WOMAN WITH PERSONALITY DISORDER CHARGED WITH MANSLAUGHTER SEEKS TO REDUCE HER SENTENCE
DPP v Dolheguy [2020] VSC 704 (22 October 2020)
This case involves the sentencing of the accused charged with manslaughter where the accused suffers from a severe personality disorder which she used as a ground to mitigate the penalty imposed upon her.
Facts:
Jamie Lee Dolheguy was charged with the Murder of Maulin Hirenkumar Rathod, a man she met through a dating application, when he strangled the deceased to death. Prior to the victim’s death were internet searches made by the accused on how to murder someone. Accused made a plea of guilt for the crime of manslaughter hence, the jury acquitted the accused of the charge of murder but found her guilty of manslaughter. The maximum penalty for the offence of manslaughter is 20 years’ imprisonment.
The evidence given at the sentencing hearing by the forensic psychiatrists of the severity of your dysfunction is consistent with evidence given at the trial about the intense level of care required over many years, including 24 hour care for several years, numerous episodes of self-harm by cutting and bodily insertion of objects, and the high number of hospital admissions required as a consequence. Each of the professional caregivers and treating professionals noted that she was one of, if not the most, challenging clients they had ever engaged with.
It is abundantly clear from all of the evidence that you have a profound personality disorder and impaired mental functioning particularly when she is in an aroused state.
Issue: Should the sentence of the accused be reduced?
Law:
- Brown v The Queen-an offender diagnosed with a personality disorder should be treated as in no different position from any other offender who seeks to rely on an impairment of mental functioning as mitigating sentence in one or other of the ways identified in R v Verdins.
Analysis:
In the case of the accused, once she reached an acute level of anger and were in an aroused state, her emotional dysregulation made it extremely difficult for her to control the impulse to act out that anger so that while she was aware that strangling the victim was wrong and she knew what she was doing and could in fact organise the steps that led to the actions which caused Mr Rathod’s death, the court is satisfied that her cognitive state (that is her capacity to think clearly and logically about your actions) was likely to have been severely impaired, particularly at the time of the doing of the act. Furthermore, her reduced capacity to experience and express empathy meant that you were not sufficiently responsive to Mr Rathod’s distress to stop.
In all the circumstances, her moral culpability for the offending is significantly reduced by reason of your severe personality disorder, which relevantly impaired your mental functioning at the time. As a result hersentence must be significantly moderated.
Your moral culpability for the offending is also reduced by reason of the terrible mistreatment and the deprivation you suffered as a child.
An attribute of your personality disorder is a limited capacity for empathy. Nevertheless, the court also accepts that you do feel remorse to the extent that you are able. It follows that you must be given the benefit of remorse in mitigation of your sentence.
Conclusion: The accused shall be imprisoned for a term of nine years. The court fixed a non-parole period of five years and six months.
