Director of Public Prosecutions v Ayama
[2018] VCC 520
•18 April 2018
m
| IN THE COUNTY COURT OF VICTORIA | Revised Not Restricted Suitable for Publication |
AT MELBOURNE
CRIMINAL DIVISION
CR 17-02066 & CR 18-00083
Ind number C1811655
| DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS |
| v |
| Cypriano AYAMA |
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JUDGE: | HIS HONOUR JUDGE TINNEY | |
WHERE HELD: | Melbourne | |
DATE OF HEARING: | 14 March 2018, | |
DATE OF SENTENCE: | 18 April 2018 | |
CASE MAY BE CITED AS: | DPP v Ayama | |
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION: | [2018] VCC 520 | |
REASONS FOR SENTENCE
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Catchwords: Armed robbery x 2, attempted armed robbery, theft. Summary offence commit indictable offence on bail.
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APPEARANCES: | Counsel | Solicitors |
| Department of Public Prosecutions | Mr J. Henderson | Office of Public Prosecutions |
| For the Accused | Ms M. Walker | Melinda Walker |
HIS HONOUR:
Cypriano AYAMA you have pleaded guilty to four charges on the indictment being two charges of armed robbery, one charge of attempted armed robbery and one charge of theft. In addition, you have pleaded guilty to one summary offence of committing an indictable offence whilst on bail. You have no prior criminal history before the courts though it is conceded that there is a troubling chronology here, both relating to the offending I am dealing with, as well as other offending which had occurred earlier and was due to be heard on
21 March by way of consolidated plea in the Magistrates Court. If I can stop at that point, Ms Walker, what has happened about that? Has that been adjourned off or - - -
MS WALKER: It has, Your Honour, to 9 May.
HIS HONOUR: Yes, all right.
MS WALKER: At Dandenong Magistrates' Court.
HIS HONOUR: Yes, thank you.
So as I have said, at the time of the plea, those matters were due to be heard on 21 March by way of consolidated plea. Sensibly, that has been adjourned to 9 May at Dandenong Magistrates' Court and you are pleading guilty to those matters. I will deal with that later.
You were born on 15 September 1998. You were either 18 or 19 depending which offence we are considering at the time of the offending. You are turning 20 years old of age in September of this year.
The maximum penalties have been correctly stated in the summary and there is no need for me to repeat them now.
Facts
The prosecutor Mr Henderson opened this matter to me on 14 March of this year in accordance with a very detailed written prosecution opening dated 5 March 2018. Your counsel Ms Walker told me that this was an agreed summary. That summary was marked as Exhibit A. I see no need in such circumstances to describe the full factual setting in these my reasons. I sentence in accordance with the agreed facts in this case and I will not go beyond those agreed facts.
I will though set out just a little more detail now as the chronology is important to understand. You have really done yourself no favours in not taking the opportunities open to you whilst you had been admitted to bail.
Very briefly, on 6 March 2017, you committed what was undoubtedly an unpleasant armed robbery on a 16 year-old boy that you knew from TAFE. This was in the setting of your pretending to have drugs to sell to him, arranging to meet and then producing a knife, pointing it at his neck and demanding his money. You said at the time, “Sorry, you’re getting robbed.” He then handed over his $100. He then reported the matter to the police, you were arrested on the same day as I understand it and police found the knife and you directed them to the cash. You were fully cooperative with the police and made full admissions in relation to that offending. That is the subject of Charge 1 on the indictment.
Now, you had previously committed a similar style robbery on 19 January 2017 and you had been bailed in relation to that matter to a February 2017 date with a condition that you not attend Fountain Gate. You failed to appear on
22 February 2017. You had also committed a theft of some jackets from a Kathmandu outlet on 22 October 2016. You had been awaiting the summons for that offending. Now, your counsel told me you were pleading guilty to all that outstanding offending and that has been confirmed in the course of the plea. For that reason, those summaries have been placed before me and they are marked as Exhibit B.
So then to assemble the full chronology, you committed the Kathmandu theft in October 2016, and then committed the “drug rip off” robbery in January 2017 and you had been bailed and you failed to appear in February in relation to the robbery matter. On 6 March 2017, you then committed the drug rip off armed robbery the subject of Charge 1 that I will have to deal with. You were arrested on that day and remanded in custody. You were released on 3 April 2017 on strict conditions but then failed to appear on 30 May 2017. You were arrested on 28 August 2017 and once again were bailed this time on 4 September 2017 with daily reporting. On 11 October you were committed to this court on the drug rip off armed robbery, the subject of Charge 1. Your bail was extended. It was four days later that you then committed the Fountain Gate armed robbery, attempted armed robbery and theft the subject of Charges 2 to 4 on the indictment. Again, undoubtedly unpleasant offending this time in company with two others, a young man of your age and a 16-year-old boy. You were back at Fountain gate. On that occasion, your 15-year-old victim was just minding his own business walking with a Bluetooth speaker hanging out from his pants. Your co-accused McKenzie called out to him and approached that boy and demanded the speaker. The boy refused and McKenzie threatened to hit him with a bottle. You approached with a bottle and you joined McKenzie and Ward, your other co-accused. You made a similar demand. Your victim then ran but was followed. You poured alcohol over him and threatened him again. He handed over the speaker to you. Your group then moved on to a liquor outlet and you stole some alcohol, the subject of Charge 4. Your victim in relation to the speaker had in the meantime rung the police. He was waiting inside a Krispy Kreme outlet for the police to arrive. You and one of your offsiders then entered the outlet, again holding bottles, and you cornered him up against a bench. You questioned him aggressively about the police and demanded his phone, threatening to hit him with a bottle. Now, there were some other young males in the shop who saw what was occurring and intervened to protect the boy and you and your offsider ran from the shop as the police arrived. You were arrested following a brief pursuit. This time your interview was far less honest and far less complete. You denied approaching the victim, you denied pouring alcohol on him. You denied knowing anything about the speaker and denied making any demand for the phone or any threats. Now, none of that is in any way an aggravating feature here. You probably just panicked when you were spoken to by the police I suspect. You were charged and you were remanded into custody. I note that in your account to the psychologist,
Ms Ferrari, you suggested to her that the approach was made to the boy owing to some racist jibe that he had made. You had said a similar thing in your untruthful police interview. Now, Ms Walker told me quite explicitly that this was not being relied upon at all. The fact is that this boy did nothing at all to attract the attention of you or your co-accused. Nothing. This was not some response by you to a racist jibe. You and those you were with were targeting him.
As at the date of the plea, you had served already 186 days by way of pre-sentence detention. Of course that has now risen following the adjournment of the matter and it was adjourned to permit me to call for a Youth Justice Centre assessment.
You have done well in custody to date as the bundle of certificates and the drug test attest. So too for that matter the views expressed by Mr Bell in the assessment report. As well, you are working whilst in custody. You are supported by your father and extended family.
Now, McKenzie who is 19 is awaiting a committal hearing as I understand it. Ward who was 16 has been dealt with by way of a non-conviction disposition (probation) but owing to his age, that hearing was in the Children’s Court. He was both younger than you and without the troubling chronology which I have set out, I suspect, and he did not face all the charges you face so his non-conviction disposition really says nothing at all as to the sentence required in your case given the many differences. Your counsel made that very clear. She was in no way relying upon parity here.
Impact
No victim impact material has been filed but it is obvious enough that the direct victims were scared by your crime. You intended to scare them. You intended to have them submit. In the absence though of impact materials, I am not free then to just imagine long term impacts. There is no doubt your conduct was frightening. There is no doubt that it had an impact as it was designed to in the short term. But I am not able to find any long term impact though I am confident your victims will never forget these crimes.
I take into account the impact of your crimes.
Mitigation
Your counsel, Ms Walker, conducted a very sensible and thorough plea on your behalf. She had also filed an impressive written outline which I have also taken into account. That was marked as Exhibit 1 on the plea. She raised a number of matters in mitigation relying chiefly upon;
· Your earliest of guilty pleas;
· Your high level of co-operation
· The presence of remorse;
· Youth;
· She took me to your background in some detail including the particular circumstances of being away from home at the time of this offending;
· She suggested that you had good or decent prospects of rehabilitation;
· You had already spent a sizeable period in custody and to good effect, she argued. You were working and doing courses in custody;
· She relied upon a report from Ms Ferrari though not upon the risk assessment referred to in that document. She relied also upon a youth justice bail report where you had done quite well for what she admitted was a limited period of around six weeks from your release in September to the October offence date. She recognised that the chronology of offending was a real problem for you and she has placed before me today a summary of the bail history.
· She made some submissions as to the relative gravity of the offending but conceded that the offending was serious. It is my view that she essentially abandoned the submission as to the availability of a community corrections order in this case. I believe she accepted that further confinement was inevitable. Well, it undoubtedly was and in those circumstances she urged the court to proceed down the Youth Justice Centre route rather than considering any combination prison/community corrections order outcome.
Prosecution
Mr Henderson, who appeared on behalf of the Director of Public Prosecutions submitted that further confinement was warranted but he conceded that the purposes of sentencing could be achieved in this case by a Youth Justice Centre disposition. He made some submissions about the chronology and the seriousness of the offending, of particular note being that the 15-year-old victim of Charge 2 had been the subject of an armed robbery and then the attempted armed robbery, Charge 3, occurred a short time later even as he waited for the police to arrive. It was pretty traumatic stuff, he argued. There was obvious planning, he suggested, in relation to Charge 1, the ‘drug rip off’ armed robbery given the text messages and the timing of those text messages and the admissions that you had made as to your reasons for taking a knife to that meeting.
Guilty plea
I turn then to consider the various submissions.
Firstly, your guilty plea. You have pleaded guilty. You have done that at the earliest stage. That is very important. You also have been fully co-operative in relation to the first armed robbery. That is co-operative with the police. Despite your less honest account in the second interview, you then pleaded guilty to the Fountain Gate offences at the earliest stage, so you have taken early responsibility for your offending. I must give you significant credit for your decision to plead guilty and at the earliest stage. 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 down in the Magistrates' Court or a trial up in this court.
You have in these various ways facilitated the course of justice. I am required to pass a lesser sentence upon you than I would have imposed had you been found guilty by a jury. I do take into account your level of co-operation and your early plea in mitigation.
Remorse
As to remorse, you have had plenty of time to think about your conduct and it seems from the report of Ms Ferrari and for that matter the report of Mr Bell that you have done just that. Indeed, even as you committed the first armed robbery, it was done almost with an air of apology with the words that you uttered. You know that you have acted badly. You know that you have caused fear to others. You have pleaded guilty at the earliest opportunity and a guilty plea is usually evidence of at least some remorse. Having assessed all of the materials afresh since the day of the plea, I believe you are actually remorseful for these crimes and I take that into account in mitigation.
Youth
I turn now to your youth. You were 18 when you committed the first offence and 19 at the time of the Fountain Gate offending. You are still a young offender for the purposes of the Sentencing Act. Your counsel relies on your youth and the cases that deal with the importance of youth including the case of Mills to which she referred. There are many other cases including that of Azzopardi. Now, it is true that you have no prior convictions but of course I cannot ignore the unfortunate chronology here. It is relevant to my task.
Youth is ordinarily a very important factor. Young people often enough fail to think about the consequences of their actions. They are, generally speaking, more prone to commit errors of judgment or to be impulsive or to be rash. They can and they do often enough lack insight and judgment and the law treats them as being less culpable for these and many other reasons. Young offenders are also far more capable of rehabilitation. They are less fixed in their ways.
So the benchmark for confining any young or youthful offender is a high one indeed and for good reason and if they must be confined, then prison should be avoided if at all possible. Of course, sometimes it is not possible.
Rehabilitation plainly has a greater emphasis in the case of a young offender, especially a first offender. It is usually more important than general deterrence and punishment. It should not be forgotten though it is often enough in the popular media, that the successful rehabilitation of a young offender serves to actually protect the community into the future.
Those of us who sit in these courts on a daily basis know that prison or even sometimes detention in a youth justice facility can derail that process of rehabilitation. It is for these and many other reasons that confinement is always a disposition of last resort.
However, sometimes a young offender - even a young first offender must be sent to prison or otherwise confined. That is the sad reality. Sometimes as here, a court is left with no choice. The fact is that the more serious the crime, the more likely it is that greater prominence will be given to deterrence, to protection of the community, denunciation and punishment and less weight devoted to youth and rehabilitation. You are a youthful first offender so your youth and rehabilitation are very important considerations in my task. I do not lose sight of that and I take that into account. However, you have committed serious crimes and the chronology of offending is unfortunate.
Background
I have said almost nothing to this point as to your background. I am not going to set it out in great detail here. It was spelt out in more detail in the report of Ms Ferrari. By the way, I have mentioned that report a couple of times. Having mentioned it again I should observe that I found that to be a report of high quality when compared to many that I have seen sitting as a judge in this court. There were a few aspects of that report not relied upon including the risk assessment and what was said by you in paragraph 56 as to the events leading in to the Fountain Gate offences.
Your counsel also told me about your background and I have no reason not to accept the personal background that has been placed before me in these various ways. It is an unenviable background in the sense that your early life has been much disrupted owing to the region you were born in. That is South Sudan. From a very early age you were removed from your country, taken by your father to Egypt and resettled in Australia as a refugee in 2004 with your father and brothers. Your mother remained and remains still in South Sudan. That separation has obviously been difficult. It follows then that you arrived in this country with no mother and no English as a six-year-old in 2004. Unsurprisingly, schooling was tough for you in that sort of setting and racism has been an issue as well. It is pretty hard to fit in with no language at all. You had challenges academically and you had a lot to live up to as your older brother had been academically gifted and also was school captain. You began to use cannabis and to drink alcohol as a 16-year-old and you were expelled in 2015. Prior to that point you had returned to South Sudan and there had been a very traumatic event there with a relative committing suicide. You did some work back in this country as a bricklayer but your height posed a problem for that as an occupation. By October 2016 you had moved out of home and you were freed up from the disciplines that were at play at home. Your drug use had increased and your offending had started. I am not going to set out again the chronology of offending and bail. The fact is the court fixed conditions which you chose not to honour. That is, you failed to appear obviously. You continued to offend and that was despite having seen the inside of a prison on two occasions. Though you did do pretty well in the supported bail arrangement from early September 2017 as Exhibit 3 makes plain, that was only for a period of about six weeks and ended with the commission of the Fountain Gate offences days after that encouraging report was written and whilst on bail, and days after having been committed to this court for the plea in relation to the Charge 1. You have been in custody since and you have done very well in custody. You have been working, you have not been in any trouble in prison as I perceive it and you have done a number of courses and programs. You receive visits from your older brother. Your father’s visiting rights had for some reason been held up. I hope if that has not changed already that it will. As to your background, particularly the disrupted early background that I have spoken of, one of significant trauma, disruption, separation, cultural adjustment and prejudice, well, I take that into account as far as I am able to in mitigation of sentence.
Rehabilitation
What then are your prospects into the future? What are your prospects of rehabilitation? Well, there was the assessment of your level of risk in the report of Ms Ferrari but as I have said already, your counsel was not relying upon that risk assessment. It was one that was so heavily qualified as to be of almost no use. It depended on a number of future positive aspects or scenarios. I take into account that report. As I say, I think it was a report of high quality, though as your counsel made plain, she was not relying upon any of the principles from the Court of Appeal decision of Verdins in this case. The report though is still of real use, setting out as it does your background, your response to the offending, your hopes for the future as well as detailing the absence of any intractable mental health issues which might impede your rehabilitation. It speaks of your current position in custody.
What then does the future hold for you? If you do all the things suggested by Ms Ferrari, then you will prosper. But will you do those things? It is always hard to know that. How things pan out in the future for you will depend on so many factors including your attitude to drug and alcohol use, employment as well as your friendship group and who you associate with. So much will depend on the choices that you make and the attitude that you demonstrate. Your attitude will be the key aspect and I am encouraged that you have made real efforts in custody. You cooperated with the police, you pleaded guilty at the earliest opportunity. You are actually remorseful. You do have family support upon your release. You are still young and with no history before the courts and you have already spent a sizeable period in an adult gaol. It was also a quite contained period of offending when one looks at the chronology and in a setting where you were living away from home. As I have said though, the chronology of offending is something of a worry as is conceded here.
I believe that you do have good prospects of rehabilitation. It is conditional upon you putting real effort into your life upon your release. If you do, if you leave drugs behind you, if you distance yourself from peers who are using drugs and who are offending, if you can do all of these things, then I assess your prospects of offending in this same way as being relatively unlikely. It might be said that these are all big ifs. That may be so but presently I am cautiously optimistic in relation to your future prospects. I believe that you do have good or decent prospects of rehabilitation if you take those steps and I believe that you can.
The Offences
As to the offences themselves, well, your counsel conceded that this was serious offending. And you know that. Of course, it was. The first offence had a level of planning plainly enough and though submissions were made as to the lack of sophistication in your not covering your face, of course that is explained by the character of the offence. You knew each other. This was a drug rip off in the sense that your victim was coming - he thought - to buy drugs off you. That is what he thought. Of course, you had no drugs and you were planning to rob him which is exactly what you then did. It was an armed robbery as you took to the meeting a knife which you then used. It was actually produced. So obviously there is a level of planning there. As you told the police, you did not expect him to report the matter to the police given the context. He was, after all, trying to buy drugs. You had many chances along the way to reflect upon the seriousness of that planned crime and to rethink and to opt out of such serious offending but you chose not to. It probably was motivated by a degree of need I suspect in your case. The later offending at Fountain Gate - well, that targeted a 15-year-old boy in a public place. It was joint conduct against him. It was very unpleasant indeed and it got worse when there was the second offence, the attempted armed robbery, in the donut outlet. It was nasty stuff, Mr Ayama, you know that.
Now I do accept that the offending is not at the highest of levels. It is nowhere near it. Plainly, there are very many far more serious instances of armed robbery and attempted armed robbery coming before the courts.
But there are plenty enough of these soft target armed robberies also coming before the courts and that is what these offences were. Your victims in each instance, be it the armed robbery or the attempted robbery, were vulnerable, and were soft targets. These were still serious offences. The second set of offences was opportunistic and quite spontaneous.
It was also though quite brazen and so too the theft. Maybe on that later occasion at Fountain Gate, you were emboldened or disinhibited by alcohol and support in place from your young offsiders. You also were on bail at the time of the last three offences and you failed to appear on bail at the time of the first offence. Failed to appear for a similar type robbery. So the chronology is obviously unfortunate and you know that. You also know that you have let yourself down after the quite encouraging period of supervised bail leading into the October offences. You describe that disappointment in yourself in your discussions with Ms Ferrari.
Purposes
I have to consider a number of purposes of sentencing and your rehabilitation is an important consideration in this case given your youth but it is not the only consideration. I have to impose a just and proportionate sentence in relation to your offending. Other matters must also to be taken into account including for instance the impact of the crime and the maximum penalty at play. Here, as you heard, it is 25 years for the armed robberies, 20 years for the attempted armed robbery and ten years for the theft.
I must also denounce your conduct and I do. You should be ashamed of yourself for committing these crimes and I sense that you actually are. And that is a positive thing. You have undoubtedly committed serious crimes - no question about that. But you are a long way removed from being set in your ways as a serious criminal.
There are other purposes of sentencing. I must give the principle of specific deterrence some weight in my task. That is that I need to deter you from offending. That is obviously something I must pay some regard to given the seriousness of the crimes and the chronology of offending including committing some of these offences whilst on bail. I believe though that it is open to me to moderate to a degree the weight given to that purpose, owing to your youth, your absence of relevant criminal history and my favourable findings as to your prospects of rehabilitation and the relatively low risk of re-offending into the future. For the same reasons, I believe I can moderate the weight to be given to community protection here. So these purposes - specific deterrence and community protection - they still have a role to play in my task. There is no question about that. It is just that they are not nearly as important as they might be in a different case. For instance, the case of an older offender, one with a relevant criminal history and one with defiance of - or disobedience of past court orders and one with less favourable prospects of rehabilitation.
General deterrence is however a 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. Soft target armed robberies and attempted armed robberies are all too common these days. Indeed they are far more common than offences that target the more traditional past victims such as banks and building societies.
Those contemplating such offending as yours, they must understand that such conduct will not be tolerated by the courts. Enough of those who commit this type of offence are young. So youth and rehabilitation though still very important here, they have to surrender some ground to general deterrence.
I must and I do pay regard to current sentencing practices. Ultimately though, what I must do is pass appropriate sentences in your case for your crimes. Other cases are not precedents that bind me in any shape or form.
Parity
No submission was made as to parity here and for good reason. The co-accused who had been dealt with is only a co-accused in relation to the two Fountain Gate offences, was 16 at the time and hence was a child and dealt with in the Children's Court. He likely did not have your unhappy bail and offence chronology. The authorities make plain enough that there is always a great difficulty when one offender is dealt with as an adult and others were children and subjected to the specialist Children's Court jurisdiction as your co-accused was. See the case of Evans [2003] VSCA 223 and Hussein [2010] VSCA 257. There are very different sentencing principles at play in the Children's Court including the total inability to even consider the principle of general deterrence nor are you strictly co-accused across the board in this case.
I do not ignore the disposition imposed upon your 16-year-old co-accused but it assumes very little weight indeed in my task given the very many differences here. Your counsel concedes as much by not even seeking to address me on the topic of parity.
YJC
Your counsel seemingly abandoned the suggestion of the availability of a community corrections order. That was certainly her stance in the event that any further confinement was required. It most certainly is in this case given the offending and the chronology. Maybe the position might have been different had you committed a single offence in isolation and then put behind you 12 months of excellent effort in the community, attending programs, courses and gaining employment in the lead up to the plea. But that is not the setting. The setting is of your having committed the January 2017 offence which is yet to be dealt with, having been bailed, then failed to appear in February, committing the March 2017 offence, then disengaging from the supported bail and failing to appear again, being remanded, being released on supported bail again and then committing the Fountain Gate offences. So as I have said, Charges 2 to 4 on the indictment have been committed whilst on bail for the October 2016 theft and the January 2017 robbery. You have let yourself down whilst on bail and you do not really need me to tell you that, I suspect. Ms Walker’s submission as to Youth Justice Centre detention was based on the desirability of your being confined in such an institution rather than an adult prison should further confinement be required here and the recognition of the inability of a court to combine detention in a Youth Justice facility with later release onto a community corrections order.
Ms Walker took me to s.32(1) of the Sentencing Act. Well, there has been an assessment report that has been placed before me. The parties have really not needed to address me in relation to it. Clearly, Mr Bell who was the author of that report has been impressed by your presentation upon interview. It is, to my way of thinking, a very positive report and it restates many of the conclusions that I had already reached as to your efforts in custody, your rehabilitative prospects and the existence of remorse in this case. You present to him as an emotionally immature man but one who is actually motivated to address the issues which confront you. A positive assessment is made of your future prospects and you express a strong desire to go to Youth Justice. You are suitable for such an order, Mr Bells tells me, as you meet a number of the criteria.
Ms Walker was relying upon the other materials placed before me suggesting the existence of rehabilitative prospects that themselves would trigger the availability of such a disposition.
Now, a court cannot impose a Youth Justice Centre order without calling for an assessment and then without being satisfied of one of the grounds set out in s.32(1)(a) or (b), either rehabilitative prospects or the impressionability, to use the short hand.
You are assessed as suitable though that does not provide the answer to the ultimate sentence that I impose. I have to then consider whether it is then open to pass such a sentence. There is a ceiling of three years here, though for offences committed after 30 November of last year, it has risen to four years. That increase does not apply to my task.
Your offending demands that you be confined for a sizeable period and I believe it is open here to avoid further exposure to adult prison in your case. I have no doubt that you have decent if not good prospects of rehabilitation, conditional upon those things I have mentioned earlier in these reasons. That alone would justify this step before even considering your youth and the ability to be subjected to the corruptive influences which no doubt abound in an adult prison and should be avoided if they can be. Well, they can be here in my judgment.
So I believe that it is open to sentence you to a Youth Justice Centre disposition.
Totality
I have to take into account the principle of totality and I have. The last three charges on the indictment are a tightly grouped set of offences obviously. However, they were separate crimes with separate elements, targeting the same victim as between Charge 2 and 3 and no doubt with separate impact. Charge 1 occurred in a totally separate time frame and targeted an altogether different victim. There is the obvious aggravation posed by the chronology here in that for the last three offences you were on bail.
What I must do is pass appropriate individual sentences. It is obvious enough that there must be some level of cumulation required in this case given the differing crimes, differing elements, differing conduct, victims and impact. I have engaged in a last look at the sentences imposed by this court and the orders for cumulation and the total effect of them in endeavouring to guard against the imposition of a crushing term upon you.
Disposal
What were the ancillary orders, Kasia? Or is there disposal orders there? I have been requested to make a disposal order under the provisions of s.78(1) of the Confiscation Act. That application is consented to. It relates to some bits and pieces set out in schedule including the knife. I have signed that order. I am satisfied of the criteria for the making of that order. I order pursuant to the provisions of the Confiscation Act the forfeiture to the State of the property referred to in the schedule and I direct that it be dealt with in the manner contemplated in the signed order. Yes, I wonder if you would stand up now please, Mr Ayama?
Sentence
On Charge 1, the charge of armed robbery, I convict and sentence you to 21 months' detention in a Youth Justice Centre. On Charge 2, armed robbery, I convict and sentence you to 18 months' detention in a Youth Justice Centre. On Charge 3, attempted armed robbery, I convict and sentence you to 15 months' detention in a Youth Justice Centre. On the charge of theft - that is Charge 4 - you are convicted and sentenced to seven days' detention in a Youth Justice Centre. On the summary offence, you are convicted and sentenced to seven days' detention in a Youth Justice Centre.
The sentence imposed on Charge 1 is the base sentence. That is 21 months. I direct then that eight months of the sentence imposed on Charge 2 and three months of the sentence imposed on Charge 3 are to be served cumulatively upon the base sentence and upon each other. The other two sentences will be served concurrently.
Total effective sentence
What this results in then is a total effective sentence of 32 months or two years eight months' detention in a Youth Justice Centre.
Pre-sentence detention
I declare that you have been in custody in relation to these matters for a period of 221 days and that period has already been served under this sentence and is to be noted in the records of the court. That declaration is pursuant to s.35 of the Sentencing Act.
Section 6AAA
Now, I have mentioned that I have taken into account your early guilty plea in this case. I have told you that I have made allowances for that. I now give you a sense of the quantum of the discount involved here. But for your guilty plea, I would have imposed a greater sentence. Had you been found guilty of these offences following a contested trial in this court, I would not have had at my disposal a Youth Justice Centre disposition in this case. The three-year ceiling would have prevented such an outcome. I would have convicted and sentenced you to a term of five years' imprisonment. I would have fixed a non-parole period of three years. That statement, made under the provisions of s.6AAA, is to be entered in the records of the court. Just have a seat for a moment,
Mr Ayama.
Are there any other matters I need to deal with at all or not?
COUNSEL: No, Your Honour.
HIS HONOUR: All right. The mathematics of that - that all adds up, does it?
MR HENDERSON: Yes.
MS WALKER: Yes, Your Honour.
HIS HONOUR: Yes, all right. You will go down and see your client, Ms Walker?
MS WALKER: Certainly will, Your Honour.
HIS HONOUR: All right. Well, thanks very much. Well, that completes the matter then, Mr Ayama. So I will sign that order in a moment but you can head off downstairs. Ms Walker will come down and have a chat to you, all right?
OFFENDER: Thank you, Your Honour.
HIS HONOUR: Yes, all right. I have signed that order then. Thanks. I will just consider whether I take something out of the reserve list. It will not trouble either of you though so thanks for your efforts in the case, Ms Walker and
Mr Henderson. So I will stand down I think for the moment. Thank you.
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