Director of Public Prosecutions v Akol

[2018] VCC 1016

IN THE COUNTY COURT OF VICTORIA Revised
Not Restricted
Suitable for Publication

AT MELBOURNE
CRIMINAL JURISDICTION

CR-18-00242

Indictment No: H12934059

DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS

v

AKOK AKOL

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JUDGE:	HIS HONOUR JUDGE TINNEY
WHERE HELD:	Melbourne
DATE OF HEARING:	15 May 2018 and 28 June 2018
DATE OF SENTENCE:	29 June 2018
CASE MAY BE CITED AS:	DPP v Akol
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION:	[2018] VCC 1016

REASONS FOR SENTENCE

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Catchwords: Theft, prohibited person possess imitation firearm, common assault x 2, summary offence of resist and commit indictable offence on bail

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APPEARANCES:	Counsel	Solicitors
For the Director of Public Prosecutions	Ms S. Wallace	Office of Public Prosecutions
For the Accused	Mr Amad (15 May and 28 June) Ms K. Townsend (29 June 2018)	Richard Revill Lawyers

HIS HONOUR: 

1Akok Akol, on 15 May of this year, you pleaded guilty to four charges laid on the indictment, being two charges of common assault, one charge of theft and one charge of being a prohibited person possessing an imitation firearm. 
That charge had been amended, as you know.

2In addition, you pleaded guilty to two summary offences being one offence of resisting an emergency services officer and one of committing an indictable offence whilst on bail.  You have quite a lengthy prior criminal history before the courts. 

3You were born on 4 September 1990, you are 27, you turn 28 in September of this year.  The maximum penalties have been correctly stated in the agreed summary and there is no need for me to repeat them now.

Facts

4On 15 May, Ms Wallace who was prosecuting then opened this matter to me in accordance with a detailed written prosecution opening that was dated 23 April 2018.  There were some amendments to that document which are recorded on the transcript.  There was the amendment as to your age and also as to the spit not actually connecting with the police member involved.

5Your counsel told me that this was an agreed summary and it was then marked as Exhibit A on the plea.  So I see no need then to describe the full factual setting in these, my reasons, I will sentence in accordance with the agreed summary and I will not go beyond those agreed facts.  Nor will I lose sight of the charges that you have actually pleaded guilty to.  In fact, I encouraged the amendment in relation to the use firearm charge as it seemed to me that there was an aspect of double punishment in the use of the firearm in the course of the assault, hence it was dealt with on the basis of the possession.

6Very briefly, as you know, this episode started out as a very brazen theft of some beer from a liquor outlet in Sunshine.  You were challenged by a member of staff and it blossomed from there, escalating into a very nasty incident where you threatened the staff member and pointed an imitation handgun at him.  
That is the subject of the common assault. 

7He was scared out of his wits.  He had no sense at all of this being a toy or an imitation weapon and you scared him and you intended to.  You and the person you were with, your offsider, decamped with the Victoria Bitter slab of beer and the police arrested you a short time later.  You resisted police, pulling your hand away, hence the summary offence of resist, and it significantly degenerated from there with the threats and the conduct including the spitting at the sergeant.  The spit did not land but that act and the surrounding words found the common assault, the subject of Charge 4 on the indictment.  All of this offending occurred whilst you were on bail.

8Once placed into custody, you were given quite some time to calm down and to sober up.  You did yourself no favours in the later police interview where you told a pack of lies and continued to make plain your complete disregard for the victim and for authority.

9The matter resolved at an early stage in the Magistrates' Court and you then endeavoured to have the matter heard in the lower court.  Correctly, if I may say so, a Magistrate refused that summary jurisdiction application and you were committed to 15 May for plea.

10I heard the full plea on that date but was persuaded by your counsel to then call for a Forensicare report which has now been received.  That is now marked as Exhibit B.  It is a disturbing report and I will have more to say about it later in these reasons.

11You have been in custody since your arrest on 20 October of last year, a period of 207 days up to 15 May.  Of course, that total has now risen.  It stands now at 251 days.

12Enough then of my summary of the summary, that is all it is.  The full summary contains the full factual basis of sentencing.

Impact

13No victim impact material has been filed, but it is obvious enough that the victim in the bottle shop was scared by your conduct, by your crime, and you intended to scare him.  There is no doubt that your conduct was frightening and had an impact at least in the short term.  I am not able to find any long term impact in the absence of materials on that topic, though I am confident that your victim will never forget the crime.  I take into account the impact of your crimes.

Mitigation

14Your counsel, Mr Amad, raised a number of matters in mitigation, relying mainly upon;

·      Your early guilty pleas;

·      The presence of some remorse;

·      He took me to your disadvantaged background but stressed that you had the existence of some qualified family support;

·      He suggested that you had some prospects of rehabilitation;

·      You had already spent a sizeable period in custody, about 207 days at the time of the plea and some had been in lockdown he submitted, where you had more time to reflect on your position. He said that you had done a number of courses and there is evidence of that in Exhibit 3;

·      He made some submissions as to the relative gravity of the offending but conceded that the offending was serious. He argued in favour of a term of imprisonment in combination with release onto a CCO. He was not suggesting your immediate release at this point.

15Now those submission were made prior to receipt of the Forensicare report. That report authored by Dr Nielsen is of real concern. Your counsel conceded that there were some troubling matters within it which eroded some of the submissions he had made. It is one thing to view the interview and to conclude that it may have been in the heat of the moment or with alcohol talking or at least loosening your tongue.

16The assessment conducted by Forensicare is current.  It was conducted on
25 May.  There was no heat to it, there was no alcohol involved and some pretty extraordinary attitudes disclosed in your dealings with the author.  It is inevitably relevant to my task.  You have, I do not know why, but you have an amazing mindset and one that does not suggest any great desire for change.

17Your counsel correctly conceded yesterday that the report was relevant to the assessment of remorse and the contention that you had been reflecting on your position in custody and the need for change in your life.  It was obviously relevant to specific deterrence, to rehabilitation and community protection. 
That was all conceded.

18Your counsel accepted also that the past lockdown arose seemingly as a result of allegations of misconduct by you in custody.  In addition, I was told yesterday that that lockdown had now ceased.

19Your counsel yesterday persisted in the submission that a community corrections order in combination with a prison term was open to the court.

Prosecution

20Even before the receipt of that Forensicare report, Ms Wallace who had appeared on behalf of the Director of Public Prosecutions in May had raised issues then as to the existence of remorse and the claims made as to your being locked down in custody.  She submitted on behalf of the Director at that stage that a term of imprisonment was warranted here.  She did not make submissions as to the availability of a community corrections order.  That was a matter for the court she said.

21The prosecution is seemingly shy to make submissions ruling out a community corrections order fearing that they are somehow providing a direct sentencing range submission.  I do not believe they do when they make that sort of submission.  Ultimately of course, it is a matter for me as these things always are.

Guilty plea

22I turn then to consider the submissions made.  You have pleaded guilty at, what I will treat as, the earliest stage.  You have taken early responsibility at law for your offending.  I must give you credit for your decision to plead guilty and at the early stage which you did.  Witnesses have been spared the experience of coming to court to give evidence.  The community has been saved the time, the expense and the effort associated with the conduct of a committal hearing in the lower court or trial up in this court.  So you have in these ways facilitated the course of justice.  I am required to pass a lesser sentence on you than I would have imposed had you been found guilty by a jury.

Remorse

23As to remorse, you have pleaded guilty and at an early stage and Mr Amad reminded me of that fact.  A guilty plea is usually evidence of at least some remorse and normally, I adopt that view unless there is something pretty solid to suggest otherwise.  Well there is here.  I have here your attitude to the offending, to the victim and to the police expressed firstly in the police interview.  Now, I know that that was on the day of arrest, so I make allowances for that fact.  However, I then add in the Forensicare report.  The Forensicare report, when read in conjunction with your troubling history before the courts involving countless acts against the police, seriously calls into question the issue of remorse in this case.  It is plain from the assessment conducted on 25 May that you have no actual remorse for these crimes at all and in fact, you hold a contemptuous attitude to the victim, to the police and to the laying of the charge of the imitation firearm.

24You have, for whatever reason, no respect for the law or for those who are sworn to uphold the law.  You presented to the author as unconcerned and dismissive about your offending.  Even on 15 May, I had serious reservations as to the presence of any remorse in this case.  I raised them with your counsel as a matter of fairness to give him the opportunity of addressing my concerns.

25Your counsel told me on 15 May that he could not take me to any evidence of remorse other than that implied in the plea.  Well, it has headed downhill from that point.  Having reviewed all of the material, including that recent report, I am not satisfied on the balance of probabilities that you have remorse. 
Indeed, I am positively satisfied, that is satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that you actually have no remorse at all for any of these crimes.

Background/prospects

26I have said almost nothing of your background to this point and I am not going to set it out great detail.  It was spelt out in some detail in the course of the plea and there was of course more detail still in the recently obtained report from Forensicare. 

27I have no reason not to accept that personal background.  Your family fled Sudan to Egypt.  You were born and raised in Egypt as a refugee and came to this country when you were about seven.  You are one of five children, the only male and in the middle.  It was a highly disrupted upbringing, it got worse still with removal at the behest of Department of Health and Human Services from your family from the ages of 11 to about 16.  You were admitted to care and disconnected from your immediate family.

28You left school far too young and you have had a very poor and disrupted employment history.  No skills, no training, no occupation and also long-term issues, serious issues, with drugs and with alcohol.  Your father died about two years ago and that, I was told, heralded an increase in drug and alcohol use.

29You are now 27 years of age.  I am afraid you no longer have youth on your side.  You have assembled a pretty troubling criminal history.  I put aside altogether the outstanding matters I was told of yesterday, both the matters listed for further mention on 30 July 2018 and the other matters for which there had been outstanding warrants to arrest. 

30The listed matters relate to allegations arising from your conduct in custody.  The other matters related to dishonesty, to resist and assault police.  It is not clear how those various matters may play out.  It has not yet been determined how you will plead.  Indeed, I am told that the 30 July matters are likely to proceed by way of a not guilty plea.

31In the circumstances then for all of those outstanding matters, those listed in July and the other ones I was told about, as you may well plead not guilty,
I should not have any regard to them.  I will totally disregard them.

32Back then to your proven past criminality as set out in the admitted criminal record.  There are a large number of matters of relevance to my task.  Over a dozen separate appearances. You obviously have significant issues with anger management.  There are many occasions of threats to kill or threats to inflict serious injury.  Seven threats to kill by my reckoning and as many occasions,
I believe eight in fact, of threatening to inflict serious injury.  Many physical assaults.  Many offences of dishonesty and causing damage or threatening to damage property.  Some nine occasions of resisting or assaulting police and as you counsel explained, many of the threat offences were directed at the police.

33Your counsel conceded the prior history speaks of an attitude with the police.  So too by the way does the police interview and so too the Forensicare report. 
You have been given many opportunities by the courts and you have not taken them.  You have received prison terms in the past including terms where a non-parole period has been fixed.  I was told by your counsel that on each occasion you were released on parole, you breached it.  You have breached a number of community corrections orders.  Your criminal history on its own is something of a worry.  It does not exist on its own.  I have the conduct that I am dealing with. I have the police interview. I have the Forensicare report and the Forensicare report in a way explains the sort of criminal history that you have accumulated before the courts.  You were on bail at the time of this offending.

34I have set out very briefly your family background and I have no doubt at all that your early background and developmental background has been most unfortunate and disadvantaged.  No one would envy you that background and I do take it into account insofar as I am able to in the ways urged upon me by your counsel.  See the cases of Bugmy and Marrah.

35However, you can no longer have any expectation of leniency when brought before a court.  Courts have tried to rehabilitate you with virtually no success.  Bail does not stop you offending.  Court orders do not stop you offending.  Prison, when imposed, has not deterred you from offending upon your release.  The courts have tried time and time again to deter you again with very little success.  I will try again.

36Specific deterrence and community protection have very serious roles to play in this sentencing task.  You may well have some qualified family support. 
I see the family members here again today but you did at the time.  You had the same family and partner.  Your partner, I understand, is soon to have your child.

Rehabilitation

37Your counsel was seemingly not prepared to apply an adjective to describe your rehabilitative prospects and I am not surprised.  I pressed him in this regard yesterday.  At the plea in May, he was suggesting that you had at least done some courses in prison and had some time in lockdown to reflect on your future life, that you had learnt, he said, a salutary lesson and had some growing insight as to the need for change in your life.  Well the report of Dr Nelson suggests quite the opposite.  The reasons for that lockdown that I was told about in May are seemingly disclosed in Nelson's report.  You had allegedly made a box cutter.  Anyway, you are no longer in lockdown and there is no submission made as to an increased custodial burden in this case.

38Your counsel took me to some references in a CISP report marked as
Exhibit 1 in these proceedings, suggesting that you had some treatment needs.  No doubt you do.  The treatment needs are set out also in Dr Nielsen's report.  There are many needs, though, I am afraid, no reason to have any confidence in your desire or ability to change. 

39You have committed brazen, unpleasant offences yet again which again display your disregard and disdain for others, including the police whose job is hard enough without the likes of you.  You have long-term issues with alcohol and with drugs of addiction and an obvious issue managing your anger. 
Your intoxication at the time is in no way mitigatory, though I will not treat it as a matter of aggravation as I perceived the prosecutor invited me to do yesterday.

40The recent assessment by Forensicare is not helpful to you at all. Not one bit.  Aside from demonstrating the complete absence of remorse, it demonstrates how poor your insight is and how entrenched your bent for crime.  No or virtually no insight as to alcohol abuse, no insight as to the impact of crimes, no empathy for your victim, even indignation that you were even charged with the assault with the firearm.  Blaming the victim.  You have no empathy and you have poor behaviour controls.  You are assessed as having a high risk for violent reoffending with antisocial attitudes and problems with treatment and supervision.  That is not my assessment, that is the assessment made by an expert and I accept it.

41Overall, you were judged to have a high risk of concern for engaging in future violence and general offending.  To quote the author of that report,

"Mr Akol's likelihood of violence is high and the physical harm may be in the moderate to high category.  The imminence of such violence is currently low due to his incarceration, but if released and if continuing problematic alcohol use, such violence may occur imminently."

42It is a pretty sobering assessment.  The report continues,

"His poor motivation to change, denial, justification and minimisation suggests that he is unlikely to make significant changes."

43It goes on to suggest the interventions that are required but it is not an optimistic report at all and negates many of those submissions that have been made by your counsel in May of this year as to the salutary experiences in custody and your reflection on your past behaviour and your developing insight and motivation for change in the future.  Those things were said in May and they were flagging a growing maturity in suggesting that there was some hope of rehabilitation.  Yet, they would appear to have very little currency, given what you told Dr Nelson as recently as late May and more significantly, her opinions as to risk and rehabilitation which are based on her assessment of you and set out in her report.

44I will not say you have no prospects of rehabilitation at all, that is a pretty bleak statement to make.  Your counsel ultimately yesterday settled on the submission that you had some prospects.  I believe that you have poor prospects of rehabilitation and a high risk of reoffending.  I hope I am wrong.  Maybe you can change your ways but your past efforts to date and your present attitudes inspire no confidence at all.

45There is no basis at all for me to hold any optimistic view here.  Courts have tried virtually every sanction available and none have impeded your subsequent breaches of the law.  Your attitude as expressed to the forensic psychologist is deeply disturbing.  It finds voice in the offences I am dealing with as well as in your long history before the courts.  Plainly, you have a shocking attitude to the police and to the law.

The Offences

46As to the offences themselves, your counsel made submissions as to the short duration of the imitation firearm offence.  It is true, but that completely ignores the fact that you have reached into your pocked and pulled out the imitation firearm and then pointed it towards the head of your victim at very close range, saying what you said at the time.  Your victim had not the slightest inkling that it was an imitation weapon.  The theft itself which heralded the staff member's involvement was just brazen, totally defiant, totally lawless.  Your conduct with the police who attended was disgusting.  The less said of it, the better, so too your conduct in the police interview and in the conference with the Forensicare author.

47The trouble is, I cannot ignore these matters.  You were on bail at the time of all of this offending.  You have whistled up out of thin air on the day in question these serious charges and by that I mean, it was all just so unnecessary and so stupid.  The theft had been completed.  You could have just left as your offsider did but instead, you significantly raised the stakes.  The subsequent offences greatly overshadow the theft obviously enough.  You had no business having an imitation weapon, you had no business assaulting the staff member and raising the imitation weapon to his face and uttering the words that you uttered, was to my way of thinking a very serious assault.

48As to the police, well you have a terrible attitude towards them. I don't know why.  They are doing a difficult job made more difficult owing to people such as you and they simply must receive protection from the courts.

Purposes

49I have to consider a number of purposes of sentencing and your rehabilitation is becoming less and less important the older you become.  You are no longer a teenager.  You are turning 28 later this year.  Courts have placed great emphasis on rehabilitation in some of the past dispositions but that, I am afraid to say, is no longer warranted.  Whilst I will not ignore your rehabilitation, it is after all a purpose of sentencing that I am required to consider, your prospects are poor.  Other sentencing purposes necessarily assume a larger role here.

50I must impose a just and proportionate sentence in relation to your offending. 
I have spent some time dealing with your prior criminal history and I make this plain; you do not fall to be sentenced a second time for that past conduct. 
It does not permit me to react by imposing a disproportionate sentence, but it is obviously relevant to my assessment of your rehabilitative prospects, your risk of reoffending and the need to deter you from future offending.

51I must take into account the impact of the crimes and of course the maximum penalties.  I must also denounce your conduct.  This sort of conduct will not be tolerated.  Brazen theft, defiant aggression when caught and then a torrent of abuse and vitriol and an assault directed at the police.  You should be ashamed of yourself but of course, you are not.  Not one bit.

52I must give the principle of specific deterrence significant weight in my sentencing task, that is the need to deter you.  That is obviously something I must give strong regard to here, given the seriousness of the crimes and your poor history before the courts and lack of compliance with past orders and bail on this occasion.  Also your attitudes as discussed with Dr Nielsen on 25 May of this year.

53Community protection is also a matter of real significance to my task, it looms large.  It plainly must be given real weight here.  I must protect the community from you.  You are a danger, as you have, it would seem from the report, antisocial tendencies, no or little insight, a veracious appetite for alcohol, poor control of your temper and impulses and no empathy for or consideration of others.  Also a preparedness to carry weapons, see Dr Nelson paragraph 29.  There are some very dangerous traits there and the expert suggests that the danger of future violence is high.

54It would seem from that report, that you can justify to yourself the unjustifiable.  For instance, somehow rationalising or justifying or minimising the crime committed upon the bottle shop attendant, when all he was doing was his job.  All you were doing was committing a crime in his workplace.  You have, for whatever reason, a warped style of thinking.  I must try to deter you from offending in the future.

55General deterrence is also a very significant purpose of sentencing in this case, that is the need for this court to deter others.  This court must send a message to other individuals in the community who might be minded to commit this sort of serious offending.  Those contemplating offending such as yours must understand that such conduct will not be tolerated by the courts.  The courts will back up those whose job it is to enforce the law.  It cannot be an easy job at times being a policeman or policewoman.  Those who choose to treat the police in the way that you did can expect little leniency.

56I must and I do pay regard to current sentencing practices but it is only one factor and it is not a controlling factor.  I must pass appropriate sentences in your case for your crimes and other cases are not precedents.

Parity

57Your co-accused was dealt with in the Magistrates' Court for theft from a shop and assaulting an emergency service worker.  He received a seven day aggregate term.  He was a few years younger.  He also had a pretty unimpressive criminal history with a fair bit of it though in the Children's Court.  I am not aware of him being on bail at the time of his offending, you were. 
It is difficult to reach any views as to matters raised in his favour.  I have no written reasons.  It is clear, I have been told, that the assault to which he pleaded guilty is not the one that you are falling to be sentenced in relation to.  So that assumes no importance at all.  But the theft, tallies up with the theft, the subject of Charge 1 on our indictment. It is the theft of the beer.

58The principle of parity of sentence dictates that all things being equal, co-accused who commit the same crimes in the same fashion and have the same or similar personal circumstances should receive the same or at least a similar penalty.  It is a principle that strives to avoid a justified sense of grievance held by offenders.  This is, I should say, very much a gross simplification of the legal principles at play but it suffices for present purposes.  Well here, all things are not equal as far as I am concerned.  You are facing more offences, you used the firearm, you were on bail.  I have your greater age, your lengthy history. 
I have much detail as to your past offending and your present attitude to this offending as disclosed in the report.  I do not believe there is any remorse here at all in your case and I believe you have poor prospects of rehabilitation and a high risk of re-offence.

59I have no idea at all what the learned magistrate concluded in all of these areas in relation to your co-accused.  It would be just total speculation. 

60Even had all things been equal, I would have regarded the sentence imposed upon him on the theft as entirely inadequate in any event.  The principle of parity does not compel me to pass an inadequate sentence.  I do not ignore the sentences of the sentence imposed on your co-accused for the theft, it just does not greatly inform my task.

Totality

61I have taken into account the principle of totality and that the charges occurred obviously in a very tight time frame.  However, they were separate crimes with separate elements and separate victims.

62There is the obvious aggravation posed by your being on bail at the time. 
What I must do is pass appropriate individual sentences.  It is obvious enough, indeed, I think Mr Amad conceded that some level of cumulation is required in this case given the differing crimes, differing elements, differing conduct, the victims and impact.

63I have engaged in a last look at the sentences imposed by this court and the total effective of the man endeavouring to guard against the imposition of a crushing term upon you.

CCO/Combination

64Your counsel was arguing both in May and yesterday for a term of imprisonment with your ultimate release onto a community corrections order.  He was not suggesting imminent release and he spoke of the availability of a period of up to 12 months beyond the pre-sentence detention declaration.  Now, he was conceding therefore that a community corrections order on its own was not open here and undoubtedly he was correct.  He argued that a term of imprisonment with later release onto a community corrections order would provide for your treatment needs, and there were many of those he said, whilst at the same time, giving adequate weight to the various purposes of sentencing.

65In May of this year, he argued that a high percentage, he said, from the material available to him about 48 per cent of people with a non-parole period are not paroled at that point and that this was somehow relevant to the exercise of my discretion, that I should have regard to that fact in determining whether or not to use a combination type order, that I could secure your guaranteed release at a specified time with release onto a community corrections order. 
Yesterday, I think it is fair to say, that Mr Amad accepted that that submission really should not have been made.

66I cannot be concerned about whether a person will or will not be released on parole.  That is not my task.  It is plain to me that you must spend a further sizeable period in custody.  Your release is a distance event and the Adult Parole Board will be in a vastly superior position to know what your then needs are.  I would only be guessing at this stage.

67What I must work on is the basis that you will serve every day of the head sentence I will impose.  Whether you are paroled or not is not something that I can even consider.  It will be left in the capable hands of the Adult Parole Board. 

68I am left with no choice here but to impose prison terms and given the dimensions of the sentences I would impose, it is simply not open as a matter of law to combine those orders with a community corrections order.  Nor though for that matter would it make sense to do so even if I had the power, given your lack of response to past orders and your expressions to Dr Nielsen.  Such a disposition would not pay adequate weight to a number of purposes of sentencing that are prominent here, including of course general and specific deterrence, punishment, denunciation and community protection.

Compensation

69There are some ancillary orders that are sought here.  I have signed those orders, firstly there is an order for compensation.

70There is an application for compensation made pursuant to s.86 of the Sentencing Act.  This relates to the cost of the slab of beer, $46.  There is consent to the making of that order.  I order that you pay the sum of $46 in favour of the victim the subject of those offences.   It seems to be made it was against resist emergency worker and prohibited person, that should not be made on that, it should be on the ‑ ‑ ‑ 

71MS WALLACE:  No, Your Honour, it should only be in relation to the first charge.

72HIS HONOUR:  I endorse that.  So it was made on the charge of theft. 
So I order compensation to the tune of $46 in relation to that theft charge in favour of the victim.

Disposal

73There is also a disposal order that is sought in relation to various things set out in the schedule, the VB bottles and the carton and of course also the metal imitation firearm.  Again, there is consent to the making of that order and I will order pursuant to s.78, the forfeiture to the State of that property and I direct that it be held and dealt with in the manner contemplated by the order to which I have signed.

74Mr Akol, stand up please. 

Sentence

75On the charge of theft, that is Charge 1, I convict and sentence you to one months' imprisonment. 

76On Charge 2, being a prohibited person possessing an imitation firearm, I convict and sentence you to 12 months' imprisonment. 

77On the common assault, the subject of Charge 3, that is the pointing of the imitation weapon into the face of the store manager and using the words that you used at that time, you are convicted and sentenced to 27 months or two years and three months' imprisonment. 

78On the common assault, the subject of Charge 4, that is the assault upon Sergeant Brezing, you are convicted and sentenced to nine months' imprisonment.

Summary Offences

79On the summary offence of resisting an emergency service worker, I convict and sentence you to seven days' imprisonment. 

80On the offence of committing an indictable offence whilst on bail, I convict and sentence you to 14 days' imprisonment.

Cumulation

81The base sentence is the 27 months imposed on Charge 3.  I direct that the one month sentence imposed on Charge 1, three months of the sentence imposed on Charge 2 and five months of the sentence imposed on Charge 4 are to be served cumulatively upon the base and other part cumulative terms.  The sentences imposed on the summary offences of resist emergency service worker and the offending on bail will be served concurrently upon the base and all other sentences.

Total Effective Sentence

82This results in a total effective sentence of three years' imprisonment.  I fix a period of two years during which you will not be eligible for release on parole.

Pre-sentence detention

83I declare that you have been in custody in relation to these matters for a period of 252 days.  That period has already been served under this sentence and it is to be noted in the records of the court.

Section 6AAA

84I have taken into account your guilty plea.  But for that, I would have imposed a longer sentence had you been found guilty of these offences following a contested hearing, I would have convicted and sentenced you to four and a half years' imprisonment.  I would have fixed a non-parole period of three and a half years.  That statement is also to be entered into the records of the court.

85Just have a seat please.

86Are there any other matters I need to attend to at all?

87MS WALLACE:  No, Your Honour.

88HIS HONOUR:  No, all right.  Are you going to go down and see your client downstairs, Ms Townsend?

89MS TOWNSEND:  Yes, I will, Your Honour.

90HIS HONOUR:  All right.  Mr Akol can be removed, thank you.

(Prisoner removed.)

91Yes, I have signed that order. 

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