Maddison Hickson has been acquitted of murdering her career criminal father Michael Carroll, a jury finding she was acting in self-defence when she twice stabbed him in the chest with a knife at a home at Tenambit last year.
Ms Hickson, now 25, did not deny stabbing her dad, a feared and unpredictable standover man, at a house at Ronald Street on January 16 last year, but pleaded not guilty to murder and claimed she was acting in self-defence after he came towards her with a knife during a volatile argument.
Ms Hickson gave evidence in Newcastle Supreme Court last week, telling the jury she managed to wrestle the knife away from her father before stabbing him twice. She said she stabbed Mr Carroll to protect herself and did not think she had any other choice.
"I thought he was going to kill me," an emotional Ms Hickson said.
Ms Hickson said she had been attempting to calm her father down after he had abused another man at the house in Ronald Street when Mr Carroll turned his attention towards her.
"I went into the bedroom to get my phone and keys and when I walked out he said to me: "you're a f---ing slut and you're a f---ing dog," Ms Hickson said.
Ms Hickson said her father was yelling at her and being aggressive and she shouted back: "you're the one who was on protection", a reference, she said, to his time in jail.
She said at that point her father got up out of his chair and said "I should bash your f---ing head in".
Ms Hickson claimed Mr Carroll began walking towards her and when he was a metre or so away she noticed the blade of a knife in his right hand.
"I was really scared," Ms Hickson said. "I grabbed the knife and we wrestled over it... and I got the knife off him. "Then I stabbed him."
When Public Defender Peter Krisenthal asked Ms Hickson why she stabbed her father, she replied: "To protect myself. I just wanted him to stop. "I didn't think there was any other choice."
Ms Hickson said she then dropped the knife and fled outside because she thought her dad was chasing her.
"I was running for my life," Ms Hickson said. "I just needed to get away."
The prosecution case was that Ms Hickson was acting out of "anger or frustration" and not self-defence when she stabbed her father twice, the blade piercing his heart.
Crown prosecutor Brian Costello had labelled Ms Hickson's version "inherently implausible" and asked them to reject the claim that it was Mr Carroll who had the knife and find that Ms Hickson was acting out of anger and not fear when she stabbed her dad.
But during his closing address, Mr Krisenthal asked the jury if after what they had heard - all the evidence about Mr Carroll's propensity for extreme violence, incredibly short fuse and paranoid delusions - was it plausible that it was Ms Hickson who grabbed a knife and decided to stab her dad.
"If you have to make an assessment based on what you know about the respective people," Mr Krisenthal said. "And based on the evidence you heard as to who in that room picked up a knife and used it in a violent manner to settle a score would you think of her? "Or does your mind immediately go to Michael Carroll?"
Mr Krisenthal asked the jury what else Ms Hickson could have done when confronted with her aggressive and paranoid father advancing towards her armed with a knife.
He pointed to Mr Carroll's lengthy history of violence and evidence that his anger would go from "zero to a hundred" and "the next thing your life could be in danger". "That is exactly what happened here," he said.
Mr Krisenthal said Mr Carroll was a "perfect storm" - prone to violence, severely intoxicated by methamphetamine and likely suffering from drug induced psychosis - at the time when Ms Hickson insulted him by making the reference to being on protection and said Mr Carroll responded the way he always did - with violence.
And ultimately, after deliberating for about eight hours, the jury agreed, returning to Newcastle Supreme Court on Wednesday and finding Ms Hickson not guilty of murder over her father's death.
Ms Hickson wept and wiped away tears after the verdict was read out.
The verdict means the jury must have accepted Ms Hickson's version that it was her father who had the knife during the confrontation and she managed to disarm him and felt she had no other choice but to stab him to protect herself.
Ms Hickson's friend, Taylah Renae McDonald, represented by barrister Paul Rosser, KC, had also been on trial accused of moving the knife used to stab Mr Carroll into a dishwasher. Last week, at the conclusion of the prosecution case, Justice Ian Harrison directed the jury to find her not guilty of being an accessory after the fact to murder.
And on Wednesday the jury acquitted her of hindering the discovery of evidence.
