Director of Public Prosecutions v Bruce

[2017] VCC 1199

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

AT LATROBE VALLEY
CRIMINAL JURISDICTION

CR-17-01373

DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS

v

TROY ANTON BRUCE

---

JUDGE:	HIS HONOUR JUDGE SMALLWOOD
WHERE HELD:	Latrobe Valley
DATE OF HEARING:
DATE OF SENTENCE:	24 August 2017
CASE MAY BE CITED AS:	DPP v Bruce
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION:	[2017] VCC 1199

REASONS FOR SENTENCE
---

Subject:
Catchwords:
Legislation Cited:
Cases Cited:
Sentence:

---

APPEARANCES:	Counsel	Solicitors
For the Director of Public Prosecutions	Mr N. Hutton
For the Offender	Ms M. Casey

HIS HONOUR:

1Troy Anton Bruce, you have pleaded guilty to one charge of aggravated burglary and two uplifted summary matters of common assault and breach of an intervention order.

2You are now 32 years of age and you have pleaded guilty.  You must get the utilitarian benefit of those pleas of guilty.  Remorse is somewhat problematic, but in these circumstances I give you the benefit of the doubt in respect of that.

3Aggravated burglary carries a maximum penalty of 25 years, summary assault, three months, and breach of an intervention order, two years.  You do have significant prior convictions and significant matters which occurred beforehand but for which you were actually convicted afterwards.

4I do not propose to go through your entire history but just so it is put into some perspective.  You are currently undergoing an 18 month sentence for matters that occurred as I understand it prior to this.  On 23 September 2015 I placed you upon a community corrections order, you having served 89 days in prison.  That was for aggravated burglary, a similar concept.

5Back in January of 2013 you contravened a community corrections order which you had got in October of 2012.  That was for stalking, contravening a family violence intervention order and threat to inflict serious injury.  You were given four months.

6On the same day other charges of stalking, contravention, unlawful assault and burglary you received in all a sentence of something in excess of 12 months.  My understanding is that the 15 months I think it was from memory, a parole period was set and you were in fact able to get through that.

7Again, on that same day there was ten months imposed for robbery, burglary and unlawful assault.  There were other matters earlier than that which are not of real concern.  You clearly have difficulties with violence and what occurred here.  I think it is just very fortunate that when you went into that house and she hid that you did not find her.

8A summary of the offending is that there are two separate incidents really.  The first occurred on 17 May 2016 and you, a complainant, Mr Sales, and his friends had been drinking and they went to McDonald's.  As they were walking to McDonald's your car came up behind him, you got out of the car and were immediately aggressive towards him.

9He went into McDonald's with his friends.  About 45 minutes to an hour later he went outside to have a cigarette and encountered you again.  You approached him and asked him again if he had a problem.  He remained silent as he did not want to escalate the situation.

10You then apparently did say something about being called a dog and called him a smart arse for not responding to you.  There were two other people with you and I have not been told who they were.  In any event, you head-butted the victim to the side of the head and you then punched him on another couple of occasions.  That gives rise to unlawful assault.

11You have instructed apparently that he did call you a dog.  I simply do not accept that.  I notice in the materials that you have been and can be paranoid and I am not saying that you do not believe you were but I certainly do not think you were.

12The second incident, which is of much more significance, is on 13 June 2016 the complainant, your former partner and mother of one child at that stage, was visiting her partner, a Mr Neil, at his mother's address.  At approximately 9 pm you arrived in a Toyota Landcruiser.

13You were apparently with someone from what I can gather but that does not really matter.  The occupants of the house were all sitting in the lounge room when they heard a big bang.  Maryanne Jackson returned to her bedroom to investigate the noise and looked out the window.

14She said something like, "They're at my fucking RAV," which I assume is a car.  I have not been told what in fact you were doing.  You were yelled at and your associate, to get away from the car.  You then ran towards the front door and were yelling for your partner.

15When you reached Ms Cox you grabbed her and pushed her to one side.  She hit the railing on the balcony but did not fall.  You then grabbed the fly screen door with both hands and ripped it off the door.  You threw the fly screen down the stairs, hitting Ms Cox, causing a minor cut to her lower leg.

16You then kicked the front wooden door, knocking one of its panels out and entered the house through the front door.  As you entered the house you were yelling and searching the house for her.  You were screaming out, "Rachel, where the fuck are you?  Get the fuck out of the house," as well as, "Where's the fucking cunt?  I'm going to beat the shit out of her," and, "I'll get four years gaol for this."

17It is put that you were concerned about her using drugs whilst pregnant.  I accept as was put to me from the bar table that there were real concerns with DHS at that time and she probably was using drugs and you would have been concerned.  But that conduct, to then try and assert that that was somehow an attempt to look after an unborn child, in my view is verging on preposterous.

18She hid and waited for an opportunity and then fled before you could find her, and as I say, if you had found her I have got no idea what would have happened.  In any event, a fortnight went past and you were found at your current partner's house.

19At that time there was an intervention order between the two of you which I am told was for some sort of verbal altercation.  That would be right, but I do not know, and you should not have been there.  That gives rise to contravene family violence final intervention order.

20In these circumstances I am simply going to convict and discharge on that charge.  I cannot see any point in taking it further.  The crime has to be regarded as serious.  Being aware of the history of all this and having dealt with you previously and your relationships previously I do understand the milieu in which all this took place and I will not go any further with that.

21The fact of the matter is you cannot conduct yourself in this way and your assertion that you were going to get four years for it showed that you were aware of the potential at least - it will not be that - but potential at least consequences of what you were doing.  Gaol is inevitable and has to be significant.

22You have now been in custody as I understand it for some 442 days.  Originally you were remanded for this matter and the committal mention came up in September of 2016.  You, as I understand it, maintained your innocence up until the day of committal when the witnesses were to be called to give evidence.  At that point in time you pleaded.

23The problem for you with that is that you were given on 21 March for a number of matters in the Magistrates' Court a sentence of 18 months.  The magistrate imposing that sentence declared all the time that you had spent in custody.  I have serious doubts as to whether that was lawfully possible, but the fact of the matter is that he did and there is nothing I can do about that.

24That means that you have no pre-sentence detention for this matter at all.  In those circumstances I obviously give real significance to the concept of totality.  I do not regard it as lost opportunity for concurrency in the same way as perhaps Renzella because you were maintaining your innocence and could have pleaded back at committal mention, some almost a year ago, if you had wanted to.

25But as I do say, I do take into account in that respect that you are still 32 years of age and you have now been in custody for a significant period of time and will be in custody for a further relatively significant period of time.

26As I indicated to counsel I am not going to go through your whole history, I am simply going to refer very briefly to a couple of matters that are contained in the reports.  I have before me my earlier sentencing remarks.  I also have the report of Mr Ball, the report of Ms Lechner, and a number of other documents that relate to it, clean urine screens that are of support, a letter describing opportunity for employment and I take all those matters into account.

27When I sentenced you last time I referred to the report of Ms Lechner who said that you suffered - and this is back in September of 2015 - that you suffer symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder relating to your experiences of violence perpetrated by your father.

28Your father was apparently a relatively well-known local criminal and you have a head injury from the extraordinary prospect of being a teenager watering his drug crop for him whereas I recollect you were rolled over by a tractor or something along those lines.

29In general terms I accept that you had a very disadvantaged childhood.  As I said at the time, it was a sad one indeed.  I accept that you for that offending had expressed regret and shame and you are apparently endeavouring to do that you say in this matter.

30Your father would smoke large amounts of cannabis and would regularly beat you and your siblings.  You would not bring other children home because of the fear of your father.  You never sent on school camps or excursions and led a very isolated existence as a young person.

31What you have described to your counsel as I understand it, and also to
Ms Lechner which I accept, is that your relationship with Ms Vincent was a very unhealthy one and, as you said, "made you become like your old man", angry, aggressive and violent.

32I do not know whether the relationship caused that or your background or whatever it was, but something is going to have to be done about it or you will end up with an extremely significant sentence at some stage.

33In terms of your general circumstances you were regarded as having clinical depression at least to a moderate degree.  You have been regarded as being a high risk of re-offending.  I think that is probably right, but you were described in a couple of ways once by Ms Lechner, "In the interview Mr Bruce impressed as capable of reflecting on the impact of his behaviour as on both himself and others.

34He is easily overwhelmed by emotional factors (particular those reminding him of traumatic memories) that together with his substance abuse undermine his judgment, decision making and capacity for impulse inhibition.  Whilst able to identify triggers to his negative feelings he tends to block out internal distress through drug abuse, this inadvertently aggravating his underlying depression."

35This is back in 2015.  "Mr Bruce is currently evidencing symptoms of a moderate level of depression as measured by the Beck Depression Inventory.  He has been commenced on anti-depressant medication and that has assisted his mood somewhat.  Mr Bruce also harbours unresolved post-trauma symptoms that affect his judgment in situations of conflict."

36It is not put that Verdins has any application in your particular matter.  Mr Ball, who is well-known to me, stated inter alia that, "Mr Bruce impressed me as an individual with impairment for his ability to plan and execute positive and self-sustaining behaviour.  He presented with a significant identity disturbance.  He presents as living on the fringes of the community and associating with negative peers."

37He goes on to talk about your career criminal father and the dreadful basis of your childhood.  He then goes on to say, "He is frequently lonely and isolated from others.  When faced with intense problems in areas of special vulnerability Mr Bruce is most likely to experience a sense of helplessness and hopelessness.  He may exhibit brief, frantic but futile efforts either to assert himself or stand on his own."

38The prospects of your rehabilitation, Mr Bruce, can only be up to you.  The risk of you re-offending, bearing in mind your past history, has to be regarded as high, as indeed it was by Corrections.  The only appropriate sentence here can be one of active gaol.  At the age of 32 you have reached an age where quite a lot of people in your circumstances are able to turn their lives around, do the appropriate courses, get the appropriate learning and stop threatening and belting people.

39If you do not you will probably spend most of the rest of your life in gaol I suspect deeply.  However, you have no pre-sentence detention and the best I can do in these circumstances is to say for the third time, taking into account totality is the following.

40The charge of aggravated burglary, 24 months, assault, one month.  As I have said, a breach of the community corrections order, convicted and discharged.  I direct that you serve a minimum term of 15 months before becoming eligible for parole.  I direct that this sentence be served concurrently with any other sentence being undergone and as I am told from the bar table your earliest release date on that sentence was some time in December, so it will be running concurrently with that.

41Just so you understand the benefit that you received by pleading guilty to these charges and avoiding the need for a trial, but for your plea of guilty you would have been sentenced to a imprisonment for a period of three years with a minimum of two.  There is no other orders I have to make?

42MR HUTTON:  No, Your Honour.

43MS CASEY:  No, Your Honour.

44HIS HONOUR:  Take him out, thank you.

‑ ‑ ‑