According to the Australian Institute of Criminology, a homicide entails the lawful or unlawful killing of a person or persons whereby the individual or individuals are killed at the same place and time. In the Simon Gittany murder case, the prosecution argued and proved that Simon was the one who had deliberately lifted Lisa over the balustrade and unloaded her over the edge from where she then fell off to the ground resulting to her death. He was found guilty of the accused crime and sentenced to 18 years imprisonment without parole. This essay sets to provide a critical analysis of the Simon Gittany Murder Case by answering various case study questions.
Question One: Type of Homicide
The type of homicide, in this case, can generally be termed as domestic and unlawful homicide or intimate partner homicide and involves killing a spouse (Ramsey, 2015). It is an apparent case of femicide wherein the offender is a male, Simon Gittany and the victim a female, Lisa Harnum. It is reasonable to assume that this case was an illegal act and unlawful as stated in the ruling that was made by the court (Ramsey, 2015).
Question Two: Characteristics of the Offender
At the time of the murder, Mr Gittany who is the offender, in this case, was aged 38 which means that by the time his final ruling was made in 2014, he was about 40 years old (Tulich, 2015). After emigrating from Lebanon at an early age, Gittany together with his family settled in Sydney, Australia where his siblings and himself grew up under the protection of his parents (Tulich, 2015). Moreover, the fact that Gittany was living in a very luxurious apartment which was located at the centre of the Sydney city shows that he was wealthy and this can be attributed to his Candy shoe business. Gittany had first encountered with the law enforcement when he was only 18 years old (Tulich, 2015).
Furthermore, in an incident in which he punched a shop owner repeatedly in the company of fellow accomplices in 1991, Mr Gitaany was charged with assault which occasioned him to actual bodily harm against the shop owner. Additionally, two years were not even over when the police found him in possession of several personal effects in his car outside a nightclub in Parramatta, Sydney (Tulich, 2015). Another incident of Gittany's history in interaction with the law is in 1994 whereby after failing to attend a court hearing in a specified date, law enforcement officers were sent to arrest him in his family residence in Maryland in Sydney. Gittany resisted the arrest and confronted these policemen only to assault one of them, Detective Constable Bristow by biting off a section of his ear (Tulich, 2015).
Question Three: Offender's Characteristics and General Patterns
According to the findings that are obtained by the research conducted by the Australian Institute of Criminology, approximately 4 out of 5 intimate partner homicides that occur in Australia have the males being the main perpetrator (Payne, 2017). In the case study, this is confirmed by the fact that Mr Simon Gittany who was the perpetrator was also a male (Cussen " Bryant, 2015). Moreover, most of the intimate partner homicides tend to take place within the home as it was the case of Simon Gittany whereby he committed the murder in his house which was on the 15th floor of the block of apartments that are located in Sidney (Cussen " Bryant, 2015). Homes become the original scenes in which intimate partner homicide takes place since they have a limited amount of external social control. Again, at the time the murder took place, Mr Simon Gittany did not appear to be working at that time. It has also been found that about 53.5% of cases of intimate partner homicide occurring within Australia are those in which the offenders are not working (Payne, 2017).
Furthermore, the national identity of Simon Gittany was an Australian having been born in Australia. Studies reveal that about 69% of the homicides that take place in Australia involve offenders who are Australians (Cussen " Bryant, 2015). Additionally, the Simon Gittany's murder case falls under a family homicide the same way that it has been discovered that about 60% of all the intimate partner homicide in the country fall under the family homicide (Payne, 2017).
Question Four: Characteristics of the Victim
At the time of her death, Lisa Cecelia Harnum who is the victim in this homicide case was only 30 years old. Lisa was a very young and attractive woman who many men would have desired to marry her for her overwhelming looks (Bibby " Partridge, 2014). At the age of 18, she was hospitalised after having been diagnosed with bulimia and anorexia eating disorders. She had also suffered during her childhood when in school due to the continued bullying that she experienced from other kids. Lisa was born in Canada where her parents raised her before migrating to Sydney on a working Visa where she later found her love life (Bibby " Partridge, 2014). Lisa is known to be a very social person given the high number of friends that she had back in Canada and the ones she had managed to make in Sydney. Though she was not working at the time of her death, Lisa was a hairdresser by profession and had earlier worked both as a receptionist in a beauty salon (Bibby " Partridge, 2014). Both her parents and friends in various instances described her as bubbly and full of life.
Question Five: Victim's Characteristics and the General Patterns
Research reveals that four out of every five intimate partner homicides that take place in Australia and other parts of the world have the females being the primary victims. In the case study, Lisa was also a female victim (Bibby " Partridge, 2015). Moreover, the murder of Lisa took place within the home context as it is the case for most of the intimate partner homicides in the country which tend to mostly take place in the intimacy of the homes where there is a significantly limited amount of social control externally (Bibby " Partridge, 2015). Lastly. It is common in Australia that about 57.7% of the intimate homicide victims are those who are not working. That is the same case for Lisa who was also not working at the time of her murder (Bibby " Partridge, 2015).
Question Six: Warning Signs that Emerged as Risk Factors
There are several traits that Grittany had exhibited in his relationship with Lisa which emerged as warning signs. For instance, Grittany portrayed a high level of control over Lisa and even limited her interaction with her friends to the extent that she relatively had no friends (Messing, Campbell, Sullivan Brown " Patchell, 2017). Secondly, Grittany had also installed cameras in their Sydney home with the aim of watching every move she made. The third warning sign that emerges as a risk factor, in this case, is shown through the harsh and threatening texts that Gittany sent to Lisa (Messing et al., 2017). Additionally, when Gittany discovered that Lisa had the intentions of leaving him which she actually showed by packing her bags and moving them in a hired storage locker, he became very furious to the extent of threatening her by saying that he could even kill her and make it look like she had committed suicide (Messing et al., 2017). In most of the domestic abuses cases and intimate partner homicides, such threats of murder are very common and act as potential warning signs of murder in the future (McKinley, 2017).
Question Seven: Identification of Guardians
There existed several warning signs and risk factors that could have been detected early enough and acted on by various individuals hence preventing this homicide from occurring although there is no one to blame for the death of Lisa other than Gittany (Wallace, 2017). Some of the individuals who could take an action that could have prevented this homicide include Lisa's friend, Brown who worked with her in the beauty salon. Prior her murder, Lisa had secretly discussed with about the horrible controlling behaviour of Grittany and how he had threatened of killing her if she dared to leave. If only Lisa's friend had informed the police the moment she learnt about these details which acted as a massive red alert for potential domestic homicide, probably Lisa would not have been murdered (Findlay, 2015).
Ms Michelle Redmond who was Lisa'a counsellor is another potential guardian who could have prevented Lisa death given the fact that Lisa had revealed to her about the nature of the relationship that she was having with Gittany. Lisa had earlier informed Ms Michelle that Gittany had strictly been controlling and watching her every move (Findlay, 2015). At one time, Gittany even called Mrs Redmond and threatened to hurt her in case she ever contacted Lisa again after he read the kind of message that Mrs Redmond had sent to Lisa using his monitoring device (Al-Alosi, 2017). It was after this threat that Mrs Redmond received several messages from Lisa's phone the following day which stated that she neither wanted to see nor continue having her as her counsellor (Findlay, 2015). If only Mrs Redmond had reported this incident to the police, a risk assessment could have timely been carried out and prevention strategies put into place which could have helped protect Lisa from Gittany and even assist her to leave before issues got out of hand (Wallace, 2017).
References
Al-Alosi, H. (2017). Cyber-violence: Digital abuse in the context of domestic violence. UNSWLJ, 40, 1573.
Bibby, p. " Partridge, E. (2014, Feb 5). Simon Gittany threatened to kill Lisa Harmun, make it look like a suicide: New witness. The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved from: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/simon-gittany-threatened-to-kill-lisa-harnum-make-it-look-lik e-suicide-new-witness-20140205-320xz.html.
Bibby, P. " Partridge, E. (2015). Simon Gittany guilty of murdering fiancé Lisa Harnum. The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved from: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/simon-gittany-guilty-of-murdering-fiancee-lisa-harnum-20131 127-2y9sr.html
Cussen, T. " Bryant, W. (2015, May). Domestic and family homicide in Australia. Australian Institute of Criminology. Retrieved from: http://www.aic.gov.au/media_library/publications/rip/rip38/rip38.pdf
Findlay, L. (2015). Courting social media in Australia's criminal courtrooms: The continuing tension between promoting open justice and protecting procedural integrity. Current Issues Crim. Just., 27, 237.
McKinley, A. (2017). Homicide in Australia. In The Psychology of Criminal and Antisocial Behavior, pp. 385-418.
Messing, J. T., Campbell, J., Sullivan Wilson, J., Brown, S., " Patchell, B. (2017). The lethality screen: the predictive validity of an intimate partner violence risk assessment for use by first responders. Journal of interpersonal violence, 32(2), 205-226.
Payne, J. (2017). Recidivism in Australia: Findings and Future Research, Australian Institute of Criminology.
Ramsey, S. (2015). Intimate partner homicides in NSW: 2005 to 2014. NSW Bureau of Crime statistics and research. Retrieved 9 July, 2017. retrieved from: http://www.bocsar.nsw.gov.au/Documents/BB/Report-2015-Intimate-partner-homicides-in-NSW-2005-to-2014-BB111.pdf
Tulich, T. (2015). Post-Sentence Preventative Detention and Extended Supervision of High Risk Offenders in New South Wales. UNSWLJ, 38, 823.
Wallace, A. (2017). Australia The Criminal Justice Process of Australia. In Trends in Legal Advocacy (pp. 31-54). CRC Press.
