"Justice for Tracey" is what the parents of Tracey Greenbury deemed the sentence of her killer Leigh Robinson.
On Friday, Lee Robinson was sentenced to life in jail, with no chance of parole, for the callous and brutal exceution of Tracey Greenbury. Ms Greenbury had recently ended a 3 month relationship with Mr Robinson when he visited her home on April 28, 2008. They argued and Ms Greenbury tried to flee, she ran to her neighbours house, but Mr Robinson pursued her and shot her in the back of the head with a shotgun, in front of her neighbour. He then calmly returned to his car and drove away.
This was the act of a violent man, with a deep sense of entilement, he placed more value on his pride and hurt than on another person's life. As Phil Clearly (a football identity and anti domestic violence campaigner, whose sister was killed by an ex-boyfriend in 1987) stated Mr Robinson was a "mongrel, a misogynist, a rapist and a woman killer."
With current sentencing practices in Victoria this sentence would be comparatively harsh compared to other similar crimes, so if I was emotionally attached to the case, I daresay I would be happy with the sentence to.
However, this is where the story gets interesting and one must pose the question whether this sentence truly was "Justice for Tracey." I would say no, and that is because Mr Robinson has a history of significant violent and sexual offences, and if justice had truly been served previously, I strongly believe Ms Greenbury would still be alive today, and as I will discuss shortly others also would not have had their lives destoryed by Mr Robinson either.
Ms Greenbury was not the first ex-girlfriend Mr Robinson had murdered in cold blood. In 1968 Mr Robinson was sentenced to death for the stabbing murder of his 17-year-old ex-girlfriend, Valerie Dunn, she had refused to go out with him again. Mr Robinson also seriously injured Ms Dunn's current boyfriend.
Mr Robinson death sentenced was commuted to 30 years imprisonment, he should not have been released until 1998. Instead he was released after serving only 15 years imprisonment. I do not believe in the death sentence, but obviously Mr Robinson was released from prison too early and before he was rehabilitated. This is where the justice system failed Tracey Greenbury, it released her murderer from prison half way through a 30 year jail term for the murder of a previous ex-girlfriend, before he was rehabilitated.
Unsurprisingly, Ms Greenbury, was not the only one victim of Mr Robinson after his release from prison. After his release from prison he married, he was later convicted and received a 5 year jail sentence for the repeated sexual abuse of one of his step children from this relationship. Mr Robinson raped and sexually assaulted his step daughter for a period of 5 years from the age she was 13, until she left home at age 18. His victim in this case stated that she was freightened of reporting the abuse because she was aware her step father had been in jail for murder. When sentencing Mr Robinson on these charges the judge stated that he accepted the victim's psychological problems "sleepless- ness, fear, drug and alcohol abuse, depression and even thoughts of suicide" were the result of the abuse she suffered at the hands of her step father.
Mr Robinson again demonstrated a gross sense of entitlement and ownership towards his victim and that he was willing to use violence and intimidation to get his way. Despite the criminal justice system again being made aware of this, it again failed to adequately protect the community from Mr Robinson.
It should be noted that these offences occured in the 1980s and he was convicted and sentenced for them in 1995. Both during the period that he should have been serving his sentence for the murder of Valerie Dunn.
When sentencing him last Friday, Justice Simon Whelan observed: ''Two women who have been in a relationship with you have paid for annoying you in the context of that relationship with their lives.'' He further commented that there was ''a pressing need to permanently protect the community'' from such a man.
Leigh Robinson received the sentence he deserved, but I find it hard to believe justice has been served, because they Justice System had already failed the victim and the wider community and if it had not, then others would not have needed to suffer at the hands of this man.
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4 comments:
holy crap mate, this is horrendous! do you have to hear stories like this every day?
Well written post, Eale. No flaws in your argument! It is totally sickening. And to think there are people who make the argument that there's no need for feminism and we live in a lucky country. Lucky if you're a white male!
The only other thing that struck me when reading this was your suggestion that jail rehabilitates offenders. I know (from having this conversation many times lol) that you don't believe this to be true. There's a blog post in that...what do you think should be done with offenders? What would facilitate rehabilitation (if anything)?
Hi Obi, no I don't usually hear about stuff this bad on a daily basis. Also I didn't hear about this case at work, have just been following it in the media.
Leigh Robinson was found guilty of murder in September last year, but was only sentenced last week and there was a fair write up about in the papers.
I don't understand why, when he got jailed the second time, why doesn't the justice system take into account that his original sentence had not been fully served and make him do that time as well?
My brother had to attend the murder scene with SES, he had also passed her street for a body pick-up with work moments prior to the incident.
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