Australian hitman killed wrong victim .
SYDNEY 1996-12-06
An Australian hitman who went to the wrong house and killed the wrong man was sentenced to 20 years jail on Friday .
Paul Crofts , 33 , and an accomplice were contracted to shoot a man , identified only as Tony , in the leg to punish him for his misconduct with a female friend of the contractor , the New South Wales Supreme Court was told .
But in February 1993 Leszic Betcher , was shot and killed after answering a knock at the door of his Sydney home . "
The inference from all the material is that the marauders had come to the wrong house , " Judge Michael Grove said .
In sentencing Crofts , who pleaded guilty , Grove took into account his " mildly retarded " intellectual state , which placed him in the lowest two percent of the population .
Grove said Betcher was " not only the victim of a horrendous crime , but his death was brought about in circumstances of an equally ghastly error on the part of the prisoner and his accomplices " .
The unnamed accomplice was earlier sentenced to 20 years in prison .