Freed from jail on appeal following stabbing

By Darren Linton

Jan 30, 2022

In court: The Supreme Court Court of Appeal determined that the impact of imprisonment represented exceptional family hardship. Photo by supplied

A woman who broke into a Tatura house and stabbed a man because she thought he had assaulted someone close to her has been freed on appeal.

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Karina Rosemarie Curtis, 29, of Merrigum, pleaded guilty in the County Court to charges of aggravated burglary with an offensive weapon, intentionally causing injury and possessing a drug of dependence and was originally jailed for nine months.

The Supreme Court appeal court accepted that the impact imprisonment would have on her children amounted to exceptional family hardship.

"In our judgement, the exceptional hardship that it could reasonably have been anticipated would be inflicted upon her children by the applicant’s return to prison ought to have led the judge to impose a sentence that involved no further custodial component,“ the appeal court found.

"The impacts on her children, however, and on her family unit, that a return to prison would have entailed meant that a period of further imprisonment was wholly outside the range of sentencing options available to the judge.“

The appeal court re-sentenced Ms Curtis to a combination sentence of 111 days’ imprisonment — representing ‘time served’ — and confirmed the 18-month community corrections order.

In their published reasons the appeal court judges said the circumstances of the case were extremely unique.

“Self-evidently, therefore, the sentence that we imposed in exercising the sentencing discretion anew should not in any way be regarded as providing some kind of benchmark sentence for the offence of aggravated burglary, particularly in a case where injury has been caused to an occupant of the burgled premises.”

By Darren Linton

Shepparton News chief correspondent