A career criminal and former lieutenant of gangland boss Carl Williams who was Tasered by police while wielding a tomahawk has pleaded guilty to stabbing a man in East Melbourne.
Sean Sonnet, who is also the younger brother of respected magistrate Brett Sonnet, pleaded guilty in court on Wednesday to a string of offences including intentionally causing injury, possessing a controlled weapon and possessing a drug of dependence.
Career criminal: Sean Sonnet in 2018.
Melbourne Magistrates’ Court was told Sean Sonnet was involved in an argument with a 27-year-old man on August 31 last year, after asking the stranger for a cigarette in an East Melbourne park. The dispute escalated dramatically when Sonnet pulled a kitchen knife from a bag and stabbed the man in the chest.
Sonnet fled towards the MCG, where he was confronted by members of the police critical incident response team in Jolimont Street.
Sean Sonnet outside the Supreme Court in 2011.Credit: Jason South
Officers used a Taser to subdue the 55-year-old, who was brandishing a tomahawk. Sonnet was also found with two knives concealed in his pants along with small quantities of methamphetamine, cannabis and LSD.
After entering a guilty plea, Sonnet was on Wednesday sentenced to 15 months’ imprisonment, with three months to be served concurrently with another term he is completing in Loddon Prison for other offending.
Sonnet’s lawyer, Emma Turnbull, said her client was a “severely institutionalised man” who had a long history of drug abuse and homelessness.
Court documents reveal he received his first conviction in 1989 and has spent most of his adult life in prison for an array of crimes including drug trafficking, armed robbery, aggravated burglary, serious assault, family violence and weapons offences.
In 2012, Sonnet was handed a 10½-year prison sentence over a foiled contract killing that was ordered by Carl Williams, the late gangland figure.
Sonnet was arrested with two loaded guns near Brighton Cemetery in 2004, when he was just moments away from executing dodgy lawyer Mario Condello, a member of the so-called Carlton Crew.
The contract had been taken out by Williams, who wanted Condello killed to avenge the fatal shooting of his close friend and bodyguard Andrew Veniamin.
Sonnet was in 2008 originally found guilty of conspiring to murder Condello and sentenced to a 20-year jail term by then-Supreme Court judge Betty King, before he was granted a retrial by the Court of Appeal.
Despite his older brother’s roles as a magistrate and former Crown prosecutor, Sean Sonnet has regularly displayed disdain for the judiciary and its officers during his frequent court appearances.
When sentenced by King in 2008, he sprayed expletives as she ordered him to serve a minimum sentence of 16 years.
“Are you f---ing finished, are you finished?” Sonnet shouted from the dock.
“You f---ing dog ... you black widow.”
Sonnet also accused King of being a drunk and denying him a fair trial.
In 2002, Sonnet was also convicted of contempt of court over his involvement in what was dubbed by a judge as the “trial from hell”, during which one of the defendants threw a bag of excrement at the jury and two co-defendants exposed their buttocks.
Sonnet and four other inmates in Barwon Prison’s top security Acacia unit had originally been charged over the bashing of murderer Gregory Brazel, who provided evidence against them at the County Court trial.
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