Regina v Galea; Regina v Yeo

THE SUPREME COURT OF NEW SOUTH WALES COMMON LAW DIVISION

70040/98 REGINA v RAYMOND GALEA 70208/98 REGINA v KENG HWEE YEO

1 HIS HONOUR : Each of the prisoners was jointly indicted on a charge of murdering Christopher Mark Dorrian and, alternatively, of being an accessory after the fact to the commission of that murder by the co-accused. The jury found the prisoner Yeo guilty of murder and the prisoner Galea guilty of being an accessory after the fact to it. 2 It will be necessary to deal separately with each prisoner but there is some commonality in the facts with which I can deal for the purpose of sentence. It is important to bear in mind that the jury's verdict necessarily implied that Galea did not participate in the actual commission of the murder. His culpability derives from his knowledge that Yeo had committed the murder and, with that knowledge, acted with the intention of assisting her to escape detection or prosecution. 3 At material times Yeo and Galea lived in a de facto relationship. Yeo was employed as a psychiatric nurse in the Palm Court Rehabilitation Unit at Rozelle Hospital. Galea worked under contract for a political organization, the Shooters Party. They lived in premises at Petersham. From time to time, both had been actively engaged in target pistol shooting. Galea kept a number of licensed firearms in a safe at the premises. Significant among these was a .22 calibre weapon known by the brand/manufacture name of High Standard Citation. Yeo knew where a spare key to the safe was located and thus had access to the safe and its contents. 4 Yeo met the victim Christopher Dorrian as a result of his being a patient at Palm Court. There is no need to detail their encounters. She decided to leave Galea. She had spent nights with Christopher Dorrian in nurses' quarters at the hospital into which she had moved and at Petersham on an occasion when Galea was absent. Ultimately she leased a small flat at Lilyfield, in the interim arranging for a former fiance (not Galea) to accommodate Mr Dorrian for a few days. 5 The relationship between Yeo and Mr Dorrian was brief. I am satisfied that Yeo was motivated to kill him by a combination of her reaction to Mr Dorrian's disinterest in establishing any relationship with her beyond engaging in casual acts of sexual intercourse and her apprehensions concerning the possible consequences of investigation into her professional conduct in entering a relationship with a former patient of the hospital at which she was employed. 6 The evidence does not enable findings as to precise times of many events and much detail can only be known to the offenders. There is, however, no doubt that Galea's High Standard Citation pistol was used to discharge three bullets into, and ultimately to be recovered from, the head and neck of the victim. At some time, I am satisfied that Yeo accessed the safe, obtained that weapon and used it in the Lilyfield flat to shoot Christopher Dorrian. This registered pistol was later returned to the safe from which it was eventually taken by police. I find that the killing took place at some time shortly before Saturday 7 June 1997, in all probability on Friday 6th. 7 After the killing Yeo offered to and did resume her relationship with Galea and enlisted him in assisting her to seek to avoid detection of her crime. That assistance included disposal of the body of the victim and cleaning the flat in an effort to obliterate evidence of what had occurred there. Neither Yeo nor Galea disputed that they had been at the flat on Saturday and Sunday 7 and 8 June and for a short visit on Monday 9th, but they claimed that their activity was limited to cleaning the flat in the conventional sense for the innocent purpose of ensuring a return of Yeo's security deposit when she terminated the lease. She terminated the lease on Tuesday 10 June. I am satisfied that during their visits over the weekend Yeo and Galea both participated in the dismemberment of the body of the victim. My finding is based upon the distribution of matter including DNA of the victim and the presence of the prisoners in the flat when the body mutilation must have happened. There is no reasonable basis for hypothesizing that anybody else had entered the flat at the relevant time. It is fanciful to suggest that anyone else was concerned in this activity and I conclude to the necessary standard that both participated in the dismemberment and disposal of the body and the cleaning of the flat. 8 Police investigation commenced when the victim's head was discovered in a bag in tidal waters of the Cooks River on Saturday, 21 June. The relevant reach of the river is relatively near to the premises at Petersham where the prisoners had resumed cohabitation. Specific submissions were made by counsel for Galea that the evidence does not enable me to find that Galea assisted in anything beyond cleaning up the flat in distinction from participating in the dismemberment of the victim, the attempted disposal of the head in the river and the disposal of the decapitated balance of the body which has not been located. I reject those submissions although I accept the further submission that Galea had no foreknowledge of the crime which is, of course, consistent with his conviction as an accessory after the fact; but I would, as invited, find in the negative to any proposition that Galea had reason to anticipate that Yeo was going to commit the murder. 9 I turn to subjective matters, first concerning Yeo. She is a woman aged twenty eight years and has no prior convictions. Her work history appears to have been relatively good and she is, as mentioned, qualified in the nursing profession. As was her right, she gave no evidence at trial, nor after conviction. From incidental sources and what I have been told from the Bar table, I have some information about her family circumstances and some of her relationships. After the offence she and Galea resumed cohabitation but they have since parted. A gentleman described as her current partner gave evidence on an issue relating to bail during the trial. 10 It appears that Yeo's mother has been in poor health for many years. Some evidence was given by her sister about this and I gather from what has been said that her illness is of a psychiatric nature. I know no more about the topic than that and that, arising therefrom, the prisoner as eldest sibling needed to care for the family. I accept that she discharged this burden. She had left home however long before the killing. The evidence included some writings of the prisoner in the nature of diaries and the like. The content of these suggested that a psychiatric survey might be useful but, as her counsel mentioned in submissions at the sentence hearing, none is to be made available to me. On such an aspect I can therefore draw no inference either to the benefit or detriment of the prisoner. 11 Much of counsel's submission was focussed upon resisting imposition of an indeterminate sentence. I confirm what I said earlier that I have concluded that a specified term of imprisonment should be assessed. 12 I have already found to the contrary of a submission about motive and the final submission was a contention that I should ignore the circumstances of the mutilation and disposal of the body. I reject that submission. I accept of course that the crime was complete when death occurred and I find that this was as a result of and at the time of the shooting and necessarily preceded dismemberment and disposal of the body. Those latter circumstances were not ingredients of the crime but they are pertinent to the overall assessment of its seriousness. 13 The absence of plea or acknowledgment of guilt deprives the prisoner of any special lenience derivable from the demonstration of contrition or remorse. The necessary obtaining of the pistol from the safe manifested a degree of planning and I find that the killing was not the result of sudden passion or impulse. Although I have not classified the crime as being in the worst case category, it objectively involved a high degree of culpability. I shall take into account, to the extent that I can, the favourable subjective matters advanced on behalf of the prisoner but it must inevitably be concluded that a substantial sentence should be passed. 14 The prisoner was in custody from 23 July 1997 to 26 September 1997 and since 17 December 1999. I will date the sentence from 14 October 1999 to take those periods into account. 15 I am satisfied that the appropriate proportion of the head sentence to be specified as a non parole period is seventy five percent and I find no special circumstances which persuade me to depart from that proportion. 16 I turn to the prisoner Galea. I emphasize again that the conviction entered as a result of the jury's verdict is for a crime, the essence of which is offence against justice and a distinction must be drawn between that situation and the different situation of a confederate involved in the commission of, or the actual planning and facilitation of a killing. 17 As I have said, I am satisfied that the prisoner Galea rendered assistance to Yeo intending to help her avoid detection and prosecution and that assistance extended to the mutilation and dismemberment of the victim at Lilyfield and the disposal of the body parts, including that which has been recovered from the Cooks River. The prisoner was also engaged in cleaning the flat in an attempt to obliterate evidence of what had occurred there. I reject the submission that such findings could or should not be made. 18 I accept the submission that the prisoner was motivated by his then infatuation with Yeo. That may explain his behaviour; I find it mitigates it only slightly. 19 The prisoner Galea has no previous convictions. He is divorced from the mother of his son, parted from Yeo and has formed a new relationship. Plans to marry his new partner are mentioned in a letter written by her and tendered at the sentence hearing. That letter does not make clear whether the author recognizes the prisoner's guilt or not. Good character witnesses were called at trial and at the sentence hearing and a large batch of testimonial letters was tendered. There is a great variation in the apparent appreciation of the witnesses and authors of those testimonials as to why the prisoner is before the Court. However, I accept the general tenor of their opinions that the prisoner Galea is a generally law abiding citizen - apart from this crime - and is a hard working person, a sincere contributor to causes in which he believes, a generous volunteer with time and energy in particular to the Air Training Corps and his pistol club. He is regarded by his associates as a loyal friend and colleague. 20 He can, however, lay no claim to special leniency for manifestation of contrition or remorse for his crime. The jury must have found that his claim to ignorance about the killing was a pretence and his adherence to that claim attracts him no credit. 21 A submission is made that I should invest the sentence with an element of lenience, or alternatively, temper downwards the proportion between non parole period and head sentence, by reason of hardship visited upon the prisoner's son. Although in calendar years he is in his early twenties, he is said to be intellectually developed into his teens. Some detail of hardship is contained in a letter dated 5 March 2000 signed by the prisoner's son and what is contained in it is confirmed in some other letters to which I need not specifically refer. The circumstances of the young man are sad and, whilst it is true that there has apparently been a change in the willingness of his mother and her husband to accommodate him, as he states himself, they have expressed the view that it was time that he faced the challenges of life for himself. Imprisonment invariably affects the family members of a convict in different ways reflecting the needs, circumstances and dynamics of any particular family. I apprehend that every case would be different. I do not categorize this particular case as exceptional in that regard. Neither for the reason advanced nor otherwise do I find special circumstances persuading me to depart from the formula specified in s44(2) of the Crimes (Sentencing Procedure) Act 1999. 22 The objective seriousness of the prisoner's crime is high. The prescribed maximum penalty legislated by Parliament is twenty five years imprisonment (formerly penal servitude). The offence is comparatively rare. Some Judicial Commission statistics were handed up and showed very few cases but in the survey period between January 1990 and July 1999 the highest full term appears to have been eight years and the highest minimum term (for comparison with what will now be a non parole period), four years. Counsel referred to some cases: Tan Do ; Farroukh ; and Wilson . I do not find a great deal of helpful guidance in either the statistics or the cases. Each case must depend on its own facts. It is true that the prisoner was not seeking to protect someone engaged in professional criminal activity but to protect the object of his infatuation; however, the lengths he was prepared to and did go to, reveal a blatant willingness on his part to engage in horrific behaviour to assist her to seek to avoid retribution for her crime. The fact that the longest sentence in the statistical survey is eight years does not establish that period as appropriate to a worst case. A worst case potentially attracts the maximum prescribed by Parliament. The sentence I will impose does not represent a finding that the crime is in a worst case category but is proportionate to the objective criminality involved, tempered as far as I consider might reasonably be done, by the subjective matters favourable to the prisoner. 23 Galea has been in custody from 23 July 1997 to 31 October 1997 and since 29 December 1999. I shall date the sentence from 20 September 1999 to take those periods into account. 24 Keng Hwee Yeo, for the murder of Christopher Mark Dorrian, you are sentenced to imprisonment for twenty four years to commence on 14 October 1999. I set a non parole period of eighteen years from that date. You will become eligible for parole from 13 October 2017. 25 Raymond Galea, for being an accessory after the fact to the murder of Christopher Mark Dorrian by Keng Hwee Yeo, you are sentenced to imprisonment for eight years to commence on 20 September 1999. I set a non parole period of six years from that date. You will become eligible for parole from 19 September 2005. **********

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