Director of Public Prosecutions v Curry
[2012] VCC 664
•22 May 2012
| IN THE COUNTY COURT OF VICTORIA | Revised (Not) Restricted Suitable for Publication |
AT MELBOURNE
CRIMINAL DIVISION
CR 11-00547
| DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS |
| v |
| GINO JOSEPH CURRY |
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JUDGE: | HIS HONOUR JUDGE MAIDMENT | |
WHERE HELD: | Melbourne | |
DATE OF HEARING: | 22 May 2012 | |
DATE OF SENTENCE: | 22 May 2012 | |
CASE MAY BE CITED AS: | DPP v Curry | |
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION: | [2019] VCC 664 | |
REASONS FOR SENTENCE
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Catchwords:
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APPEARANCES: | Counsel | Solicitors |
| For the Crown | Mr D. Holding | Office of Public Prosecutions |
| For the Accused | Ms C. Gwynn |
HIS HONOUR:
1 Gino Joseph Curry, you have pleaded guilty to an indictment containing four charges of robbery, one of attempted robbery, one of armed robbery, one of obtaining financial advantage by deception and one of possessing an unregistered firearm whilst prohibited from doing so. You have asked the court to take into account a related summary offence involving your possession of a Taser which was used in the course of the armed robbery.
2 You have admitted a number of prior convictions going back many years. You have pleaded guilty at the first reasonable opportunity, I take that into account in your favour.
3 The prosecution have tendered a Summary of Opening which is Exhibit A on the plea and I incorporate that document by reference into these sentencing remarks. I note that your counsel does not take issue with the facts that are set out in the Summary of Prosecution Opening. The prosecution also tendered three Victim Impact Statements from three of the victims. They were read out in court and I take those into account, as I do the two photographs which were Exhibit C of the airgun which is the subject of Charge 8 on the indictment.
4 The offences took place in a relatively short period of time between 30 July 2011 and 20 September 2011 and involved robberies by you of what the prosecution have described as soft targets who are employed by various retail outlets. So far as the robberies are concerned, it is conceded that there was no actual violence used, rather you relied upon the implied threat of violence that your presence represented and that clearly operated on the minds of the staff at the retail outlets concerned.
5 The armed robbery involved your taking with you a Taser weapon which you used by indicating that you had it and that you were willing to use it. That, too, clearly operated on the mind of the victim of that particular offence. I note that the offences the subject of Charges 5 and 6, that is on 20 September 2011, occurred whilst you were on bail for some other matters and clearly that is another aggravating feature of those particular offences.
6 On your behalf, Ms Gwynn tendered a report from Geoffrey Cummins, psychologist, which is Exhibit 1 on the plea. That helpfully sets out much of your background history. I do not propose to go into that in detail. Suffice to say that you come from a Maori background. It seems that you are not an Australian citizen or a permanent resident of Australia and therefore are potentially, at any rate, amenable to deportation back to New Zealand. It is said that during your childhood you were the victim of domestic violence perpetrated upon you by your father in a disciplinary way but which clearly has had a significant impact upon you. Your mother is apparently terminally ill. That clearly is playing upon your mind and rendering your ability to cope with your incarceration more difficult.
7 It seems that you were educated to Year 10. You started work thereafter first as a spray painter and then as a clothing cutter for a period of three years. You became involved in taking cannabis from the age of 15 and then graduated to heroin at the age of 18. It seems you have struggled with addiction to heroin and other drugs thereafter. You have not worked since you were 18 or 19 years of age. You are now 32 years of age, having been born on 23 March 1980.
8 You do have a bad record which includes offences of this kind and it is clear that you spent a lot of your youth and early adult life in custody. As your counsel has suggested and, indeed Mr Cummins has suggested, there is a real danger of you becoming institutionalised, if you have not already become institutionalised to a degree.
9 It seems that the offences occurred in circumstances where not long after your release from your last period of imprisonment, you became involved in drugs again and that it was in that kind of context that you committed the offences. You indicate through your counsel that you have tried to settle into life outside the prison environment but that you have not acquired the skills to cope adequately in the community.
10 It seems that you have been assisted to some extent at any rate by forming a relationship with the young lady who has attended court today and who you describe now as your fiancé, Tristana. You have indicated, through your counsel today, that you are hoping to marry Tristana in due course and hopefully that will be a relationship which assists you to settle back into the community. It is a source of some optimism that she is not apparently involved in taking drugs herself and therefore one would hope she will be able to assist you better to cope in the community without resort to drugs in the future.
11 Unless and until you cope with your drug problem your prospects of rehabilitation are not good. They have been described by Mr Cummins as guarded, at best. I think your counsel adopts the same description of your prospects of rehabilitation. It is very much going to be in your hands at the end of the day. During discussion with your counsel I spoke of the treatment options that are available through the prison system and to the extent that you are able to use those options to increase your ability to rehabilitate yourself to cope in the community once released, then I hope that you will take those opportunities. It seem to me that if you do take those opportunities, it will greatly increase your prospects of getting parole and that, too hopefully, will assist you in settling back into the community.
12 You have apparently done your time on remand hard in that you have been the subject of management as a result of various altercations that have occurred within the prison system, although it is to your credit that you have availed yourself of the courses that are available through the Kangan Institute. Although certificates were not produced on your behalf today because they apparently not available in court, I accept that you have taken those opportunities and that gives some glimmer of hope, perhaps, that your prospects of rehabilitation are on the upward trend rather than on the downward trend.
13 I take into account the fact that your mother is in very poor health and that that will very much play on your mind whilst you are serving sentence. I take into account that you have a present fear of deportation at the end of your term of imprisonment and that, too, will make serving your time somewhat harder than it would for a person without those issues.
14 You have pleaded guilty and that is in your favour. That has saved the community the cost of the trial and it has helped facilitate the course of justice. It shows that you have a willingness to be co-operative and assist in those regards. I do not see a lot of evidence to support the proposition that you are remorseful but I am inclined to accept that the plea of guilty at the earliest reasonable opportunity is some sign that you are remorseful for your conduct.
15 These are serious offences. They are serious because, apart from anything else, they put people who were going about their ordinary business, in fear. The Victim Impact Statements show that it has had a psychological impact which goes beyond the immediate impact of the offence upon them and that does add to the serious nature of offending of this kind.
16 The courts rightly regard not just deterring you as being an important feature of the sentencing considerations, but deterring other people from committing offences of this kind. So I must pass a sentence that pays proper regard to deterring not just you but others from being involved in this kind of offending in the future.
17 It seems that you have been on a methadone program in prison and it is to be hoped, as I say, that you will continue with your efforts to try and deal with your drug problem whilst you are serving your term of imprisonment.
18 The law requires me to have regard to the maximum terms of imprisonment and I note that the maximum term of imprisonment for armed robbery is 25 years, attempted armed robbery is ten years, for robbery the maximum is 15 years, obtaining a financial advantage by deception, ten years, being a prohibited person in possession of an unregistered firearm, namely the air pistol, 15 years, and possessing the Taser, which was the related summary offence to which you have also pleaded guilty, the maximum sentence is two years.
19 That said, I accept what your counsel has put to me, namely that even though the offences are all serious in their own way and some more serious than others, that this conduct falls towards the lower end of the range of offences of this kind. On one view, it might be seen as rather stupid behaviour by somebody who was clearly addled and disinhibited by the use of drugs. In one sense, they are offences that are to be regarded as a symptom of your continuing drug problem. But through the eyes of the victims you, perhaps, can now appreciate that they had every right to be fearful and have every right to indicate the kind of on-going problems that offending of that kind induces in them. I have to take those matters into account also.
20 I have to punish you adequately for the offences you have committed and to express the denunciation of this court of offending of this kind. But I have also got to be mindful of facilitating to the extent that I reasonably can in all the circumstances your rehabilitation. Whilst it does not seem to me that your prospects are particularly good as things stand at the moment, and guarded at best being the description that has been proffered on your behalf (it might be rather too generous), I am inclined to accede to your counsel's submission that the overall sentence should be at the low end of the range that was proffered by the prosecution.
21 The prosecution suggested that the appropriate range of sentences was a total effective sentence of between five years and seven years' imprisonment, with a period of three to four years to be served before being eligible for parole. I think that they have been entirely reasonable in the range that they have put forward and, indeed characteristically, your counsel has been realistic in accepting that the range at least encapsulates a sentence that would be appropriate for you in all the circumstances.
22 I am bound to take into account the principles of totality and proportionality and in passing the sentence I am about to pass, I propose to give full effect to those principles.
23 Gino Joseph Curry, for each of the offences on the indictment and for the summary offence to which you have pleaded guilty, I convict you. In relation to Charge 1 on the indictment, I sentence you to imprisonment for 20 months; Charge 2 on the indictment of attempted robbery, I sentence you to imprisonment for 18 months; on Charge 3 of armed robbery with the Taser, I sentence you to 36 months' imprisonment; on Charge 4 of robbery, I sentence you to 20 months' imprisonment; on Charge 5 of robbery, I sentence you to 24 months' imprisonment; and on Charge 6 of robbery, I sentence you to 24 months' imprisonment. Noting, as I do, that Charges 5 and 6 were committed whilst you were on bail for other offences that are not before this court today.
24 On Charge 7 of obtaining property by deception from the trading of two stolen mobile telephones, I sentence you to imprisonment for six months; on Charge 8 of being a prohibited person in possession of an unregistered firearm, I sentence you to imprisonment for nine months; for the summary offence of possessing the Taser, I sentence you to imprisonment for six months.
25 The base sentence is Charge 3 and I order that six months of the sentences on Charges 1, 2, 4 and 5 be cumulative on each other and upon the sentence of 36 months in relation to Charge 3. That makes a total effective sentence of five years' imprisonment and I order that you serve a minimum term of three years' imprisonment before being eligible for parole.
26 But for your pleas of guilty, I would have sentenced you to a total effective sentence of six years' imprisonment with a minimum non-parole period of four years' imprisonment.
27 I declare that 243 days be reckoned as time served upon the sentence that I have just passed and therefore to be deducted from the total period of the sentence I have order your to serve.
28 I make the orders for forfeiture and disposal which I have been asked to make by the prosecutor and I note that in respect of those orders you do not oppose those orders being made.
29 Is there anything else, counsel?
30 MR HOLDING: No, Your Honour.
31 MS GWYNN: No, Your Honour.
32 HIS HONOUR: I have signed the forfeiture and disposal orders.
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