Two men charged after a fatal stabbing in a western Sydney home invasion have urged the court for leniency due to their disadvantaged upbringing.
Kevin Kourtis, 39, was murdered in his Riverstone home on May 24, 2020 when a group of youths unlawfully entered the premises.
Brandon David Shillingsworth, 23, and another man known only as DPD, have pleaded guilty to various charges, including murder, and appeared at a NSW Supreme Court sentence hearing on Friday.
Three other youths have also been charged and crown prosecutors do not know who fatally stabbed Mr Kourtis.
As well as murder, Shillingsworth faces five other charges including being an accessory after the fact to murder. DPD faces nine other charges, including two of assault.
Shillingsworth's barrister Tom Hughes said his client had been violently assaulted by his father, who left the family home, and had started taking illicit drugs as a teen.
"The cards were stacked against him from a very early age. And he, unsurprisingly in all those circumstances without a present father and subjected to violence and drug addiction, went down a road which is so sadly often predictable," Mr Hughes said.
The youth had shown "green shoots" while in custody, mentoring others and wanting to complete his electrician apprenticeship.
He urged Justice Robertson Wright to avoid imposing a "crushing sentence" on his client so as to give him hope.
"The community requires that those green shoots be watered, not withered," Mr Hughes said.
From the witness box, Shillingsworth admitted he had relapsed back onto illicit drugs, taking cocaine, heroin and alcohol when the fatal stabbing occurred.
He felt devastated and ashamed about his involvement in the tragedy.
"I'd do anything I can to make up for what I've done. I accept my involvement and yeah I'm sorry for what happened," he said.
While he had been involved in two assaults and a prison riot while incarcerated, Shillingsworth said he was committed to getting psychological help and told the court he wanted to start his own electrician's business hiring Indigenous youths.
Crown prosecutor Andrew Isaacs questioned the 23-year-old's prospects of rehabilitation given his criminal history and relapses into drugs.
He argued that the home invasion was planned, with the group meeting in a car park before descending on Mr Kourtis' home.
"It wasn't a spontaneous attempt," he said.
There was also no evidence that Shillingsworths' mental conditions of drug dependence and anxiety caused the offence, Mr Isaacs said.
Representing DPD, a teenager at the time of the attack, barrister Winston Terracini SC said the "disgraceful" parenting of his client as a child, when he was offered drugs and hung around others popping in and out of jail, left him with no real opportunities.
"Children don't plan to be born. They expect that they're going to have some modicum of direction and comfort and support by those who bring them into the world," he said.
DPD had taken heroin, alcohol and 11 Xanax tablets at the time of the home invasion, and brought along a shortened firearm.
His father is in custody and his mother, who admitted "utterly" failing her son as a child, had only just been released from prison, the court heard.
Mr Isaacs argued that while the teenager had been treated for mental illness, he had stopped taking his medication at the time of the murder and had started taking illicit drugs again.
DPD has asked the court to take into account his guilty pleas for two further charges of common assault and possessing a shortened firearm when sentenced.
Justice Wright will deliver his decisions at a later date.
