was the culmination of long years of trauma, violence, and abuse. Even though, on the objective and reliable evidence, Mr Adams posed no real threat to her, Ms Ridgeway was primed to see danger around her because her life had so often been lived in dangerous circumstances. Her perceptions could only have been further distorted by the drugs she had been abusing over the previous days. Her response, which she described as "blacking out" or going into "survival mode", must have been almost an instinctive one.
I accept that Ms Ridgeway was in the emotionally dysregulated state Dr Furst considered was likely and which, to some extent, common sense suggests, given her history as a victim of domestic and other violence and the evidence of the terrible violence she suffered just one month before: that is, she was suffering from an acute stress disorder, and she was hypersensitive to any threat.
That state of emotional dysregulation had its origins in the significant disadvantage of the offender's upbringing, where she endured a chaotic lifestyle surrounded by, and the victim of, drug use and violence. As Dr Furst observed, such a childhood likely had a damaging impact upon the core structures of the offender's brain and neural connections, leaving her less able than an individual without that adverse developmental history to regulate emotion.
Intoxication further twisted Ms Ridgeway's perceptions and, whilst intoxication is not ordinarily a feature that mitigates sentence, it can have that effect in some, very limited, circumstances, as here: R v Henry (1999) 46 NSWLR 346 at [273], Hayek v R [2016] NSWCCA 126 at [76]. The use of drugs by the offender was a habit inculcated in her as a child by adults who should have protected her from such harm, including her own father. It is little wonder that she thereafter relied upon illicit drugs as a means of coping with the distress of her past as a victim of emotional, physical, and sexual violence, and turned to drugs in the weeks following the abuse to which she was subjected in January 2020. Her drug use only made her more vulnerable to conflict.
The offender's moral culpability, her blameworthiness for her conduct must, in these circumstances, be reduced, and considerably so: Bugmy v The Queen (2013) 249 CLR 571; [2013] HCA 37 at [44]. Where her moral culpability is reduced, the application of the principle of general deterrence must have lesser weight.
Whilst an offender's compromised capacity to control a violent response to life events can require the sentence imposed to give greater weight to the protection of the community, I do not think it has that impact in the offender's case. Dr Furst referred to Ms Ridgeway's level of intelligence and good school performance, together with the educative courses she has completed, and work undertaken in custody, to conclude that she has good prospects of further educating herself and obtaining useful employment in the future. He did not think she posed an ongoing threat to others, stating that: "Ms Ridgeway does not appear to be a violent person by nature, her criminal history being relatively short / light compared to other conduct disordered youth and young adults coming before the courts in NSW. Her individual risk factors mostly relate to her trauma history, emotional dysregulation and addiction issues, factors she has been addressing in treatment/ counselling whilst in custody".
I accept Dr Furst's opinion in this regard, the Court concluding that, as long as the applicant can maintain abstinence from drugs, and she avoids the company of drug users and criminals in the future, her prospects are positive. She will have the practical aid her grandmother can provide to break her habit of drug use, a path the offender has already walked some distance along, by remaining abstinent from illicit drugs in custody.
Her prospects are further evidenced by the vocational courses the offender has undertaken, underlined by her previous good school record. She has the personal qualities to live a law-abiding life, and one free from violence. She appears also to have the determination to do so.
Ms Ridgeway will need assistance and a longer than usual period of supervision to that end, and I make a finding of special circumstances pursuant to s 44 of the Crimes (Sentencing Procedure) Act.
Although she entered a plea of not guilty to the crime of Mr Adams' manslaughter, that does not axiomatically mean that the offender feels no regret. I am persuaded that she was and remains distressed by the consequences of her actions, both for Mr Adams's death and for the grief occasioned to his family. She told Dr Furst that: "I have remorse. I do care about the victim and his family. The impacts… […] I do feel for his family a lot".
In her letter, Ms Ridgeway made similar statements of regret for the harm done to Mr Adams and his loved ones. Although the Crown submits the letter should be given little weight, consistent with the authority such as Quatami and Imbornone v R [2017] NSWCCA 144, I am persuaded that it is a genuine account of the offender's feelings, and she is remorseful for her crime. As counsel for the offender pointed out, the contents of the letter are consistent with other evidence, notably the reports of Drs Furst and Smith. There is nothing in Ms Ridgeway's words that strikes a discordant note, or points to invention or exaggeration. It reads as a true acknowledgment of responsibility for Mr Adams' death, grief at the terrible impact on others of that death, and an attempt to understand her own role in it.
The Court accepts her sentiments as real, and deeply felt, and accepts that the offender is remorseful for her offence.
The assistance to authorities, whilst not of a high order, should be recognised. Although it is the sort of assistance that any citizen who sees or hears something relevant to the prosecution for a criminal offence is expected to provide, there was no obligation upon the offender to provide her statement, or to agree to give evidence. Her willingness to do so, even in circumstances where adverse consequences could have flowed to her as a prisoner in a correctional facility, has value. It should be recognised by a modest 5% discount on the sentence that would otherwise have been imposed.
Ms Ridgeway has already spent a period of time in custody referable to this matter, although the position is complicated by the revocation of parole for an unrelated offence following her arrest. Although not in custody on 29 February 2020, the revocation of parole commenced on that date, with the parole period expiring on 2 January 2021. In the period 2 March 2020 (when Ms Ridgeway was arrested) to 2 January 2021 the offender was both serving balance of parole and on remand relating to this matter, a period of 306 days. From 3 January 2021 to 12 June 2021, and from 20 December 2021 until today, a total period of 320 days, her incarceration has been solely connected with the present matter. Including the 306 days when the offender was both serving balance of parole and on remand, she has spent 626 days in custody.
Although the Court can commence the sentence on any appropriate date before today in compliance with s 47 of the Crimes (Sentencing Procedure) Act, there should in my view be some discrete portion of the 626 days the offender has spent in custody which reflects only the balance of parole. The offender was in breach of her parole not only through the killing of Mr Adams, but also by her acknowledged use of prohibited drugs in this period. Full credit against sentence for the whole of the parole period is not appropriate, although it must be recognised that the offender's parole was revoked only because she was charged with respect to Mr Adams' death. The sentence imposed today will commence on 29 November 2020, a starting date that allows for a modest discrete period after the offender began to serve the balance of her parole.

Conclusion

The task of the Court is to have regard to all the matters to which I have referred and impose a sentence which properly reflects each of them. I acknowledge that Mr Adams' family may find it difficult to understand why the sentence imposed upon Ms Ridgeway should have regard to her background and personal circumstances, or be mitigated by them in any way, or even why she should receive credit for time served that related to revocation of parole.
Ms Perceval said in her victim impact statement that it had seemed to her that the court proceedings were all about the offender, and one sided. Her experience of them has been one of disempowerment. It is understood that the families of victims of crime may feel that their lost one has been forgotten, or disregarded, and that the process employed by the criminal courts advantages the offender. That may be the perception, but I assure Ms Percival that Mr Adams has not been forgotten.
I hope Ms Perceval, Mr Adams and their family can understand that no sentence this Court could impose can ever make up for the loss of their son, brother, and loved one; and nor can the value of Mr Adams' life be measured by the sentence to be imposed. Nothing the Court can do can address the magnitude of their pain. The imposition of sentence serves quite different purposes, provided by s 3A of the Crimes (Sentencing Procedure) Act. The immeasurable grief occasioned to the Adams family by the death of Jason Adams is acknowledged. Perhaps the finalisation of these proceedings can bring, at least, some lessening of the pain and distress they have undoubtedly caused.

orders

Lily Ridgeway, having been convicted on 8 February 2022 of the manslaughter of Jason Adams, on 29 February 2020 in this State, is sentenced to imprisonment for 7 years and 7 months to date from 29 November 2020 and expiring on 28 June 2028. There will be a non-parole period of 5 years, expiring on 28 November 2025, that being the earliest date upon which the offender may be released to parole.

DISCLAIMER - Every effort has been made to comply with suppression orders or statutory provisions prohibiting publication that may apply to this judgment or decision. The onus remains on any person using material in the judgment or decision to ensure that the intended use of that material does not breach any such order or provision. Further enquiries may be directed to the Registry of the Court or Tribunal in which it was generated. Decision last updated: 24 June 2022

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