A woman who admitted assaulting and threatening to kill her former lawyer’s wife was sentenced to time served at an appearance in Magistrates’ Court yesterday.

Carina Dornelas, 45, from Southampton, pleaded guilty last year to threatening to kill Heather Funk, causing her bodily harm and sending her an offensive text.

Magistrate Maria Sofianos said Dornelas was entitled to a discount for her early guilty plea and noted that a court report had found she was at low risk of reoffending.

“The defendant has no doubt had further time to reflect and, as she stands here today, she should well appreciate that her actions were serious and the court must mete out a sentence that is proportionate to the gravity of the offence and her degree of responsibility,” she said.

She sentenced Dornelas to five months behind bars for assault and one month for her threatening comments, to run concurrently.

Ms Sofianos also sentenced Dornelas to ten days in prison for the offensive text message, to run consecutively to the others terms.

However, she noted that the defendant had already spent 116 days behind bars and by her estimation the custodial sentence had already been served.

The court previously heard that Dornelas had sent an offensive message to Ms Funk using Ms Funk’s husband’s phone in October 2024.

A month later, she was involved in an altercation at the couple’s home in which she slapped Ms Funk and threatened to kill her.

The court heard Ms Funk had hit her head against a couch during the assault, causing a concussion. Her victim impact statement said the injury led to her missing one month of work.

The statement added that Ms Funk still relived the “shock, pain and abuse” of the incident and that Dornelas’s message “shakes [her] to the core”.

However, Charles Richards, for Dornelas, said that according to his instructions the defendant had initially acted in self defence but her actions became disproportionate.

He urged the court to hold a “Newton hearing” to determine the seriousness of the offence. Ms Sofianos said that such a hearing was not necessary.

“I don’t see this is a substantial departure from the facts put forward by the Crown,” she said.

“Further, even if I was to take the Crown’s case at the highest, I would not impose a sentence of too much more than five months imprisonment, so even if a Newton hearing was held and the entire facts of the Crown were accepted, I don’t see that it would materially impact the sentence.”

Dornelas was also sentenced at the hearing for a separate matter in which she admitted obtaining $200 from Che Bean by deception, with the intention of permanently depriving him of two kettle bells.

The court had heard that Mr Bean gave Dornelas $300 for three kettle bells in May 2024 but claimed to only have received one, valued at $100, from her.

Ms Sofianos fined Dornelas $500 for the offence and ordered that she pay Mr Bean $200 in restitution.

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