The mother of a young woman shot dead by her boyfriend has criticised the Director of Public Prosecutions for not pursuing a murder charge against him and taking the case to trial.
Mehmet Torun, 26, had initially been charged with murdering Kara Doyle before the DPP dropped the charge when he offered to plead guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter.
Torun was jailed for eight years with a non-parole period of five years but the DPP appealed the sentence, claiming it was manifestly inadequate.
The DPP said the sentencing judge had failed to take into account how the case involved a background of domestic violence.
But Court of Appeal Justices David Ashley, Simon Whelan and David Beach, when dismissing the appeal on Tuesday, said the domestic violence issue was never raised at Torun’s pre-sentence hearing.
Outside court, Ms Doyle’s mother, Jenny, said she had been disappointed at the DPP’s decision not to pursue a murder charge against Torun.
“We were ill-advised of what the outcome could have been,” she said.
“We always stick by the people who know, the lawyers, barristers … who know the system.”
She believed Torun should have received a jail term “in the double figures at least”.
Justice Ashley said Torun was sentenced on the basis that Ms Doyle, 24, had been accidentally killed by a drug-addicted man “in the course of play-acting gone terribly wrong”.
He said the DPP’s appeal was “neither soundly framed nor soundly pursued”.
The DPP’s appeal claimed Torun’s relationship with Ms Doyle had been characterised by violent arguments, controlling and threatening behaviour and physical violence against a background of a “good deal of illegal drug use” on his part.
Torun had been acting violently and erratically towards Ms Doyle and others before the shooting at Avondale Heights on April 17, 2013, and threatened to “blow off an associate’s head with the gun”.
The DPP said Torun had been waving the sawn-off 12-gauge shotgun around and telling a story when he pointed it at Ms Doyle at very close range and deliberately pulled the trigger when not realising in his drug-addled state that he had earlier loaded the gun.
After being shot in the groin, the seriously injured Ms Doyle was dumped at the nearby Caltex service station and died five days later in hospital.
Justices Whelan and Beach said Torun’s previous conduct towards Ms Doyle might have been relevant to the case if the charge was murder but had less relevance for the manslaughter charge.
“The sentencing judge specifically found that Mr Torun’s behaviour did not involve any intended or foreseen violence or injury to Ms Doyle,” the judges said.
“That finding is not challenged on appeal.
“It was a conclusion which inevitably followed from the director’s acceptance of the manslaughter plea and the director’s concession as to Mr Torun’s state of mind in the circumstances of this case.”
Ms Doyle’s mother, Jenny, in a victim impact statement, said she remembered waking up on Mother’s Day 2013 after the shooting with tears streaming down her face because she knew her daughter would not be coming to visit her. Instead, she had to visit Kara at the cemetery.
“I had to decide the colour of the coffin for her funeral … I should have been (helping) choose the colour of her wedding dress.”
This story first appeared in The Age
