Blacktown Local Court

As a member of the Legal Aid General Crime Panel, we were referred a case where a young woman was charged with reckless wounding following a domestic where she had stabbed her partner in the shoulder with a kitchen knife. She instructed us that she was acting in self-defence. We ran her case at trial, and while the Magistrate accepted her version of events that the victim had put her in a headlock prior to the stabbing, he was not satisfied that she believed that stabbing her partner was a necessary response to defend herself. She was found guilty of the offence, and we successfully argued that our client should be put on a community service order rather than receive a custodial sentence.