Committal set aside

Press, 19 December 1986, Page 7

Committal set aside

PA Wellington A Dunedin man who sexually violated an elderly woman last May has been sentenced by the Court of Appeal to serve a five-year prison term. Michael Edwin Redmile, aged 37, was found guilty by a jury in the High Court at Dunedin of sexual violation, and was ordered to be detained in Cherry Farm Hospital as a committed patient. The Court of Appeal has set aside that order and on the application of the Solicitor-General substituted the prison sentence. Redmile had appealed against conviction. The appeal was dismissed. The order for suppression of his name by the sentencing Judge was discharged by the Court of Appeal. Mr Warwick Flaus, for the Crown, argued that the proper course for the sentencing judge to have taken was to sentence Redmile to prison with a direction that psychiatric reports be sent to the prison authorities so that action could be taken if necessary under the Mental Health Act.

He argued that Redmile’s offending was sb grave as to call for a prison sentence and that the offending had not been motivated or influenced by any untoward factor in his mental state. Mr Flaus also argued that an order such as that made by the sentencing Judge rendered Redmile a committed patient in terms of the Mental Health Act, placing him under the formal care of the hospital superintendent who was obliged to discharge him when the superintendent was of the opinion that the patient was fit to be discharged.

Redmile’s committal would have had the effect of removing the stress which required his detention in a psychiatric hospital in his own interest, and when detention in such a hospital for his own good was no longer necessary (because the stresses had gone) Redmile would not be returned to prison but released into the community from which he had been removed in the first place, for offending unrelated to the mental condition, and so give him a liberty which he would not otherwise have.

Mr Justice McMullin, delivering the judgment of the Court, said that the sentencing of offenders in situations such as Redmile’s case was a difficult matter. It called for a

balancing of interests. In this case the Judge recognised that the gravity of the crime would normally have justifed a prison sentence. On the other hand he had been justifiably concerned that Redmile, if sentenced to prison, might commit suicide through the fear which confinement in a prison might engender in him.

The question was how best to impose a sentence of imprisonment which reflected the comjnunity’s abhorrence of offences of this kind and Redmile’s conduct in particular, and, at the same time, take care of the concern the psychiatrists had expressed for his safety if he was sent to a penal institution. The Court directed that

the Registrar of the Court of Appeal send copies of the psychiatric reports on Redmile to the superintendent of the prison in which Redmile was to be detained, so that an officer might apply in terms of the Mental Health Act for a reception order which would have the effect of committing Redmile to a psychiatric institution as a special patient.

In the event that two medical practitioners appointed by the Director of the Mental Health Division certified that it was no longer necessary to detain Redmile as a mentally disordered person, the Director of Mental Health might direct that he be removed to a prison to complete his sentence, the Court said.