- Peter Dupas plays the system
- By Alan Howe
- The Herald Sun
- 09/03/2009 Make a Comment
- Contributed by: The Rooster ( 258 articles in 2009 )
OR how long can the Victorian judiciary dodge its conscience?
Serial killer Peter Dupas, whose second career - playing the courts like a violin - has become his full-time job, is up again next month.
In an astonishing decision, he has been allowed to appeal against his conviction for the murder of Mersina Halvagis 12 years ago.
There are rules about such appeals, and deadlines for their acceptance.
And with good reason.
You can't have the Halvagis family's torture extended endlessly just because Dupas wants to manipulate them from behind bars.
Dupas's original application for leave to appeal against this murder conviction was rightly struck out.
It was submitted too late.
He missed the deadline.
But Justice Robert Redlich reinstated the application last September and the Crown did not oppose it.
Taxpayers are funding this farce as the depraved Dupas plays the system he knows so well.
But his next absurd court appearance, an unnecessary torture for the families of those he has killed and of those others police are convinced he murdered, should herald a review of sentencing, and especially the concept of concurrent sentencing.
The judiciary has an elite membership, sometimes even pompous, and is resistant to criticism.
But not a person to whom I have spoken in our state believes that our judges and magistrates are in touch with the rest of us.
The judiciary insists that sentencing is a perpetually and almost insolubly complex business properly understood by very few.
Only those who have sat through every moment of a trial can begin to correctly estimate the punishment an offender should receive.
Perhaps.
But too many sentences are clearly inadequate, and not just the obvious slaps on the wrists for quite serious offences.
It is high time to review the notion of concurrent sentencing - a curious concept that I suspect is often employed lazily as an easy solution in complex cases.
Essentially, such sentences are get-out-of-jail-free cards generously dispensed by judges to offenders.
You've committed two serious crimes?
Here's the deal: you'll be serving the time for the first at the same time as being detained for the second.
Buy one, get one free.
It's as crude and simplistic as that.
Concurrent sentencing is not just a flawed concept, it can kill you.
In recent years it has resulted in the murder of five Victorian women.
All of Peter Dupas's known victims - Margaret Maher, Mersina Halvagis and Nicole Patterson -would be alive today had he not been allowed by Judge Roland Leckie to serve concurrently parts of his sentence for a knife-wielding rape and indecent assault in 1985.
And William James Watkins' victims - sisters Colleen and Laura Irwin - would not have been stabbed to death at their Altona home in 2006 had the convicted rapist not also been given concurrent sentences.
Dupas ranks among the three most repulsive men in Victoria, alongside Robert Farquharson, who drove his three sons to their death in a Winchelsea dam in 2005, and the simpering John Myles Sharpe who killed his pregnant wife and 19-month-old daughter with a speargun the year before.
Farquharson and Sharpe's crimes were almost certainly unavoidable.
Neither had popped up on the police or legal system's radar.
But we were wearily familiar with Dupas's perversion and murderous capability.
The judiciary could, and should, have stopped him.
I hope someone, somewhere looks at their bewigged reflection and feels at least a twinge of doubt.
As is reported in Jim Main's hard-hitting new book Rot In Hell: Peter Dupas, the Mutilating Monster, Judge Leckie was well aware of Dupas and his possibilities.
In sentencing him that day in 1985, Leckie said: "On the evidence that I have read before me this morning there seems to be a very good chance - if you were at large again - that some other girl might suffer in the same way."
He certainly had that right.
Judge Leckie was fully aware of Dupas's already dark past.
Dupas stabbed his first victim 17 years earlier, he had been sentenced to nine years for rape in 1974, but released in five.
Within weeks he stabbed and raped other women.
Judge Leckie continued: "There is a strong possibility of your reoffending, that the recidivism rate in cases of your type is between 80 per cent and 90 per cent or even higher."
It sounded, as it so often does with judges about to deliver inadequate jail time, that Dupas was facing perhaps two decades behind bars.
Judge Leckie sentenced the monster to six years on the indecent assault charge, and 12 years for rape.
Had Dupas been put away for 18 years, his 1990s killing spree would have been avoided.
But he ruled that the six-year sentence was to be served concurrent with the 12-year sentence, and then generously set a minimum of 10 years. He was released after just seven.
That day a shadow lurched across the mortal turf of three young girls.
(Rot in Hell by Jim Main is published by BAS Publishing. RRP $32.95)
PAM O'Donnell remembers her last child, Nicole, "as a brilliant baby - the best any mother could have".
Every day is hard for Nicole's mum, "but particularly the anniversary of her death, followed by her birthday and Mother's Day".
"And it's getting harder, not easier," she said.
"Things come out of left field and really get to you, trigger off the emotions.
"When Cathy Freeman won at the Sydney Olympics and she was doing the lap of honour and she was surrounded by all the photographers I broke down.
"Even though it was a happy occasion it reminded me of being in court and coming out and the photographers . . . It is things like that you are not prepared for."
She believes the judiciary is over-sympathetic to criminals and is convinced the legal system "is responsible for my daughter dying".
And she has a point.
As far back as his first trial in 1974, the judge described Dupas's first known attack as "one of the worst rapes that could be imagined" and then, in a fashion pretty much indicative of our skewed legal system, delivered an extraordinarily lenient sentence, too little of which the accused served.
Before his late 1990s' killing spree, Dupas's various serious rapes and attacks had seen him jailed four times for a collective 19 years - but on every occasion he was released before the minimum period set by the presiding judges.
Mrs O'Donnell ran a campaign through the Herald Sun for mandatory sentencing for serial rapists and violent, repeat offenders.
She firmly believes that any repeat offender should, on top of any new sentence, be forced to serve out any unserved part of a previous sentence.
"And I am very much against concurrent sentences. I am a firm believer in cumulative sentencing," she said.
Mrs O'Donnell might be heartbroken, but she is also strong and doesn't want to see other families suffer like hers.
Serial killer Peter Dupas, whose second career - playing the courts like a violin - has become his full-time job, is up again next month.
In an astonishing decision, he has been allowed to appeal against his conviction for the murder of Mersina Halvagis 12 years ago.
There are rules about such appeals, and deadlines for their acceptance.
And with good reason.
You can't have the Halvagis family's torture extended endlessly just because Dupas wants to manipulate them from behind bars.
Dupas's original application for leave to appeal against this murder conviction was rightly struck out.
It was submitted too late.
He missed the deadline.
But Justice Robert Redlich reinstated the application last September and the Crown did not oppose it.
Taxpayers are funding this farce as the depraved Dupas plays the system he knows so well.
But his next absurd court appearance, an unnecessary torture for the families of those he has killed and of those others police are convinced he murdered, should herald a review of sentencing, and especially the concept of concurrent sentencing.
The judiciary has an elite membership, sometimes even pompous, and is resistant to criticism.
But not a person to whom I have spoken in our state believes that our judges and magistrates are in touch with the rest of us.
The judiciary insists that sentencing is a perpetually and almost insolubly complex business properly understood by very few.
Only those who have sat through every moment of a trial can begin to correctly estimate the punishment an offender should receive.
Perhaps.
But too many sentences are clearly inadequate, and not just the obvious slaps on the wrists for quite serious offences.
It is high time to review the notion of concurrent sentencing - a curious concept that I suspect is often employed lazily as an easy solution in complex cases.
Essentially, such sentences are get-out-of-jail-free cards generously dispensed by judges to offenders.
You've committed two serious crimes?
Here's the deal: you'll be serving the time for the first at the same time as being detained for the second.
Buy one, get one free.
It's as crude and simplistic as that.
Concurrent sentencing is not just a flawed concept, it can kill you.
In recent years it has resulted in the murder of five Victorian women.
All of Peter Dupas's known victims - Margaret Maher, Mersina Halvagis and Nicole Patterson -would be alive today had he not been allowed by Judge Roland Leckie to serve concurrently parts of his sentence for a knife-wielding rape and indecent assault in 1985.
And William James Watkins' victims - sisters Colleen and Laura Irwin - would not have been stabbed to death at their Altona home in 2006 had the convicted rapist not also been given concurrent sentences.
Dupas ranks among the three most repulsive men in Victoria, alongside Robert Farquharson, who drove his three sons to their death in a Winchelsea dam in 2005, and the simpering John Myles Sharpe who killed his pregnant wife and 19-month-old daughter with a speargun the year before.
Farquharson and Sharpe's crimes were almost certainly unavoidable.
Neither had popped up on the police or legal system's radar.
But we were wearily familiar with Dupas's perversion and murderous capability.
The judiciary could, and should, have stopped him.
I hope someone, somewhere looks at their bewigged reflection and feels at least a twinge of doubt.
As is reported in Jim Main's hard-hitting new book Rot In Hell: Peter Dupas, the Mutilating Monster, Judge Leckie was well aware of Dupas and his possibilities.
In sentencing him that day in 1985, Leckie said: "On the evidence that I have read before me this morning there seems to be a very good chance - if you were at large again - that some other girl might suffer in the same way."
He certainly had that right.
Judge Leckie was fully aware of Dupas's already dark past.
Dupas stabbed his first victim 17 years earlier, he had been sentenced to nine years for rape in 1974, but released in five.
Within weeks he stabbed and raped other women.
Judge Leckie continued: "There is a strong possibility of your reoffending, that the recidivism rate in cases of your type is between 80 per cent and 90 per cent or even higher."
It sounded, as it so often does with judges about to deliver inadequate jail time, that Dupas was facing perhaps two decades behind bars.
Judge Leckie sentenced the monster to six years on the indecent assault charge, and 12 years for rape.
Had Dupas been put away for 18 years, his 1990s killing spree would have been avoided.
But he ruled that the six-year sentence was to be served concurrent with the 12-year sentence, and then generously set a minimum of 10 years. He was released after just seven.
That day a shadow lurched across the mortal turf of three young girls.
(Rot in Hell by Jim Main is published by BAS Publishing. RRP $32.95)
PAM O'Donnell remembers her last child, Nicole, "as a brilliant baby - the best any mother could have".
Every day is hard for Nicole's mum, "but particularly the anniversary of her death, followed by her birthday and Mother's Day".
"And it's getting harder, not easier," she said.
"Things come out of left field and really get to you, trigger off the emotions.
"When Cathy Freeman won at the Sydney Olympics and she was doing the lap of honour and she was surrounded by all the photographers I broke down.
"Even though it was a happy occasion it reminded me of being in court and coming out and the photographers . . . It is things like that you are not prepared for."
She believes the judiciary is over-sympathetic to criminals and is convinced the legal system "is responsible for my daughter dying".
And she has a point.
As far back as his first trial in 1974, the judge described Dupas's first known attack as "one of the worst rapes that could be imagined" and then, in a fashion pretty much indicative of our skewed legal system, delivered an extraordinarily lenient sentence, too little of which the accused served.
Before his late 1990s' killing spree, Dupas's various serious rapes and attacks had seen him jailed four times for a collective 19 years - but on every occasion he was released before the minimum period set by the presiding judges.
Mrs O'Donnell ran a campaign through the Herald Sun for mandatory sentencing for serial rapists and violent, repeat offenders.
She firmly believes that any repeat offender should, on top of any new sentence, be forced to serve out any unserved part of a previous sentence.
"And I am very much against concurrent sentences. I am a firm believer in cumulative sentencing," she said.
Mrs O'Donnell might be heartbroken, but she is also strong and doesn't want to see other families suffer like hers.
Source: https://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,,25157265-5000117,00.html
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