Anna Marshall On March 6, 2015 another woman using the “battered woman” defence walked free from an Australian court after being found guilty of the manslaughter of her former de-facto husband and father of her child. Although the jury found Jessica Silva guilty of the manslaughter of James Polkinghorne, the kindly Jessica Silva walks free from court James Polkinghorne – stabbed to death by Jessica Silva judge, NSW Supreme Court Justice Clifton Hoeben found that although she did not intend to kill Mr Polkinghorne, she did indeed intend to “cause him grievous bodily harm “, but nevertheless allowed her to walk from the court with just a good behaviour bond. Evidence was given that Polkinghorne was high on “ice” and making threats to Silva and was involved in an altercation with her father and brother on the street in front of her parent’s house when Silva went inside, grabbed a…
battered wife syndrome
Susan Falls, who in 2010 provided a case study in how to legally kill your husband, has walked free from court again, this time after defrauding the Australian taxpayers of $78,284. Falls walked free from Southport (Queensland) Magistrates Court on an intensive supervision order after pleading guilty to ripping off Centrelink over five years when she claimed she was a single mother. Susan Falls But at the time she was living with her husband Rodney on the Sunshine Coast and the pair owned businesses, built a duplex and took a family holiday to Hawaii. Falls killed Mr Falls in 2006 when she drugged his dinner and shot him in the head. His body was later dumped in bushland and she reported him missing. At her trial, she claimed Mr Falls had subjected her to years of brutality and at the time she killed him, he had threatened to kill one…
By Anna Marshall On 4th March 2006, Claire Margaret McDonald gasped and burst into tears as a Victorian Supreme Court jury found her not guilty of the execution style murder of her husband, Warren John McDonald. The court was told that McDonald had donned camouflage gear and lay in wait with a high-powered rifle for her husband to approach. She fired six shots, mortally wounding her husband. McDonald successfully used the “battered woman syndrome” defence, claiming she had suffered years of abuse at the hands of her husband. Within days, Queensland woman, Susan Falls, having probably read the media reports of Heather McDonald’s stunning acquittal, decided to execute her allegedly abusive husband in the same fashion, in what prosecutors would describe as a cunning, calculated murder. Falls paid a friend, Anthony Cummings-Creed $5,000 to buy a 22.calibre pistol with silencer on the black market. Rodney and Susan Falls Christopher Cummins-Creed supplied…
Anna Marshall On March 3, 2006, a woman who shot dead her husband from a “sniper’s nest” at their central Victorian property walked free from an Australian court after being charged with the murder of her husband. Not only was it murder, it was, according to the prosecution, a cold-blooded and calculated execution. Claire Margaret MacDonald walks free from court after killing her husband On 30 September 2004, primary school teacher, Claire Margaret MacDonald, aged 39 at the time, put on a camouflage outfit and rubber gloves, grabbed her husband’s high powered rifle and hid in the bushes near where the family’s Land Rover was parked in a paddock on the couple’s property in Acheron in Victoria, and waited for her husband to arrive. She lured him to the spot by telling him the Land Rover’s battery was flat. She loaded five bullets into the magazine and kept a…