Bax granted term reduction
Court of Appeal reduces minimum non-parole period
Marcus Bax, who was last year sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of 77-year-old Peter Nilsson at Te Kao, has been granted a reduction of 20 months in the term he must serve before being considered for parole.
Bax (40) had been granted leave to appeal the minimum non-parole period of 15 years by submitting new evidence regarding his mental state at the time of the killing, claiming the non-parole period was excessive.
At sentencing it had been stated that he felt “powerful,” and “enjoyed” it when he cut the throat of the farmer who he had looked up to as a role model and a father figure for many years. At appeal he claimed that the judge had wrongly refused to take his mental health issues into account.
The Court of Appeal reduced the nonparole period to 13 years and four months.
The Crown opposed Bax’s request to submit new evidence, a report from psychiatrist Dr Karl Jansen, that had not been available at sentencing, telling the court that the judge had had two psychiatric reports. The Court of Appeal noted, however, that those reports were completed in November 2016 and January 2017, for the purposes of determining whether Bax was fit to plead, and were not for sentencing.
The author of one of the report writers recommended that, in the event of Bax pleading or being found guilty, a presentence psychiatric report might provide mental health information likely to improve understanding of the causes of the offending and inform rehabilitative interventions.
“Unfortunately, no pre-sentence psychiatric report was obtained. Given the complex nature of Mr Bax’s mental health issues, the sentencing judge would have benefited from a report specifically directed to sentencing considerations,” the Appeal Court said.
It suppressed the details of the report, but concluded that failing to take into account Bax’s personal circumstances as a factor reducing his culpability had led to a material error in sentencing, and the 15-year term was manifestly excessive.
During sentencing it emerged that Bax threw a large chipper bar at Mr Nilsson, before killing him with a butcher’s knife, after driving to his house following dinner with one of Mr Nilsson’s daughters, a few kilometres from where her father lived, on August 4, 2016. He then returned to the house he shared with Ms Nilsson and her family, including her brother, covered in blood and holding the knife. Bax told them what he had done and asked for help in destroying evidence.
Crown solicitor Mike Smith said there was a high level of callousness and brutality against a 77-year-old man in his own home. It was a deliberate and conscious attack on a vulnerable man in an isolated area, where police help could be an hour away.
Bax had written to the Nilsson family, saying he hoped to apologise to them in person one day and asking for their forgiveness.