A FORMER Hamilton resident sentenced to 30 years in prison for a brutal murder in New South Wales had criminal charges withdrawn in a Warrnambool court on Friday.
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Michael Peter Kaine, 50, previously of the Hamilton Caravan Park, had charges listed in the Warrnambool Magistrates Court.
The charges related to warrants issued in 2007 for possessing and using drugs, refusing a breath test, theft, unlawful assault and indecent assault.
Magistrate Peter Mellas agreed to a request by police prosecutor Sergeant Sandra Skilton that the charges be struck out.
Sergeant Skilton said Kaine had bigger issues than old charges from Hamilton.
Fairfax Media reported in December last year that Kaine labelled a judge a “dead man” before venting a torrent of abuse at his victim’s family, after he was jailed for 30 years in Newcastle Supreme Court.
Kaine had made the threat to Justice Robert Hulme as he pointed his finger and thumb in the shape of a gun at the judge after being ordered to serve a minimum of 22 years and six months behind bars.
Kaine then turned to his victim’s family and friends in the public gallery and besmirched the character of his 62-year-old victim.
Kaine was convicted of murder by a jury in minutes after he had pleaded not guilty, claiming he had been either provoked or substantially impaired.
He had savagely beaten, stabbed and mutilated Dennis Griffin’s body in a Waratah unit on the evening of October 3, 2011, under the mistaken belief that the victim was a paedophile. Justice Hulme said the case was a classic example of why people should never take the law into their own hands.
The judge also detailed Kaine’s criminal record which included jail for stabbing one person in the throat, and another in the back, in 1992 before he bashed a youth-group leader who he believed was molesting children in 1996. Kaine will be eligible for parole in June 2034 at the age of 71.
Kaine had claimed Mr Griffin touched him and made repeated advances towards him even though the victim had an illness that caused the elderly disabled pensioner to spasm and stand hunched over. The attack was one of the most brutal seen in the Hunter Valley, with Mr Griffin suffering facial fractures, 36 knife wounds and various other injuries to his head, body and genitals.
Kaine’s barrister had said his client should be found guilty of manslaughter because of either provocation or mental impairment and the ferocious attack was evidence of an unhealthy mind. But Kaine had told the jury he had been thinking clearly at the time of the murder.
Kaine had been arrested in Mount Gambier almost three months after the murder and extradited to NSW.