A man who stabbed his former partner and struck her with a baseball bat was acting in "excessive self-defence", a judge has found.
The 38-year-old, who has not been named to protect the victim's identity, pleaded guilty to common assault and recklessly inflicting grievous bodily harm (family violence).
On Wednesday, July 22, he was sentenced in the ACT Supreme Court to two years and six months in jail, with a non-parole period of 16 months that will expire in January 2027.
The court heard the man and his former partner, who share two children, exchanged threatening text messages before she went to his Higgins home with four others on December 29, 2024.
The 38-year-old was standing in the front yard and picked up a knife from the ground after seeing the group had weapons.
Another man struck him in the head with a long metal bar, while the woman hit him in the side of the face with a baseball bat, the court heard.
The offender then stabbed his ex-partner in the left shoulder with the knife, wrestled the bat away and struck her on the right side of her torso.
When the second man retrieved a jack handle from their vehicle, the woman yelled at him to get back in the car.
The 38-year-old then approached the vehicle while yelling the other man's name before he punched a window and threw the baseball bat at the car.
"Although there were further threatening remarks, the melee essentially ended at that point," Justice Andrew Muller told the court.
The woman was taken to hospital where she was found to have suffered a three-centimetre stab wound, bruising to her chest, and a partially collapsed lung.
The offender also required hospital treatment for severe bruising on his head and shoulder.
In sentencing, Justice Muller said that although the woman was "an aggressor in the initial altercation", the man's decision to use a knife escalated the confrontation and caused her to fear serious injury.
"The use of a knife elevates the seriousness of the offending in that it was a highly dangerous weapon utilised deliberately to cause serious physical harm," he said.
However, the judge said he was mindful the man had already been struck in the head and face with blunt force weapons, was at his own home, and that the knife was used "in the nature of excessive force directed at least in part to defending himself."
Justice Muller also took into account the man's disadvantaged background, including a deprived childhood, post-traumatic stress disorder, and a longstanding struggle with substance abuse.
The court heard his father gave the man alcohol as an infant "to get him to sleep", and by age 13 he was drinking by choice - a habit that eventually escalated to 12 litres of fortified wine a day.
Justice Muller noted the man had shown genuine remorse and recognised how his drinking contributed to escalating the conflict.
While acknowledging that the man's childhood exposure to violence and alcohol abuse combined with his ongoing alcohol consumption "explains, in part, his recourse to violence", the judge said a full-time jail sentence was the only appropriate outcome.
The man's sentence also took into account an additional offence of possessing a weapon with intent.
