Troy Desmond Mercanti

Convictions

Notorious bikie Troy Mercanti was sentenced to six years and 10 months jail, with a judge saying he was a coward who had shown no mercy to his partner Tammy Kingdon, repeatedly beating her during their 16-year relationship.

Mercanti, a former member of the Coffin Cheaters and now a Fink, was charged with five counts of assaults on his long-time partner Tammy Kingdon, which allegedly left her with a broken eye socket, two sets of broken ribs and countless cuts and bruises.

Prosecutor Justin Whalley told the West Australian District Court Mercanti had also urinated on Ms Kingdon, threatened to tie her with gaffer tape to a tree to stop her attending her sister's wedding and ordered her to lie on a dog bed and bark.

Mr Whalley told the jury that after the pair had met in Kalgoorlie in the late 1990s, where Ms Kingdon was working as a skimpy barmaid, she had "doomed herself'' to years of abuse in the violent relationship.

Mercanti is alleged to have seriously injured Ms Kingdon first in 1997, when he punched her in the face outside a hotel in Bunbury, leaving her with black eyes and a fractured eye socket that required a metal plate to heal.

The pair continued their relationship, and Ms Kingdon gave birth to two boys by Mercanti in the following four years.

Mr Whalley said Mercanti punched her again in 2002, leaving a facial cut that needed stitches, and launched a prolonged assault on Christmas Day 2006 which left her missing a tooth.

In 2011, he allegedly punched and kicked her and made her stand naked in front of their Duncraig house after an argument following a sex party involving a friend of Mercanti's.

Following an alleged beating in January 2012, when with broken ribs, she was left naked and cowering outside a neighbour's home, Ms Kingdon went to police and made a statement that stretched to 104 pages.

But defence barrister Colin Lovitt QC (pictured below) told the jury that rather than being a battered woman, Ms Kingdon was enamoured with Mercanti's lifestyle and reputation, and was herself "angry, abusive, hysterical and very accident prone''.

During her five days of evidence Ms Kingdon was subjected to regular brutal ross-examination by Lovitt that at times reduced her to tears. Lovitt made accused her of being a liar and vengeful woman.

Mr Lovitt said Ms Kingdon had invented the string of violent incidents to suit her desire to leave the relationship with Mercanti and retain custody of her children.

The missing tooth was caused by a fall down stairs, and the 1997 assault which broke Ms Kingdon's eye socket was at the hand of someone else, Mr Lovitt said.

District Court judge Simon Stone said at Mercanti's sentencing  that damning evidence from Mercanti’s mother midway through the trial had been behind his sudden change of plea to guilty, not remorse or concern for the embarrassment and distress caused to those called to testify in the case.

Defence lawyer Colin Lovitt told the court that his client wanted to apologise for putting the court and Ms Kingdon through the trial, but he had been entitled to initially plead not guilty.

Mr Lovitt said the prosecution claim that the bikie never expected Ms Kingdon to give evidence in the trial was “outrageous” and “nonsense.”

The court was told that Ms Kingdon said in a victim impact statement that all she had wanted was a family unit for her two children.

That was why she had stayed with the bikie for so long, despite the violence.

But in the end, she had made the painstaking decision to leave “our friends, family and the only life we knew”.

The court heard that Ms Kingdon had left Mercanti in January 2012 and that he had not had any contact with the children since.

Judge Stone said he believed Mercanti would always remain a risk to Ms Kingdon’s safety.

Judge Stone said Ms Kingdon had been a credible witness and that Mercanti had been “deceitful” by instructing his lawyers to accuse her of being a liar, actress and drama queen, while knowing she had been telling the truth.

He has been made eligible for parole and his sentence was backdated to March 3 2013

Mercanti and Kevin Ashley Woodhouse were convicted of supplying cannabis to a woman at a hotel in the Perth suburb of Dianella.

The court was told the two men supplied 392 g of the drug to Bernadette Joy Hurley in November 1998