R v Wheeldon

1. [1]

   On 27 May 2025 Robbie Wheeldon was committed from the Local Court at Narrabri to this Court on a charge that on 10 August 2023 at Pilliga he did murder Malcolm Wheeldon. Malcolm Wheeldon was the accused’s father. On 4 July 2025 the accused was arraigned before Hamill J and pleaded not guilty. With the consent of both the Crown and the accused, his Honour ordered pursuant to s 132(1) of the Criminal Procedure Act 1986 (NSW) that the accused be tried by judge alone.

2. [2]

   The trial was listed before me on 1 December 2025 at Moree. The accused through his legal representatives indicated from the first mention of the charge in this Court that he did not deny having caused the death of the deceased but would contend that at the time he was relevantly affected by a mental health impairment within the meaning of s 4 of the Mental Health and Cognitive Impairment Forensic Provisions Act 2020 (NSW) (Mental Health Forensic Provisions Act) and that he was not criminally responsible for the homicide by the operation of s 28 of that Act. There has been no suggestion that the accused has been unfit to plead at any time since his committal.

Mental impairment defence

1. [3]

   Sections 4 and 28 provide as follows, so far as relevant to this case:

2. [4]

   This being a judge alone trial, the question of fact arising under s 28 is to be determined by me on the balance of probabilities. The accused’s reliance upon s 28 arises from reports of Dr Gerald Chew, psychiatrist, dated 4 June 2024, 28 April 2025 and 10 November 2025. The Crown arranged for the accused to be examined by Dr Kerri Eagle, psychiatrist, and obtained reports from her dated 10 January 2025, 9 May 2025 and 21 November 2025. The reports of Dr Eagle were tendered in the Crown case and she also gave oral evidence. Dr Chew’s reports were tendered in the case for the accused and Dr Chew gave oral evidence.

3. [5]

   Section 29 of the Mental Health Forensic Provisions Act is as follows:

4. [6]

   I am of course aware of the matters set out in pars (a)-(d) of s 29 and in reaching my verdict I will observe the statutory direction in par (e).

Circumstances in which the deceased was killed

1. [7]

   The deceased was 59 years old when he was killed, at about 9:40 pm on Thursday, 10 August 2023 at his home at Pilliga. Pilliga is a small settlement of approximately 200 inhabitants located 90 km west of Narrabri. The deceased had lived there, mostly alone, for about 10 years.

2. [8]

   About three weeks prior to 10 August 2023 the accused came to Pilliga to visit the deceased and to stay with him. The accused was accompanied by his partner, Ms Danielle Newman, and their five-month-old baby. The accused was born in July 1998 and was aged 25 years at this time.

3. [9]

   Over the three weeks of their visit leading up to 10 August 2023 there were frequent very loud arguments between the accused and Ms Newman. Neighbours heard them screaming and shouting at each other on most days and during the nights, more or less constantly. The accused was using methylamphetamine heavily at this time, as he had done earlier in their relationship. Some of the arguments were about Ms Newman telling the accused to stop using illicit drugs.

4. [10]

   Ms Newman gave the following account of events immediately preceding the killing of the deceased, which I accept. She said that the accused did not sleep during the two preceding nights and he did not sleep during the daytime either. He was not eating over that period. On Thursday, 10 August 2023 the accused told Ms Newman he was sleep deprived and had mental illnesses. Over the preceding two nights he was talking incessantly, to himself. His talking was likewise continuous during the Thursday. He refused Ms Newman’s plea that he should see a doctor.

5. [11]

   During the evening Ms Newman was so concerned about the accused that she tried to leave the home with her baby, to get help. However, the accused blocked her from leaving. He alternated between aggression and affection towards Ms Newman. At one point he said he would kill her, then he said he was joking. At some time after about 9:15 pm Ms Newman took the baby into the bathroom and tried to lock herself in. She was in fear of the accused. He forced the bathroom door open and off its hinges. At that time the deceased was in the lounge room of the house. Ms Newman saw the accused push the deceased to the floor.

6. [12]

   That was the last Ms Newman saw of physical conflict between the accused and his father. She left the house carrying the baby a few minutes before 9:30 pm. After unsuccessful attempts to get help at nearby residences, Ms Newman went to the home of Senior Constable Cruickshank, the police lock-up keeper at Pilliga. Mrs Cruickshank took Ms Newman and the baby in at about 9:30 pm and woke her husband, who was off duty.

7. [13]

   Two minutes after Ms Newman left the house, the deceased was captured on his home CCTV system running down some steps into his yard, followed closely by the accused. The accused was barefoot throughout these events and bare chested, wearing only a pair of long track pants.

8. [14]

   Mr Warwick Hall was the deceased’s next door neighbour. The two houses were approximately 20 m apart. The deceased’s house was surrounded by a large yard. Shortly after 9:30 pm Mr Hall heard a male person calling “Help, help me”, loudly in a high-pitched and desperate tone. Mr Hall stepped outside his house and when the cries for help were repeated he recognised the voice as that of the deceased. He looked across the fence and saw Malcolm Wheeldon on his knees in the yard, about 6 m away with the accused standing over him holding his hair with both hands and pulling him upright. Malcolm Wheeldon was shouting “Robbie, Robbie stop it”.

9. [15]

   Mr Hall ran back into his own house to pull on some clothes. By the time he got around into the deceased’s yard to intervene in the conflict, the deceased was on his back. The accused was kneeling beside him with his hands around his father’s throat. Mr Hall put his arms around the accused from behind, under his arm pits, and pulled him off. Malcolm Wheeldon sat up a little off the ground but as soon as Mr Hall released his grip on the accused, he ran back to resume throttling his father. Malcolm Wheeldon said, “Stop it Robbie, you are killing me Robbie, I am bleeding out, stop it”. The accused forced his father back down onto the ground and gripped him around the throat. He leaned over the top of the deceased and pushed down with both hands at his neck.

10. [16]

    Mr Hall pulled the accused off again but he had to use some force because of the accused’s grip on his father’s throat. Again, as soon as Mr Hall released the accused, he went back to throttling his father with both hands. The deceased did not speak again. As he was choking his father the accused said, “Did you rape me dad, when I was a boy did you rape me?”. Mr Hall pushed the accused off the deceased. The accused then paced and ran in circles around the yard. Mr Hall examined the deceased and found that his chest and back were bloodied. No pulse could be detected.

11. [17]

    When Mr Hall went on to the deceased’s property to try to stop the accused attacking him, his partner made a triple-0 call to police at 9:39 pm. After the struggle ended, Mr Hall returned to his house. The accused followed him and for about 20 minutes he jogged backwards and forwards on Mr Hall’s land and between the two properties, in a hyperactive, agitated manner.

12. [18]

    Senior Constable Cruickshank arrived at Mr Hall’s property shortly after 10:00 pm. He arrested the accused, who resisted. He had to be held face down on the ground with the assistance of Mr Hall, while handcuffs were put on. The accused was placed in the caged police vehicle that SC Cruickshank had driven to the scene. Throughout the process of restraining the accused, he was highly agitated and speaking a stream of disconnected words. Verbal communication with him was not possible. More police arrived from Narrabri at about 10:30 pm. The accused was transferred to one of their vehicles and was taken back to Narrabri police station.

Post-mortem examination

1. [19]

   A post-mortem examination of the body of the deceased was conducted by Dr Paul Loots on 15 and 16 August 2023. He found two deep stab wounds to the deceased’s lower neck that had penetrated to his cervical spine. There was extensive haemorrhaging within the protective membrane around the spinal cord. In addition there were several stab wounds to the back, some of which had penetrated the deceased’s chest cavity, causing injury to the lungs and severing blood vessels. The deceased had also sustained stab wounds from the front, to his upper chest. There was evidence of multiple blunt force impacts to his head. Focal haemorrhages in the strap muscles of the neck were identified, consistent with the strangulation that had been observed by Mr Hall. The direct cause of death was given as:

The accused’s drug misuse; toxicological evidence

1. [20]

   The accused had been a heavy user of methylamphetamine, synthetic cannabis and cannabis for several years before the homicide. Ms Newman had observed his drug usage over several months leading up to 10 August 2023. Dr Chew recorded the following from a face-to-face interview with the accused on 23 February 2024:

2. [21]

   Lorezepam is an anxiolytic and sedative medication, in the class of benzodiazepines. Dr Chew was sceptical of an actual consumption of 30 tablets, which he explained would be fatal for most people. He said that the accused would likely have developed a tolerance for an excessively high dose of the medication and, despite its sedative properties, it would not have alleviated psychotic symptoms.

3. [22]

   A blood sample was taken from the accused approximately 10 hours after he had killed his father. No amphetamines were detected and the Delta-9-THC level was at .006 mg/L, which, according to the opinion of one of the two toxicologists in the case, is approximately the baseline level for a regular user. The toxicologists are of the opinion that the accused would not have used methylamphetamine for at least 24 hours before the sample was taken; that is, at least 14 hours before the homicide. Having regard to the rapidity of onset of the intoxicating effects of the drug and the usual rate of its elimination from the bloodstream, the accused would not have been directly affected by methylamphetamine at the time of his attack on the deceased.

4. [23]

   The toxicologists could not say whether the accused may have used cannabis shortly before the attack or whether he may have been affected by it at the time. However, the experts agree that witness descriptions of the accused’s behaviour and the CCTV and body worn video recordings of him on the evening of 10 August 2023 cannot be attributed to acute cannabis intoxication.

5. [24]

   The accused’s long-term misuse of illicit drugs has given rise to an issue as to whether, at the time when he killed the deceased, he may have been impaired solely by the “temporary effect of ingesting a substance”, so that the Court could not find him to have had a mental health impairment: s 4(3) of the Mental Health Forensic Provisions Act.

6. [25]

   In order to disentangle the effects of the accused’s long term illicit drug use from symptoms of an underlying psychotic mental health impairment, it is necessary to consider manifestations of the accused’s mental illness over a 10 year time frame, from his mid-teens.

Accused’s personal background, psychiatric history prior to the homicide

1. [26]

   The accused’s upbringing in early childhood was chaotic and traumatic. His mother has bipolar disorder and his father was schizophrenic. There were three children: the accused and his two sisters, one of them two years older and the other six years older. The family moved around the State a great deal and the children had no stability in home or in schooling. The parents smoked cannabis in the home and behaved sexually in the presence of the children. The deceased administered excessive physical discipline to all three children. The accused was physically abused by his father and, in a manner that is not clear on the evidence, he was also indecently assaulted by his father. The evidence does not disclose when or over what duration that occurred.

2. [27]

   During a separation of the parents in 2002 the deceased commenced to molest the eldest child sexually. She was then 10 years old. The parents reunited shortly afterwards. The older daughter did not say anything of the deceased’s conduct until 2008, when she was 16 and had moved away from her parents’ home. When the mother was informed she immediately left the deceased, taking with her the accused and the younger daughter. Not long after that the accused and the middle child were removed by the authorities from the mother’s care and placed with their aunt at Forster. The accused was 10 years old at that time. His father was charged on 26 February 2009 with sexual offences against the eldest child and subsequently sentenced to a term of imprisonment, of which he served 4 years and nearly 6 months, from 26 February 2009 to 5 August 2013.

3. [28]

   In 2012 the accused was 14 years old and was still in the care of his aunt and uncle at Forster. His mother was not permitted to have contact with him until he reached the age of 15. By 2012 the accused had been diagnosed with ADHD and conduct disorder. He was seeing a psychologist fortnightly. On 20 December 2012, at age 14 years and 5 months, the accused presented to Manning Base Hospital at Taree after becoming acutely distraught and harming himself in response to his foster mother having threatened a sanction for misbehaviour. The accused was at that time stressed about the impending release of his father from prison, expected to be in 2013.

4. [29]

   Further admissions as a psychiatric patient followed during the period in which the accused continued to live with his foster parents, up to the age of 18. The records include the following:

5. [30]

   After leaving his foster home at about the age of 18 years, the accused travelled to Queensland. He was admitted as an involuntary mental health patient at Mackay in September 2017 (at age 19). He had taken a substantial overdose of medication. Mental health presentations after that episode, to the date of the homicide, are recorded as follows:

6. [31]

   The above summary is no more than an outline, taken from a condensation of hospital records prepared by agreement between the Crown and the accused. Dr Eagle’s report of 10 January 2025 contains a much more detailed narrative of the accused’s engagement with and disengagement from mental health services, which I have reviewed closely. The outline given above is sufficient, for present purposes, to identify the history of professional medical recognition of the accused’s mental disorders over the course of 10 years prior to the homicide.

The accused’s behaviour proximate to the homicide

1. [32]

   The accused’s sleeplessness and erratic behaviour over the days leading up to 10 August 2023 has been described earlier, by reference to the evidence of Ms Newman. CCTV footage from the deceased’s home, recorded between about 8:30 pm and 9:30 pm, shows the accused walking swiftly around the verandahs of the house, up and down the stairs leading to the yard and in and out of entry doors. His movements were rapid, disordered, agitated and apparently without purpose. Ms Newman can be seen in this footage carrying her baby, crying at times and being intermittently obstructed and/or confronted by the accused. There is no sound recording with the CCTV. At the end of the recorded sequence, at about 9:30 pm, the deceased is seen to run down the steps from a verandah to the yard, closely followed by the accused. Ms Newman had by that time walked towards the police residence, where she was admitted by Mrs Cruickshank.

2. [33]

   Movements of the accused were next captured on Mr Hall’s CCTV from shortly after 9;40 pm. The accused can be seen after his attack on the deceased had ended. He ran in a circle within the deceased’s yard, then commenced trotting back-and-forth, at intervals, along Mr Hall’s driveway from the street entrance towards Mr Hall’s house. At one point in this sequence the accused leapt up to the top of the 2.1 m high fence between the two properties and dropped down into the deceased’s yard on the other side. He then jogged to street frontage of the property and came back onto Mr Hall’s property through his front gate and along the driveway. His movements were hyperactive and disorganised. There is no sound recording with the CCTV but Mr Hall gave evidence that during this activity, which continued for about 20 minutes, the deceased made no coherent utterances. From time to time he shouted the name of Mr Hall’s partner or the name of his dog. The accused repeatedly tried to push his way past Mr Hall, who was standing at his front door. For two minutes the accused disappeared from the view of the CCTV camera. At that time he ran to a lagoon at the end of the street and immersed himself, returning soaking wet. The accused’s resistance to being arrested when SC Cruickshank arrived has been described above.

3. [34]

   By 12:15 am on 11 August 2023 the accused was in custody at Narrabri police station. Body worn video recordings of him in the dock show that by then he was speaking in full sentences, with pressure of speech. He was very difficult to interrupt and barely responsive to repeated directions from the custody manager. By about 1:30 am, four hours after the fatal attack on the deceased, the accused was lying down in the dock, less argumentative and falling asleep. He became wakeful again but then slept heavily for over an hour from 3:40 am.

4. [35]

   Upon waking at 5:00 am the accused was calm enough for forensic procedures to be undertaken, including examination and photographing of his hands. That occurred between 5:45 am and 7:00 am. During the forensic examination of the accused he said the following to Detective Senior Constable Ridley:

5. [36]

   At 6:49 am the accused said this to DSC Ridley, while the accused’s clothing was being removed to be bagged as an exhibit:

6. [37]

   Between 9:00 am and 10:00 am on 11 August 2023 the accused was administered 10 mg of Olanzapine at Narrabri Hospital, to which he appeared to respond by becoming calmer. In the middle of the day a Legal Aid solicitor assessed that he was not fit to be interviewed.

The accused’s mental state in custody on remand

1. [38]

   When the accused was spoken to in custody by Dr Chew on 22 August 2023, by AVL, he appeared vague and perplexed. He did not respond to questions from the doctor in a coherent way. He reiterated, over and over, the meaningless phrase “Repeat, repeat, repeat”. He said he had not taken antipsychotic medication for at least some months prior to the homicide. Since that night it appeared that he had only received the single 10 mg dose at Narrabri Hospital on 11 August.

2. [39]

   From late August 2023, on remand, the accused was compliant with prescribed medication which included Olanzapine at a high dose of 20 mg nightly and 5 mg each morning. A forensic registrar observed signs of psychosis during those months, including mumbling to himself, inappropriate responses to questions, rambling thoughts and poor eye contact. He was responding to unseen stimuli and experiencing auditory hallucinations. The accused at that time openly admitted to having killed his father. He expressed suicidal ideas.

3. [40]

   By mid November 2023 a provisional diagnosis of schizophrenia was made. The accused’s symptoms then appeared to be managed by medications and the auditory hallucinations subsided. They resumed from April 2024, apparently intermittently. It appears that his psychosis has not subsequently progressed to an acute state in custody. Dr Chew found the accused markedly more coherent when he interviewed him a second time, in person, on 23 February 2024. By that stage he had been medicated with Olanzapine for six months.

4. [41]

   Most recently, according to a comprehensive Justice Health report by Dr Alexander Leroux dated 1 October 2025, the accused has complained of not sleeping well, hearing the voice of his father and also a female voice, having nightmares concerning his father and child sexual abuse and having racing thoughts. Dr Leroux has observed that the accused is distractible, hyperactive, talkative and reactive, without thought disorder but with some ideas of reference. He concluded that the accused’s psychotic disorder could be more optimally controlled and he increased the dosage of Olanzapine to 30 mg daily, all to be administered at night. Drs Eagle and Chew observed that this is an extremely high dose, consistent with the treating doctor’s assessment of psychotic illness requiring assertive treatment.

5. [42]

   The above summary of the course of the accused’s diagnosis, treatment and management in custody is very much abbreviated. Again, a full, chronological narrative of the Justice Health records has been provided in Dr Eagle’s report of 10 January 2025.

The accused’s account of provocation by the deceased

1. [43]

   In phone calls from the Metropolitan Reception and Remand Centre at Silverwater on 20 and 23 February 2024, the accused spoke openly to his aunt and uncle of having stabbed and strangled the deceased. He said that on the night in question his father said to him, with reference to Ms Newman, “Oh, when you going to let the old man have a ride of your woman? When’s, when, when you going to let daddy have a ride?” The accused told his aunt and uncle that he responded by telling his father to “shut up” and that Ms Newman walked to the bathroom and locked herself in because she was shocked. He said that she appeared to be talking to herself in the bathroom and sounded distressed. The accused said that he pulled the door open and Ms Newman ran outside with the baby. He said his father locked him out of the house briefly but that he got back inside and was confronted by his father with a knife saying “Where’s Danielle? I want to rape her”. According to his account the accused got the knife off his father, followed him when he ran outside and killed him.

2. [44]

   The accused gave a broadly similar account to Dr Chew on 23 February 2024. Ms Newman’s description of the events, as summarised earlier in these reasons, is entirely different. She makes no mention of any such provocative suggestion by the deceased. I accept Dr Chew’s opinion that the accused’s belief about his father making a lewd suggestion that he would have sexual intercourse with Ms Newman was a persecutory delusion.

Conclusions of Drs Chew and Eagle

1. [45]

   Dr Chew has diagnosed the accused as most likely suffering from schizophrenia, which is a psychotic disorder and therefore falls within the recognised causes of mental health impairment as provided for in s 4(2)(c) of the Mental Health Forensic Provisions Act. In Dr Chew’s opinion the accused was, at the time of the homicide, suffering from active psychosis as a symptom of his schizophrenia, exacerbated by his use of substances over time. Dr Chew considers that the accused’s psychotic episode on the night of 10 August 2023 caused a disturbance of thought that was significant for clinical diagnostic purposes and that impaired his judgment and behaviour at the time.

2. [46]

   Dr Chew does not consider that the accused’s impairment was caused solely by the temporary effects of having ingested a substance. That conclusion is strongly supported by the toxicological evidence, which places the accused’s last usage of methylamphetamine at least 14 hours before his attack on the deceased, so that any intoxicating effect would have well preceded the homicide. The doctor says that the toxicology reports make it “clear he wasn't acutely intoxicated and affected in that way”. I accept Dr Chew’s opinions in that respect. They support a finding on the balance of probabilities that the accused had a mental impairment within the meaning of s 4 of the Act at the time when he killed his father.

3. [47]

   Although Dr Chew considers that the accused is likely to have known the nature and quality of his acts of stabbing and strangling the deceased, it is his opinion that the accused did not know that what he was doing was wrong. Attending to the terms of s 28(1)(b) of the Act, Dr Chew’s assessment is that the accused would not have been able to “reason with a moderate degree of sense and composure about whether [his acts], as perceived by reasonable people, [were] wrong”. Dr Chew concludes that, by reason of his psychotic and delusional state, the accused’s disorder of mind led him to believe that he was acting in justifiable defence of Ms Newman against a threatened sexual assault. Even without that specific delusion, Dr Chew considers that, by reason of the level of the accused’s mental disorganisation and psychosis at the time, he would not have been able to reason about the wrongfulness of his acts, in the statutory sense. Dr Chew’s assessments are sufficient to establish the mental health impairment defence as provided for in s 28. As explained below, that conclusion is supported by the expert evidence of Dr Eagle.

4. [48]

   Dr Chew gave what I accept as a likely explanation of why the accused’s schizophrenia was not diagnosed unequivocally at an earlier time, despite his numerous and relatively frequent admissions to mental health hospitals over the preceding 10 years. As the doctor points out, on each of those admissions the accused presented with acute symptoms in the context of some precipitating event, against a background of severely dysfunctional early family life and traumatic experiences of childhood physical and sexual abuse. Dr Chew explained that psychoses can occur in severe trauma based disorders. He identifies a significant possibility, if not probability, that the accused was schizophrenic throughout his mid-teens and into adulthood and that his underlying schizophrenia was not identified because of the attribution of psychotic and other symptoms to more tangible potentially causative experiences.

5. [49]

   There is an ample medical record of the accused displaying severe symptoms of depression, anxiety and emotional dysregulation as a result of his childhood trauma. Dr Chew said that sometimes the presence of schizophrenia is not obvious at early presentations because of the extent of the patient’s behavioural disturbance and trauma-related symptoms that have led to attendance at a mental health unit. Psychotic symptoms may initially appear to be only a minor part of early presentations. The diagnosis of schizophrenia may become clearer over a longer timeframe, as Dr Chew considers has occurred in this case.

6. [50]

   In Dr Chew’s opinion, a differential diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder is also plausible. He explained schizoaffective disorder as follows:

7. [51]

   Dr Chew considered the progression of the accused’s behaviour on the night of 10 August 2023 and into the next morning, as summarised to him from the CCTV and body worn video footage. The accused’s seemingly manic hyperactivity recorded between 8:30 pm and 10:30 pm subsided over night to the point where he became sleepy and dozed off. His incoherent one word utterances at around 10:00 pm became full sentences, albeit expressing disconnected thoughts, by the time he was at the Narrabri police station shortly after midnight. By 7:00 am on the morning of 11 August he was expressing a degree of reason about his criminal responsibility, his mental illness and his need for medication.

8. [52]

   Dr Chew explained that this course of his presentation was consistent with schizophrenic psychosis, particularly in a person such as the accused who has a long history of dysregulated emotions and significant swings of mood, as noted in his medical records. In Dr Chew’s opinion the disturbance of the accused’s mind would have been greater and the outward demonstration of his psychosis would have been more pronounced when he was emotionally heightened, as was evidently the case at the time of the homicide. Dr Chew regards it as typical that the intensity of psychotic behaviour would diminish quite rapidly with lowering of the accused’s emotional state and with him being in the police station, a “lower stimulus environment than he had been in previously” when he was in conflict with Ms Newman and his father. The accused’s brief period of sleep in the dock, after about 72 hours of being continuously awake and agitated, would also “have improved his mental state somewhat”.

9. [53]

   More generally, Dr Chew said this:

10. [54]

    Dr Chew’s opinion that this was a schizophrenic psychotic episode is thus satisfactorily reconciled with the fairly rapid moderation of symptoms. There appears to be no basis for attributing the accused’s modest improvement overnight to a cause such as elimination of an ingested substance from his system.

11. [55]

    In her first report, dated 10 January 2025, Dr Eagle accepted that the accused has a psychotic disorder but, without the benefit of a longitudinal assessment in a secure hospital setting, she was unable at that time to determine whether it is substance induced or schizophrenic. Dr Eagle also diagnosed PTSD, ADHD and borderline and antisocial personality disorders. She said that the mental disorders she identified would result in symptoms that cause “a temporary and enduring disturbance of the accused’s thoughts and mood, and impair his emotional well-being, judgement and behaviour”.

12. [56]

    At the time of her first report Dr Eagle thought that on the night of the homicide the accused appeared intoxicated, based upon review of the CCTV and body worn video footage. She found it “difficult to clearly separate Mr Wheeldon’s symptoms of intoxication from the impact of his underlying mental health conditions”. Dr Eagle expressed a somewhat tentative conclusion with respect to whether the accused had a “mental health impairment” within the meaning of the Act, as follows:

13. [57]

    Dr Eagle drew the following conclusions in her first report concerning the criteria of the mental health impairment defence, as prescribed in s 28(1) of the Act:

14. [58]

    Dr Eagle’s second report, of 9 May 2025, was prepared with the benefit of further information, including the report of one of the toxicologists referred to earlier in these reasons, Dr Robertson. Taking into account the additional information that the accused would not have ingested methylamphetamine any later than 14 hours before the homicide and that he would not have been acutely intoxicated by the drug at the time, Dr Eagle opined as follows:

15. [59]

    In November 2025 Dr Eagle received the detailed Justice Health assessment prepared by Dr Leroux in early October. Dr Eagle’s final report and oral evidence took account of that report, as explained in the following passage of oral evidence:

16. [60]

    Dr Eagle’s relevant diagnosis in her final report of 21 November 2025 is as follows:

17. [61]

    Dr Eagle said (at [15.3] of her third report) that the accused’s presentation and highly disordered mental state on the night of the homicide were:

18. [62]

    Dr Eagle stated that in her professional experience, similar to that of Dr Chew, a schizophrenia spectrum illness may not be detected in a patient during initial mental health presentations. For that reason, the absence of any earlier diagnosis of the accused as having a schizophrenia spectrum illness does not cause Dr Eagle to doubt the accuracy of the diagnosis, in light of all that is now known. Dr Eagle said this in oral evidence:

19. [63]

    Again in similar terms to the opinions expressed by Dr Chew, Dr Eagle did not consider that the moderation of the accused’s psychotic symptoms overnight, from the evening of 10 August to the morning of 11 August 2025, gave rise to any doubt about the cause or severity of the psychotic episode at the time of the homicide. She gave this evidence:

20. [64]

    Dr Eagle was asked directly whether any significance should be attached to the accused’s self-excusing statements on the morning of 11 August 2023, concerning manslaughter, sleep deprivation, paranoia and correct medication. I accept Dr Eagle’s opinion that the accused’s ability “to articulate himself” the next morning, after the psychosis had fluctuated downward to a calmer state, does not invalidate her conclusion that at the time of the homicide his psychotic disturbance of thought and perception was such that he probably could not reason with a moderate degree of sense and composure about whether his acts, as perceived by reasonable people, were wrong. In the experience of Dr Eagle it is not unusual that people affected by schizophrenic spectrum disorders may, in calmer moments, be able to express justification for or denial of conduct, including by reference to their mental illness and/or treatment.

21. [65]

    Dr Eagle reported the following conclusions that directly support the mental health impairment defence:

Verdict

1. [66]

   I am satisfied on the balance of probabilities regarding the factual premises upon which Drs Chew and Eagle have formed their opinions and I accept the doctors’ conclusions to the same standard of proof. On the balance of probabilities I find that when the accused carried out the deliberate acts that directly caused the death of the deceased, he had a mental health impairment that had the effect that he did not know that his acts were wrong; that is, he could not reason with a moderate degree of sense and composure about whether the acts, as perceived by reasonable people, were wrong. The Court’s verdict follows accordingly.

2. [67]

   On the charge that Robbie Wheeldon did murder Malcolm Wheeldon on 10 August 2023 at Pilliga the verdict of the Court is:

Section 166 charges

1. [68]

   Pursuant to s 166 of the Criminal Procedure Act 1986 (NSW) there have been transferred to this Court two related charges that might otherwise have been dealt with in the Local Court. They are as follows:

2. [69]

   Section 168(3) of the Criminal Procedure Act provides that in dealing with such charges in circumstances such as the present, the Supreme Court “has the same functions, and is subject to the same restrictions and procedures, as the Local Court”. In this case, it is appropriate that I should utilise s 14 of the Mental Health Forensic Provisions Act, which provides as follows:

3. [70]

   The orders that are to be made in consequence of the verdict on the murder charge will have the effect that the accused will be subject to detention at such place and for such time as determined by the Mental Health Review Tribunal. In those circumstances the s 166 charges can most appropriately be dealt with pursuant to s 14(1)(c), by dismissing the charges and discharging the accused with respect to them, unconditionally.

Orders

1. [71]

   The following are the orders of the Court, to be entered forthwith: