Director of Public Prosecutions v Chrisafis
[2018] VCC 149
•12 February 2018
| IN THE COUNTY COURT OF VICTORIA | Revised Not Restricted Suitable for Publication |
AT MELBOURNE
CRIMINAL DIVISION
Case No.17-01714
| DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS |
| v |
| BILL CHRISAFIS |
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JUDGE: | Her Honour Judge Riddell | |
WHERE HELD: | Melbourne | |
DATE OF HEARING: | 6 February 2018 | |
DATE OF SENTENCE: | 12 February 2018 | |
CASE MAY BE CITED AS: | DPP v Chrisafis | |
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION: | [2018] VCC 149 | |
REASONS FOR SENTENCE
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Catchwords:
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APPEARANCES: | Counsel | Solicitors |
| For the Crown | Ms B. Goding | |
| For the Accused | Mr L. Dean |
HER HONOUR:
1 Bill Chrisafis, you have pleaded guilty to one charge of armed robbery and one summary charge of committing an indictable offence whilst on bail. The circumstances of the armed robbery are outlined in the summary of the prosecution opening which is exhibited on the plea.
2
In short, on 12 December 2016 you were staying at your girlfriend's house, sleeping in her car in the garage. At some time after 11 pm your girlfriend
Ms Kelly, heard the engine of her car running and asked you via SMS where you were going. You told her you were going to get petrol. She did not see you again until after 3 am.
3 On 13 December 2016 at approximately 2.15 am, the victim in this matter, a Ms Pham, was driving her silver Mercedes from St Peter Chanel Catholic Church in Deer Park to her home in Williamstown. As she was driving along Kororoit Creek Road, Altona, she noticed a grey four-wheel drive driving next to her. It then moved behind her and began to flash its lights. It drove to the left and right sides of her car three times with the driver gesturing to her to wind down her window. She wondered whether it was the police but was not sure and so did not pull over. You were the driver of that vehicle and you continued to follow her all the way to her home in Williamstown.
4 By this time Ms Pham says she was in shock and fearful of having been followed. In her desire to reach safety, she opened her garage door using a remote control and drove immediately inside. She then attempted to close the door using her remote. You parked nearby and then ran up her driveway. Using your hands you prevented the garage door from closing, jamming it open so that you could enter. Ms Pham was still in her car in the confined space of the garage. You approached her and tried to engage her in conversation. You said, "My name is John, what's your name?" You asked her to wind down her window which she eventually did a little way.
5 Terrified, Ms Pham tried to use her mobile phone to call her husband who was inside the house. You then became agitated and panicked. You grabbed a selfie stick that was lying in the garage. You began waving the selfie stick in a menacing way and demanded that she get out of the car. You then placed your hands at the top of the slightly open car window and forced it down so that you could reach into the car and open the door.
6 You continued waving the selfie stick and demanded that Ms Pham give you her phone and her purse. You then reached into the car and snatched a Samsung phone out of her hand before reaching for her purse. She was scared and so gave it to you. It contained currency of approximately $150 as well as personal cards. You then left. Later that morning you showed Ms Kelly a phone which you said you had purchased for $55.
7
The victim called the police at approximately 2.55 am. Latent fingerprints on the driver's side window led to your identification. You were arrested on
14 December 2016 and interviewed. You denied the allegations claiming that you were with your girlfriend and you did not leave her premises and did not drive her vehicle. You said, "I'm not the type of person to do something stupid and shit like this, it's just ridiculous." You invented a story about having been at a shopping centre as a way of explaining your fingerprints on the victim's car.
8 You were charged and remanded in custody. At the time of this offence you were on bail for a number of other dishonesty matters. You were placed on bail on 28 September 2016. You were on bail for two different sets of offences of dishonesty.
9 At the time of this armed robbery you were 40 years of age. You are now 41.
10 Your history reads as if you have been two different people. On the one hand you have a supportive and loving family. Your father was present in court. He and your mother worked 16 to 18 hour days in labour intensive jobs bringing you and your two younger brothers up as Catholics living in the western suburbs of Melbourne. You performed well at school, completing Year 12 at Keilor Downs College where you performed well academically. You were liked by students and teachers alike. You then completed an associate diploma in applied science at RMIT. In 1995 you also became a qualified pilot. At one stage you were engaged flying commercial aeroplanes in and around Melbourne metropolitan area for the purpose of their service and repair. This apparently continued until around the time of the Ansett collapse where more qualified people took jobs you otherwise might have obtained. Thereafter, and for approximately ten years on and off you were engaged in sales in the telecommunication industry.
11 However from about the age of 16 years you were also working in nightclubs mainly as DJ. This apparently put you in touch with persons with criminal associations and behaviours and you then allowed yourself to become involved in criminal offending. In particular you committed a number of dishonesty offences which are reflected in your prior criminal history. I am told that most of your past offending relates to opportunities you had to steal credit cards belonging to patrons at various nightclubs where you worked, and to then use those credit cards to obtain property by deception.
12 These matters are reflected in your prior convictions during the period from 2002 to 2007. They are again reflected in the dishonesty matters for which you were on bail when you committed this offence. During that period of your prior offending you were given community corrections orders with various conditions aimed at your treatment and rehabilitation. You were breached on two occasions in relation to those orders, however ultimately in 2007 the original community based order was confirmed and I am told you successfully completed that. There is certainly a gap in your prior criminal history between 2007 and 2011.
13 You have had two significant relationships but relevantly your marriage to Suzannah Bozinovska from around the 2007 period was apparently a stabilising influence on your life. You have two daughters as a result of that union, with your first born in 2009 and your second in 2011. Apparently with the birth of your second child there was financial strain on the relationship and eventually that marriage broke down.
14 I am told by your counsel that this was a seminal event in your life and ultimately led you to increased and addictive use of various drugs of dependence, in particular the use of methylamphetamine. The scourge of that drug is well known and is certainly reflected in your increasing appearances in the criminal justice system between 2011 and today.
15 Again you were given a number of opportunities to undertake a community corrections order and to be placed on a suspended sentence. Each of those orders were breached. Ultimately you were sentenced in June 2015 to 12 months' imprisonment. You completed that sentence and were released back into the community in March 2016, some nine months before the commission of this offence. Clearly this offence and the matters for which you were on bail show that you were not rehabilitated at that point but rather came out of custody and proceeded down the familiar path. The fact you were on bail for two separate sets of offences committed in April and September 2016 is an aggravating factor in relation to this armed robbery.
16 Those matters reflected in your criminal history speak against your prospects of rehabilitation. Further, the armed robbery represents a significant escalation in your offending.
17 However, your counsel was able to point to some positives as a result of your period in custody during the last 14 months and I take these into account when considering your prospects of rehabilitation and the issues of specific deterrence.
18 You have been on remand since being charged with this offence in December 2016. It is to your credit and particularly as you are a remand prisoner, that you have engaged yourself with a number of programs during your time in custody. You have completed a number of TAFE courses through the Box Hill Institute of TAFE. Those have been directed at increasing your employability upon your release from custody and have been conducted during March, April, May, August and December of 2017.
19 Perhaps more importantly you have engaged in programs which have potentially made you undertake some more serious self-reflection regarding your life, your drug use and your repeated criminal offending. The first of those is the School's program which you have participated in for a period of six to eight months. This has seen you engage with approximately 3,000 school children over that time on a weekly basis. Your role in that program is to discuss the history of your own offending, the reasons and background for that offending, your own personal background and your interaction with the Corrections system. I am told and I accept, that this has been a cathartic experience which has had a significant impact on you and has perhaps led to some greater insight. It has made you confront your own past history, but has also made you accept and prioritise what you will be trying to achieve when you are released.
20 The second program you have been involved in is a peer listener training program as well as a peer mentoring pilot program. The peer listener training program involved an induction during May 2017 when you were placed on probation as part of that program, and then an engagement in that program during August 2017. This involved you being a support to other prisoners who had been struggling with prison life. It involved discussing with those persons issues such as conflict resolution, coping strategies, preparing for release and self-care amongst other things.
21
You have also been part of a pilot program where it is intended that prisoners who have been through periods of imprisonment will become peer mentoring models for other persons still enmeshed in the gaol system. According to a letter from the general manager of Marngoneet Correctional Centre,
Mr Wayne Harper, you have been honest and forthcoming in your ideas, opinions and advice. Your involvement in the early stages of that pilot project are said to be invaluable as it is being developed. You anticipate and look forward to participating in that program once you are released from custody.
22 Upon release you will reside with your parents who remain supportive of you. You have been told by your father however that living with them will be on the strict conditions that you remain on the right track. I accept that your efforts in custody bode well for your eventual rehabilitation.
23 I have also been provided with four urine screens spanning the period February 2017 to November 2017 and which are all negative. Obviously any return to drug use will place you at serious risk of re-offending.
24 Armed robbery is a serious offence. It is an offence of violence whether or not actual violence is used. The threat of violence is part of the offence. It is also a prevalent offence committed often, as here, on defenceless members of the community who are going about their business. They are often isolated, helpless and vulnerable. Your victim Ms Pham, was all of these things. She was a 49 year old woman going about her business of religious devotion. She was alone at night.
25 In assessing the objective gravity of this offence, this was a brazen attack carried out at night on an innocent person. You demonstrated your willingness to engage in physically violent behaviour by jamming the garage door open, by forcibly pushing down the car window and by reaching into the car and grabbing her belongings. The ultimate armed robbery occurred in the sanctity of her own premises where she should have felt safe. She was isolated and perceived the real threat of your demand. Your use of the selfie stick as a weapon to extract that demand was menacing to her and clearly conveyed to her the threat of violence.
26 You are a person with prior convictions for violence, namely threatening to inflict serious injury and reckless conduct endangering serious injury as well as various prohibited weapon charges. Your counsel accepted that you made up your mind to commit an offence against this woman at the time you were driving and followed her for that purpose. To that end this was not a spontaneous offence. I do accept however that arming yourself with the selfie stick which thereby created the offence of armed robbery, was a spontaneous act and that the duration of the actual armed robbery was reasonably short, though obviously in the context of what had gone before it.
27 I have read and considered Ms Pham's victim impact statement. She talks of the immediate effects, saying this crime affected her tremendously. She felt weak, helpless, anxious and scared of possibilities of experiencing this crime again. She says,
"I also felt very angry and disappointed at our society that it is not safe any more and therefore our movements have become restricted."
28 Her views reflect many in the community. To that end I must denounce your behaviour and I do so. The victim you selected however says those initial feelings have settled a lot, though it is clear she is still hyper-vigilant as a result of your crime. She says she has learnt to be more careful, more prepared and more cautious. However she offers you her forgiveness and she wishes for you to find a life of peace.
29 Your rehabilitation is of course in the public interest and I accept that you have made some gains in the context of a long and substantial drug use history. In the case of armed robbery, rehabilitation is generally of secondary importance to the requirements of deterrence and community protection.
30 In my view your rehabilitation prospects are still guarded given your prior matters including your failure to take up opportunities offered to you, and given the circumstances of this serious offence. They do not displace deterrence as the dominant purpose for imposing sentence. However I do of course take them into account.
31 I do note you are still a relatively young man. I view the ongoing love and support of your parents as an important positive factor in your future.
32 Despite the denials in your record of interview, the matter resolved at an early stage with plea discussions commencing as early as May and the final resolution reached in August. No witnesses and particularly the victim were required to give evidence. You receive the benefit of your plea of guilty as remorse and also an acceptance of responsibility and I take that into account.
33 On the charge of armed robbery, you are sentenced to four years' imprisonment
34 On the charge of committing an indictable offence on bail, you are sentenced to one month imprisonment to be served concurrently with the sentence for armed robbery.
35 I direct that you serve 26 months before you are eligible for parole.
36 I declare that 369 days pre-sentence detention has already been served and will be accounted for in relation to this sentence.
37 In relation to s.6AAA, if you had pleaded not guilty and been found guilty after a trial, the sentence I would have imposed would be a sentence of five and a half years' imprisonment with three and a half years' non-parole period.
38
The prosecution have made application for an order under s.464ZF. I propose to make that order in the draft terms provided. Thank you. Thank you
Mr Chrisafis.
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HER HONOUR: Any other matters counsel?
MS GODING: No Your Honour. Did Your Honour require the draft orders or I'm not sure - - -
HER HONOUR: Thank you.
MS GODING: - - - whether they're e-filed or hard copies are handed up these days.
HER HONOUR: Thanks. Thank you counsel for your assistance in that matter.
MR DEAN: As Your Honour pleases.
MS GODING: If the court pleases.
HER HONOUR: Good luck Mr Chrisafis, I hope everything goes well for you. Thank you, I'll leave the Bench.
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