The drunk, speeding driver who ran a red light in a stolen car and hit and killed Canberra hospital worker Linda Cox has lost an appeal against his 13-year jail sentence.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Justin Lee Monfries, 26, was on bail and evading police when he smashed into mother-of-two Linda Cox, 38, as she walked across the road after finishing a shift at the Canberra Hospital in 2012.
Monfries had hot-wired the car in a car park in Manuka and committed a number of crimes before running the red light on Yamba Drive.
Mrs Cox, a much-loved cardiac technician, was killed instantly and her colleague Ashlee Bumpus, then 25, was left with multiple fractures to her legs.
They had both waited for the green pedestrian light before crossing.
Despite ploughing into the two pedestrians, Monfries kept driving in an attempt to flee.
But he crashed into another car about 150 metres down the road, and was arrested by police as he tried to leave the scene.
Mrs Cox's husband Jamie told him to "rot you b-----d" as he was led away in handcuffs, and had spoken of his hatred for his wife's killer in an emotional victim impact statement.
The sentence gave Monfries an earliest parole date of January 2022.
But Monfries, who had already racked up a significant criminal history at the time of the crash, appealed the sentence as "manifestly excessive".
He argued his pleas of guilty were not given enough discount, he was treated too harshly for the stolen car offence, his mental health problems were not properly considered, and that his punishment didn't match sentences for other similar cases.
But the ACT Court of Appeal handed down its judgment on Thursday, with two of the three judges finding against Monfries and upholding the original sentence.
Justice John Burns agreed with the 13-year sentence imposed on Monfries.
"The primary judge clearly considered the offence of culpable driving causing death to be close to the worst type of offence of its kind," he said.
"Bearing in mind all of the aggravating circumstances ... I am not persuaded that his honour was incorrect."
Justice Iain Ross agreed the sentence was stern but said he was not persuaded that it was "manifestly excessive".
He also dismissed the appeal.
"While I would not have imposed such a stern sentence, that is not the test to be applied," Justice Ross wrote.
Chief Justice Helen Murrell dissented from the other two judges, saying she considered a lesser sentence to be more appropriate in the case.
