Director of Public Prosecutions v Anderton

[2024] VCC 1584

IN THE COUNTY COURT OF VICTORIA

AT MELBOURNE

CRIMINAL JURISDICTION

Revised

Not Restricted

Suitable for Publication

CR-23-01424

DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS

v

JADE ANDERTON

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JUDGE:	HIS HONOUR JUDGE CHETTLE
WHERE HELD:	Melbourne
DATE OF HEARING:	14 February 2024
DATE OF SENTENCE:	20 March 2024
CASE MAY BE CITED AS:	DPP v Anderton
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION:	[2024] VCC 1584

REASONS FOR SENTENCE

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Subject:  CRIMINAL LAW SENTENCE

Catchwords:             Dangerous driving causing serious injury – plea of guilty

Legislation Cited:     -

Cases Cited:            Boulton (2014) VR 308

Sentence:18-month community corrections order. Convicted. Licence cancelled and disqualified for 18 months.

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APPEARANCES:	Counsel	Solicitors
For the Director of Public Prosecutions	Ms G. McMaster	Ms S. Ross, Office of Public Prosecutions
For the Accused	Ms S. Coulson	Ms A. McCarron, Victoria Legal Aid

HIS HONOUR: 

1Jade Anderton, you pleaded guilty to one charge of dangerous driving causing serious injury.  This is a serious criminal offence with a maximum penalty of five years' imprisonment.  The facts of your offending are set out in Exhibit A, the prosecution opening.  Your counsel informed me that this was an agreed statement of fact and I incorporate it into these reasons for sentence, and I sentence you on the basis of the facts set out in that document.

2Briefly stated, on 17 December 2022 at about 2.00 pm you made a U-turn in Mt Pleasant Road, Highton, directly into the path of a motorcycle ridden by then 50-year-old, Simon Jarvis.  Mr Jarvis was riding within the speed limit at about 40-50 kilometres per hour and the headlight of his motorcycle was on.  He tried to brake but could not avoid colliding with the driver's side door of your Holden Cruze, which he hit at about 37 kilometres per hour.

3You had not seen him approaching and he would have been visible to you for about one and a half seconds prior to you commencing to turn across the road.  Your turning in front of Mr Jarvis' motorcycle constitutes your admitted dangerous driving.  When one looks at the accident scene and sees how firstly, close to an intersection you were when you made that turn and the fact that you did not see him, in my view, demonstrates the dangerousness of what you did.

4You stopped your car immediately.  You were seen to be distressed and heard to say you did not know what had happened.  An ambulance took Mr Jarvis to Geelong Hospital and he was transferred to ICU at The Alfred in Melbourne where he remained for 14 days, before being moved to Talbot Rehabilitation Centre for a lengthy period of time.

5He sustained dreadful, extensive serious injuries.  He had facial fractures to the left maxillary sinus, the zygomatic arch, the orbital floor and lateral orbital wall, and the nasal bone.  He had spinal fractures which resulted in bilateral lower limb deficit –  basically he has lost the use of his legs.  He was injured to C6 and C4 to C6, he had multiple thoracic spine fractures, he had lumbar traverse process fractures and he suffered bilateral foot drop.  He had multiple bilateral rib fractures with right sided hemopneumothorax and left sided pneumothorax.  He had bilateral scapular fractures and transient acute kidney injury.  He suffered a closed head injury with intercranial haemorrhage, subarachnoid haemorrhage and Rathke's cleft cyst haemorrhage.

6You were arrested and interviewed by police.  You told police you put your indicator on and looked before you commenced to turn.  You said you did not see or hear the motorcycle before you turned, and it suddenly hit you.

7Clearly you failed to look properly before commencing your turn and I am of the view that you should not have made your turn in that position in any event – it was far too close to the corner.

8Both Mr Jarvis and his wife, Louise, completed victim impact statements and you have just heard them read.  Those documents make crushing reading.  I have been reading victim impact statements in this court for over 20 years and you can never get used to it.

9Mr Jarvis is severely permanently injured.  He lives constantly with pain, and I am not going to rehash what he just read to you.  Mrs Jarvis' victim impact statement is a compelling chronical of trauma, loss, and love.

10The consequences of your short dangerous manoeuvre have had catastrophic consequences. 

11I actually hope the TAC will be able to at least alleviate some of the financial difficulties that you have outlined in your statement, Mrs Jarvis. 

12I take the contents of the victim impact statements into account in sentencing you.

13Turning to your personal circumstances, you are now 27 years of age, being born in Geelong in May 1996.  Your personal history is set out in Exhibit 2, the psychological report of Lisa Jackson, psychologist.

14You yourself are no stranger to tragedy.  You were born and raised in Geelong by both parents up until the age of three. You have a number of brothers and sisters.  You have a half-sister from a previous relationship of your father’s.

15When you were three, your mother committed suicide tragically.  You were then raised effectively by your older sister, Kirsty, who was some 11 years older than you.  She made your lunches and generally took the role of looking after you.  She unfortunately was diagnosed with lupus and eventually died from that disease when you were 18.

16Those losses have significantly affected your mental health and you have suffered from anxiety and depression throughout your life.  Your anxiety and depression has been increased as a result of this accident - well it is not an accident - as a result of this collision.

17You took your time to relate to your father's new partners, there was some hostility between you and your father, but you have now managed to form a closer relationship with your father's second wife.  Your father has health issues, he has developed cancer, and you have concerns about him, and spend time helping him with his health issues.

18You live in rented accommodation in Geelong.  You were educated to VCE level and since leaving school you have a stable work history.  You worked for a period of some five years, ironically to some extent, with the Transport Accident Commission.  You have worked in the disability sector for some years and you lost the job you had after the time of the collision because of the loss of your licence.  You have managed to obtain work in the WorkCover area subsequently.  You have a stable, solid work history.

19You are currently described as being anxious and it seems to me that your severe distress that you have exhibited is consequent to your involvement in this collision and your involvement in these court proceedings. 

20You have no prior criminal history.  You fall to be sentenced as a person of established good character.  Unfortunately, offences involving dangerous driving are often committed by ordinary decent people, however I take into account your prior good character in sentencing you.

21I also take into account your plea of guilty.  You have spared the community the time and expense of a criminal trial and more significantly, spared Mr and Mrs Jarvis the trauma of such a trial.  Your plea is of significant value given that you had an arguable defence and represents an important acknowledgement of responsibility for your actions.

22I accept that your plea of guilty also evidenced what I accept is your genuine remorse and significant distress for your actions.

23I accept that you have excellent prospects of rehabilitation.  Your background, your family support, your solid work history, your lack of criminal history, make it highly unlikely that you will reoffend in the future. 

24Dangerous driving covers a range of offending. It is common ground between the prosecution and your counsel that your offending represents a low-level example of the offence of dangerous driving causing serious injury.  The injuries in this case are horrific, top order, top level injuries and they are a significant part of the circumstances of your offending when it comes to me determining whether or not to convict you for these offences.

25Although the consequences of your actions are horrific, in my view your moral culpability is lower.  You pleaded guilty after a case conference then a sentence indication before me.  The only real issue that arose between your counsel and the Crown was whether this court should convict you or impose a non-conviction sentence. 

26Firstly, it is clear that a term of imprisonment is not appropriate in your case because of the lower level of seriousness of your offending.  More serious examples do result, as you would be aware, in custodial sentences.  The imposition of a community corrections order in my view represents an appropriate sentence in this case.  The Court of Appeal has made it clear that such a sentence is available and appropriate in cases such as yours.[1] 

[1]Boulton (2014) VR 308.

27I have to consider a number of factors in determining whether to impose a conviction for your offending.  It is clear that imposition of a conviction is itself a punishment.  Although your character and past history are impeccable and your moral culpability is low, the nature of your offence and in particular its consequences are such that I believe I must impose a conviction in this case.  There is, in my view, no evidence before me that a conviction will have any impact on your economic or social wellbeing, nor will your employment prospects be affected.

28On the one charge of dangerous driving causing serious injury you are convicted.  You are sentenced to a community corrections order for a term of 18 months with a special condition that you perform 150 hours of unpaid work.

29I am obliged to make an order cancelling your driver's licence.  Now that was already cancelled from some earlier date, wasn't it?

30MS McMASTER:  I don't think it was actually cancelled, Your Honour.

31HIS HONOUR:  According to the material I got she lost her licence when she went ‑ ‑ ‑

32MS COULSON:  So, Your Honour, when immediately following the collision she was not permitted to drive while they were doing tests in relation to the drugs and alcohol ‑ ‑ ‑

33HIS HONOUR:  Yes.

34MS COULSON:  ‑ ‑ ‑ alleged drugs in her system.  So there's a period of three months where she doesn't drive and then after that she is permitted to drive again because it shows that she is not under the influence of drugs.

35HIS HONOUR:  All right.  So what's it the minimum term of two years, isn't it?

36MS COULSON:  Eighteen months.

37MS McMASTER:  Eighteen months, Your Honour.

38HIS HONOUR:  Eighteen months from today?

39MS McMASTER:  Yes.

40HIS HONOUR:  All right.  I make an order cancelling any driver's licence you hold and you are disqualified from obtaining a driver's licence for 18 months from today's date.

41I have not obtained a report from Corrections in relation to your suitability to undergo a community corrections order, but I do not need to because I am only imposing work hours.

42MS McMASTER:  Yes.

43HIS HONOUR:  You are to report to the Geelong Community Corrections Office - and we will give you the address of that - within two working days.  So we are now at Wednesday, before Friday night.  We will send the community corrections order to the Geelong Corrections Office for you to sign and it will be returned to the court.  Are you prepared to undergo such an order?

44OFFENDER:  Yes.

45HIS HONOUR:  Do you understand that if you commit any other offence in the next 18 months, you have breached that order and you come back to be re-sentenced by me?

46OFFENDER:  Yeah.

47HIS HONOUR:  All right.  And if you do not comply, if you do not do the
150 hours.  I think you will find you will get the 150 hours done relatively quickly.  They will sort out a timetable with you.  All right?

48OFFENDER:  Yeah.

49MS COULSON:  Your Honour, sorry to interrupt, just in relation to the disqualification, Your Honour indicated on the last occasion that because she had not been driving for those three months, you would essentially backdate ‑ ‑ ‑

50HIS HONOUR:  Well, can I?  Can I take it three months backwards from today?

51MS COULSON:  I understood you could, Your Honour, but ‑ ‑ ‑

52HIS HONOUR:  What's the date today? 

53MS COULSON:  The 20 March, Your Honour.  It would be 15 months instead of 18 months.

54HIS HONOUR:  So, no well I can't, the 18 months is mandatory.  I think I can make the 18 months run ‑ ‑ ‑

55MS COULSON:  Backdate it three months.

56HIS HONOUR:  ‑ ‑ ‑ run from 20 December.

57MS COULSON:  Thank you, Your Honour.

58HIS HONOUR:  So the 18 months disqualification runs from 20 December 2023.

59MS COULSON:  May it please the court.

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