Magistrate lashes cruel email mocking SA police chief's grief
A man who sent South Australian Police Commissioner Grant Stevens a highly offensive email just hours after Mr Stevens's son had died following a car crash has been sentenced to community service.
Robert James Angus, 36, of Millicent, was convicted in the Mount Gambier Magistrates Court on Monday for using a carriage service in a harassing or offensive way over the email he sent on November 18, 2023, to Mr Stevens's personal SA Police email account.
It contained three words: "Sucked in c***."
Mr Stevens's 18-year-old son Charlie was hit by a car in Goolwa on the night of November 17, 2023, and died at 7pm the next day in Adelaide.
The court heard Angus — a married father of four — sent the email later that night after hearing of Charlie's death in the media.
"Although comprised of only three words, the defendant's email was an expression of enjoyment and derision towards the commissioner's grief at the loss of his son," the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) said in its submission to the court ahead of sentencing.
Magistrate Koula Kossiavelos said the DPP alleged Angus knew the "deliberate timing of this offending would inflict maximum distress".
"It is submitted that the hypothetical reasonable person would be shocked, outraged and disgusted at your behaviour," she said.
"More importantly, this is what the commissioner has said in relation to being subjected to your email: he found the offending to be abhorrent, deeply offensive and cruel.
"In your record of interview, you showed no remorse or understanding of the gravity of your actions to the extent that you queried why police were bothering to investigate it.
"When asked why you sent the email, you responded, 'Because you could.'"
The court heard that since his offending, Angus had apologised in a letter to the commissioner and had been diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder and impulsive aggressive disorder.
Magistrate Kossiavelos said the conditions contributed to the offending, but were not the cause of it.
"I find that his moral culpability for the offence is partially reduced, but there is a need for general and personal deterrence," she said.
The court heard Angus did not remember sending the email and had not explained why he sent it.
The court heard Angus was undergoing cognitive behaviour therapy and taking medication to stabilise his moods.
The truck sales manager's last criminal conviction was in 2008.
The maximum penalty for the crime is 12 months in jail and an $18,780 fine if convicted in a magistrate's court.
Angus's lawyer pushed for no conviction to be recorded and for her client to be given a good behaviour bond.
Magistrate Kossiavelos ordered Angus to do 150 hours of community service within 12 months and to pay prosecution costs of $512.
"Reasonable persons would all find that what you did on November 18, 2023, was very offensive," she said.
"It was probably at the higher end of the scale of what offensive can actually be in all the circumstances."
The man who hit and killed Charlie was given a suspended sentence last October.
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