A man allegedly bashed with a baseball bat in a standover job is "a gratuitous and pathological liar" who cannot be believed, a defence barrister has told a court.
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More than a week of evidence in the judge-alone trial of Sharon Ann Stott and David Micheal Evans drew to a close in the ACT Supreme Court on Wednesday.
Stott, 58, and Evans, 33, have pleaded not guilty to charges of forcible confinement, intentionally inflicting actual bodily harm and making a demand with menace. Stott is further charged with attempted kidnapping, which she also denies.
The alleged victim in the January 2019 incident claims Stott and Evans detained him in a Kambah house and demanded that he pay $20,000. He says Stott was preparing to cable tie and kidnap him when he "freaked out" and a man he later identified as Evans hit him repeatedly with a baseball bat.
He says he managed to grab a knife and chase the pair out of the house, before stabbing one of Stott's car tyres to stop the underworld figure fleeing the scene before police could arrive.
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On Wednesday, Crown prosecutor Keegan Lee urged Justice John Burns to convict Stott and Evans.
He said the alleged victim's version of events matched up with independent evidence including texts sent by the home's occupant, heroin dealer Catherine Howsan.
While Howsan told the court an entirely different story about the alleged victim being hit only once with a baseball bat in self-defence after he went to grab a knife, she sent texts during and after the incident about how Stott had the alleged victim bashed in her home with the bat.
Mr Lee said the texts, which aligned with what Howsan told police at the scene, were a more believable account of the incident. There was a suggestion that Howsan had only changed her story because she feared Stott.
Mr Lee said medical evidence also supported claims that the alleged victim had been struck with the bat multiple times, but perhaps not up to 50 times as the alleged victim claimed.
The Crown also relied on forensic and DNA evidence as part of its case.
But Stott's barrister, Steven Whybrow, said she should be acquitted. He told Justice Burns "nearly everything" the alleged victim said in court was a lie.
Mr Whybrow said the man had been "belligerent and combative" on the witness stand, and demanded a break every time he felt painted into a corner by his own lies.
"Every time [the questions] got hard, he walked out like he was running for politics," Mr Whybrow said.
The alleged victim conceded on the stand that he had not initially been truthful about some aspects of his evidence, including his illicit drug use and where he had been earlier on the day in question.
He notably said he had never had a problem with Stott before the incident, only for it to be revealed that he had previously threatened to kill her in a murder-suicide.
Mr Whybrow said Justice Burns could therefore have no confidence in anything the alleged victim said.
He said the alleged victim had actually been the perpetrator in the incident, and that there had been no threats or demands for money before the regular heroin user "went crazy" in the house, chased Stott outside with a knife and damaged her car. The man then had a motive to make up a story in which he only picked up the knife in self-defence, in order to avoid prosecution.
Mr Whybrow also questioned whether the alleged victim's injuries and blood evidence from the scene were consistent with the man's story.
Evans' barrister, Jason Moffett, also called for his client to be cleared. He said Evans was not at the house at the time of incident.
Mr Moffett said that the alleged victim had picked out a photo of Evans and identified him as the man with the baseball bat. But this only happened after the alleged victim was told by people he would not name that Evans was responsible for his injuries.
Mr Moffett also said the description the alleged victim gave in court of an "ugly" bat-wielding assailant with "terrible teeth" could match any number of Canberra men.
"My client and I acknowledge that we are not going to be invited to any fashion parade in Milan by Calvin Klein," Mr Moffett said.
"But that is a general description of a certain population within the territory."
Mr Moffett further noted that while Evans' DNA was a possible match to that found on the baseball bat, a forensic biologist could not rule out the possibility that it was transferred onto the bat by another person.
Justice Burns reserved his decision.
