Mother who killed her children by driving in lake has sentenced reduced
A mother who killed three of her children by deliberately driving into a lake at Wyndham Vale has had her original jail sentence reduced after a complicated legal saga.
Akon Goude killed her four-year-old twins, her 16-month-old son and almost killed her fourth child when she drove an SUV into a Wyndham Vale lake in 2015.
Guode won an appeal after she disagreed with her 26-year prison sentence.
"The Court of Appeal accepted that objectively Ms Guode's offending was 'about as heinous a crime as one could reasonably contemplate,'" the Summary of Judgment read.
"At the time Ms Guode committed the offences, she had a major depressive disorder consequent upon her giving birth to her youngest child and her life was in turmoil.
"Moreover, as the sentencing judge observed, Ms Guode had had an extraordinarily difficult life, having watched her husband being murdered in South Sudan before she herself was raped until she was unconscious.
"Ms Guode's mental functioning was impaired by her major depressive disorder to a point where her capacity to exercise appropriate judgment, and her capacity to think clearly and make calm and rational choices, and to appreciate the wrongfulness of her conduct at the time, was impaired.
"In all the circumstances, she was entitled to some mercy in the sentence imposed."
Goude is now set to serve 18 years in prison.
She can apply for parole in 14 years and will most likely be deported after her release.