R v Coonan[2002] QCA 465

SUPREME COURT OF QUEENSLAND

[1]  de JERSEY CJ  The appellant appeals against his conviction for the offence of unlawfully doing grievous bodily harm.  His grounds are that the complainant’s injuries did not amount to grievous bodily harm; and that the circumstances of his prior conviction for manslaughter, and of his having carried out a prior stabbing, should not have been adduced in evidence.

[2] The complainant gave evidence that on the relevant day, he and the appellant, who was a friend, drank extensively together.  In the evening, the complainant recalled seeing the appellant, snarling as he put it, in front of him.  The complainant felt pain and started to bleed.  The complainant was taken by ambulance to hospital.  He had suffered nine stab wounds, to the left loin, right shoulder, rear of the left shoulder and the head.  The treating doctor said that if left untreated, the wounds “would have endangered his life”.  The appellant made an incriminating admission to the complainant some days later.

[3] On the other hand, the complainant’s partner gave evidence that she witnessed the incident, and in effect that the appellant had acted in self-defence.  Counsel for the Crown submitted that her evidence was unreliable. 

[4] Other evidence showed that the appellant was in the habit of having a large knife in his possession; that the appellant admitted to the police that there had been an argument over car keys; and that about seven years earlier, the appellant had stabbed a man in the head after an apparently trivial argument, and four years earlier, had pleaded guilty to manslaughter, on the basis of a stabbing in the head again over another trivial incident.  There was additionally, as I have mentioned, the evidence of an incriminating admission made to the complainant.

[5] As to the first ground of appeal, the injuries relevantly amounted to grievous bodily harm if “likely” to endanger life.  Hind v Harwood (1995) 80 A Crim R 105, 116, 142, 143 deals with the meaning of that.  The learned Judge directed the jury in terms of “a strong chance or a probability”, and there was no criticism of that.  While it is true that the doctor in her evidence spoke from time to time in terms of possibilities, there was sufficient concentration on the matter of probability to warrant the jury’s reasonably distilling from her evidence the ultimate view that, absent treatment, the complainant would probably have died.  I do not accept that such an approach would have been “too equivocal, uncertain and tentative”, as was submitted.

[6] The second submission was that the relevant evidence “did no more than show the appellant’s propensity for that sort of crime in those circumstances”. To be admissible, such evidence must of course go much further, as explained in Pfennig v R (1994-5) 182 CLR 461, 480-1 and R v O'Keefe [2000] 1 Qd R 564, 573-4.

[7] In my view, notwithstanding Mr Carmody’s helpful submissions, the appellant did in this case leave a “unique signature” (Pfennig, supra, at 488; R v Carne (1997) 94 A Crim R 249, 272).  In all three violent cases, the appellant was considerably affected by the consumption of alcohol; the incident arose in a domestic type situation; the injuries were inflicted on a friend or neighbour; a kitchen type knife was used; an apparently trivial argument preceded the attack; and stabs were directed at the upper body and head of the victim.

[8] We have fortunately not reached a point, as a society, where such an approach indicates merely the common norm of criminally violent behaviour, the “stock in trade” of those who commit such acts.  The central issue in the case being who stabbed the victim, those features combined to establish an approach which, for its peculiarity, supported the view that whoever committed the previous crimes inferentially committed this one.  Add in the admission, in particular, and the conviction should in my view be seen as in law unassailable. 

[9] I would accordingly dismiss the appeal.

[10]  McPHERSON JA: For the reasons given by the Chief Justice, I agree that this appeal against conviction should be dismissed.

[11]  MULLINS J: I agree with the reasons of the Chief Justice and that the appeal should be dismissed.