A series of exceptional circumstances has combined to allow a woman to remain out of jail while she awaits her sentence for killing her husband.
Samantha Hooker walked out of the NSW Supreme Court on Thursday after the judge found she posed no unacceptable risk to the community.
Hooker was found guilty by a jury on March 19 of the manslaughter of her husband Peter at their Schofields home in northwest Sydney.
On August 8, 2023, Hooker drove her work vehicle directly at her husband, striking him and also colliding with the house.
Peter Hooker suffered serious injuries and died of complications more than three weeks later, after which his wife was charged with murder.
However, the jury found her not guilty of murder after she relied on evidence that her husband had been abusive to her for an extended period, causing her to suffer severe mental illness.
During the trial, Hooker argued she was provoked by her husband's intimidation of her including assaulting and harassing her.
She also said the partial defence to murder of substantial impairment applied because of a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder causing her to be unable to control her actions.
"Clearly by their verdict, the jury must have found at least one of the two partial defences applied," Justice Hament Dhanji said on Thursday.
The extent to which either or both of the partial defences applied to the jury's verdict will need to be determined by the judge on sentencing.
The Crown argued on Thursday that Hooker, who has been under effective house arrest while on bail for more than two years, should be detained before her sentence hearing on April 29.
Prosecutor Emma Blizard submitted a sentence of full-time imprisonment was inevitable because of the seriousness of the crime, even though she did not pose any unacceptable risk to the community.
But Hooker's barrister Tom Quilter SC argued the strict conditions she has been subjected to amounted to "quasi-custody", meaning extra prison time was not a foregone conclusion.
Hooker spent four months on remand in late 2023 before receiving bail.
The short time before the sentence hearing, the high impact of the legal proceedings on her mental state and the likelihood of her being placed in a higher security remand facility factored into Justice Dhanji's decision.
Justice Dhanji found the circumstances were "special and exceptional" and allowed Hooker to leave the court under her previous bail conditions.
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