STATE OF TASMANIA v RENEE LORRAINE DONALD 5 JULY 2019
COMMENTS ON PASSING SENTENCE PEARCE J
Renee Donald, on 12 March 2019 you pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact to the murder of Tyson Clarke. In about June 2016 you and Mr Clarke and Ian Rosewall all moved into a house rented by Robert Broad in Mitchell Street Mowbray. You had been in a relationship with Mr Clarke for about 14 months. He was 24 and you were 18. Not long after the move into Mitchell Street, you broke up with Mr Clarke and took up with Mr Rosewall who was then aged 44. On 20 July 2016, you were out. However when you returned to the house Mr Rosewall told you that he had murdered Mr Clarke. He had done so by striking the back of Mr Clarke’s head with a hammer at least four times, causing fatal head injuries.
From that day you, with Mr Rosewall, embarked on a strategy to assist him to keep the murder secret so he may escape punishment for his crime. You knew that Mr Rosewall had killed Mr Clarke from the day of his murder. You knew that Mr Rosewall put his body in the shed at the house, and then buried it in the back yard. There was an obvious grave which had been dug by Mr Rosewall near the back door. It is not asserted that you helped Mr Rosewall to deal with the body in that way, but from 20 July 2016 you and he jointly set on a deliberate course of conduct designed to conceal the murder. You sent a series of messages from Mr Clarke’s phone and Facebook account to other persons, including Mr Clarke’s father, Timothy Clarke. There were numerous such messages and your purpose in sending them was to make it seem as though Tyson Clarke was still alive by pretending to be him. For months Timothy Clarke believed he was communicating with his son. The messages included that he was still in a relationship with you and you were pregnant with his twins. As Tyson you asked Timothy Clarke for money. You wished him a happy Father’s day. You also sent messages to at least three other persons, either friends or family of Tyson Clarke, either pretending to be him or designed to make it appear he was still alive. Over the ensuing eight months or so, Timothy Clarke continued to receive messages but became progressively more suspicious that his son was not the author of them. In March 2017 he notified the police and a missing person investigation was commenced. You were interviewed by the police on 16 March 2017 and falsely claimed that you had seen Tyson Clarke on a number of occasions in the months following his death. The Centrelink disability benefits to which he was entitled before he died were still being paid into your bank account. Between July 2016 and March 2017 you and Mr Rosewall regularly withdrew the money, almost $17,000, and took it for yourselves. You lied to the police and said that you thought Mr Rosewall was giving the money to Mr Clarke. You are not to be sentenced for offences of dishonesty with which you have not been charged, but your conduct forms part of the way in which you acted to conceal the murder and assist Mr Rosewall to escape punishment and demonstrates the absence of remorse. You used Mr Clarke’s phone to correspond with his lawyers to make it seem he was still alive, months after he was dead. Despite a broad ranging investigation, it was only when Mr Broad told the police on 11 April 2017 that he believed that Mr Clarke’s body may be buried in the back yard of his house that it was discovered. By then it was decomposed and largely skeletonised. You were re-interviewed but maintained your lies.
You pleaded guilty but not until a few days before your trial was due to commence. Some mitigation arises from the plea but it is limited. A trial has been avoided. Mr Clarke’s family is spared the ordeal of a trial. On the other hand a great deal of the resources of the State were devoted to investigation and preparation for trial, and the plea is a very late one.
You are now aged 22. Your relative youth at the time you committed this crime is a factor relevant to sentence. Courts have long recognised that, generally speaking, the youthfulness of an offender is always a ground for extending leniency. Your sentencing has been delayed so I could be provided with a report from a clinical psychologist, Mr Minehan. He thinks you have a borderline personality disorder which gives rise to fears of abandonment and an unstable self-image. There have been some attempts at self-harm. You were much younger that Mr Rosewall at the time you acted as you did. It is natural that a man so much older than you may have exerted some improper influence to some extent. Your counsel submitted, without dispute, that Mr Rosewall had exhibited some violence to you which also contributed to the decisions you made. You valued your relationship with him and feared that you would lose it if his crime were discovered, a consideration heightened by your fear of abandonment and the difficult family background described in the report. But the report also demonstrates that you were capable of independent thought, and you had many months to consider and think about what you were doing. It is not suggested that your personality disorder or any other condition reduces your culpability or the need for general deterrence or will make prison so difficult as to justify a reduction in sentence. You should be able to get the treatment or counselling you require in prison.
You do not have a bad criminal record. In October 2017 you were fined by a magistrate for two common assaults committed on 10 May 2017. They are not a prior convictions for sentencing purposes although the criminal conduct for which you are now to be sentenced commenced while you were on bail waiting for the assault charges to be dealt with. You have no other prior convictions. Those factors in your favour are to be balanced against the fact that you committed a crime of considerable gravity. Punishment, retribution and deterrence are also very important. You played a significant part in concealing Mr Rosewall’s crime. You did so by repeated dishonest acts over a prolonged period. You pretended for over ten months that he was still alive. Although you now appreciate the harm you caused, at the time your conduct was callous and cruel, particularly to Tyson Clarke’s father and the rest of his family, and greatly added to the terrible emotional and psychological impact of his death. It added to the gross indignity to which Tyson Clarke was subjected and potentially made identification of the cause of his death more difficult. Because of your age I will allow the earliest eligibility for parole. You spent two days in custody prior to your remand on 12 March 2019.
Renee Donald, you are convicted. You are sentenced to imprisonment for six years from 10 March 2019. I order that you not be eligible for parole until you have served half of that sentence.