A New South Wales woman who was jailed for more than seven years for setting her friend on fire after a night of partying is fighting the sentence in the Court of Criminal Appeal.
Corbie Jean Walpole, 25, was jailed in May last year after pleading guilty to one charge of burning or maiming by using corrosive fluid.
Walpole poured fuel on her friend, Jake Loader, and set him on fire after he made a misogynistic comment following a night of partying, drinking and drug taking in Howlong, in southern New South Wales, in January 2024.
Mr Loader suffered third-degree burns to about 60 per cent of his body and was in an induced coma for more than a week.
On Monday, Walpole fronted the court via video link from prison.
Her legal team argued the sentencing judge failed to properly consider psychiatric evidence about her mental health at the time of the offending.
Jake Loader sustained life-threatening burns in Howlong. (Supplied: GoFundMe)
During a 90-minute hearing, defence barrister Philip Boncardo told the court the sentence imposed by Judge Jennifer English was “invalidated on two bases.”
He said Judge English failed to give Walpole “procedural fairness” by not alerting her to the fact a psychologist’s uncontested opinion on the link between her depressive disorder and the offending would be rejected.
The court heard a psychologist had concluded Walpole was suffering a “clinical level depressive disorder” at the time of the offending and that her judgement and decision-making was impaired.
“And secondly, that her honour failed to take into account a relevant consideration, namely that my client had developed post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of the offending,”
Mr Boncardo said.
The defence told the court that Crown prosecutors had effectively accepted there was a causal connection between Walpole’s depression and the offending during the original sentencing hearing, while disputing whether it reduced the objective seriousness of the offence.
Crown prosecutor Monika Knowles told the court there was no procedural unfairness because an apparent conflict between psychiatric and toxicology evidence was obvious on the material before the court.
“There was no causal link regarding the mental health impairment and therefore the moral culpability would not be reduced in that way because of the other aspect, the severe intoxication,” Ms Knowles said.
“This was a person who was 172 centimetres tall, 55 kilograms, had 23 to 35 standard drinks over 12 hours, had a blood alcohol concentration of 0.22 to 0.386, and had, quote, a substantial quantity of cocaine.
“In those circumstances, it was entirely open to Her Honour to find that it was the drugs and the alcohol that was related to the impaired decision making and the offending.”
During the hearing, the Justices questioned whether the psychologist’s evidence established a sufficient causal link between Ms Walpole’s mental health condition and the offending.
The Court of Criminal Appeal reserved its decision.