Man found guilty of attempting to murder corpse faces 25 years in jail

A man is facing up to 25 years in jail for attempting to murder a corpse in one of the most unusual cases in Australian legal history. Lawyers for both the prosecution and defence told Supreme Court Justice Paul Coghlan on Wednesday they could not find any similar cases to the "peculiar and unusual" attempted murder case. Daniel Darrington, 39, was found guilty by a Supreme Court jury in October of attempting to murder Rocky Matskassy, 31, after he was already likely to have been dead. Justice Coghlan said the jury's verdict indicated Darrington intended to kill Mr Matskassy, believing he was still alive. Darrington claimed the pair had struggled with a gun during an altercation at a house in the Melton South suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, in the early hours of March 22, 2014, before Mr Matskassy was accidentally shot in the head.



Darrington claimed he then shot Mr Matskassy a second time when he was making jerking and twitching movements to put him out of his misery. The medical evidence suggested these movements could have been involuntary responses after death. Crown prosecutor Peter Rose, QC, told the court Darrington deserved a significant jail sentence given he had clearly intended to kill his victim in what was an "odd situation". But defence barrister John Desmond said Darrington had made an extremely poor decision when he fired the second shot, and the case was at the lower end of the scale compared to other attempted murder cases where the maximum penalty is 25 years' jail. Justice Coghlan did not accept Darrington's actions were a matter of poor judgment, suggesting he might have just made a cold-hearted decision to kill Mr Matskassy. "He shot at him believing he was alive, intending to kill him," the judge said.

Justice Coghlan said Darrington's decision to fire the second shot was an irrational response to the situation he was in. The judge said if Darrington had simply called triple 0 after the first shot was fired or taken Mr Matskassy to hospital, "we wouldn't be here". Mr Desmond said Darrington had been significantly affected by alcohol at the time and was in shock after seeing Mr Matskassy slump to the floor after being shot the first time. During the trial, Mr Desmond told the jury it could not be proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr Matskassy had not died from the first shot. "The issue is not did Darrington believe the man was alive. The issue is, was he factually dead?" Mr Desmond said. "If someone's already dead and you then try to kill him, how can that be attempted murder? But the law in this state is because you have the criminal intent to kill and if you, the accused, thought the person was alive, even if he was in fact dead, the law says that would be attempted murder.



"So just to quickly repeat - if Matskassy dies as a consequence of the first shot, the subsequent deliberate shots into Matskassy are not murder." The jury found Darrington not guilty of murder or the lesser charge of manslaughter, but guilty of attempted murder. In a victim impact statement read to the court on Wednesday, Mr Matskassy's sister, Mercedesz, said their mother had been murdered in New Zealand when Mercedesz was 12 and Rocky was nine. Ms Matskassy said her mother's body was dumped in Wellington Harbour and her father stood trial for murder but was found not guilty. The two children, who had been put in foster care, were then returned to their father and they moved to Australia but Ms Matskassy said she and Rocky always suspected their father had killed their mother. Ms Matskassy said it took many years to get over her mother's murder and then her baby brother was killed. She felt a deep sense of loss because her brother had died in such a meaningless way. Justice Coghlan will sentence Darrington at a later date.