Shooting gesture at juror

A LAUNCESTON man has been found guilty of contempt of court after threatening a juror in a Supreme Court trial last year.

The man, who was a youth at the time he was charged and cannot be named, saw a juror during the luncheon adjournment of the July 2016 trial and said to her: “I can see another dog, bang bang.”

He also raised his fingers and made a shooting motion.

The jury trial in which he was a co-accused was discharged by Justice Robert Pearce.

Justice Shann Tennent said she was satisfied the event occurred.

In written reasons, it was said that the words dog or dogs had come up 34 times in the evidence before the contempt incident. “[The juror] said the respondent was laughing as he said this,” Justice Tennent said.

“She felt sick to the stomach and was worried and scared for her safety.

“She ran straight across the road and back to the court where she spoke to another female jury member. She told her she felt unsettled and worried about ‘our’ safety.”

Justice Tennent will hear sentencing submissions on Friday at 11.30am.

The Crown has made an application for costs.

The man, now 20, was a co- accused with Jay Ashley Whatley, Zane Andrew Henderson and Coby Wells for brutalising a woman and forcing her to eat dog food at Ravenswood on October 16, 2014.

During the trial, the court heard that the males forced the woman to consume the dog food, burnt her, sprayed fly spray into her eyes, shot her with a taser-like weapon and hit her with a sock that contained a cake of soap.

It was alleged that the victim owed money associate of the males.

Wells and Whatley were retried and found guilty by a jury of assault and, on 13 April this year, were each sentenced to 18 months’ imprisonment with an order they each serve one half of that sentence before being eligible for parole.

Henderson was sentenced to 22 months jail for assault from March 25 this year.

Justice Tennent said in sentencing Henderson: “The to an crime committed in this case was horrendous. It was a very serious example of the crime. It involved what amounted to torture over several hours and a total lack of respect for another human being.”

“You told [the victim] she was a dog and treated her like one. You behaved in the way you did effectively because you could and clearly with absolutely no thought for the suffering she must have gone through.”