Director of Public Prosecutions v Doyle

[2014] VCC 1043

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

AT LATROBE VALLEY
CRIMINAL JURISDICTION

CR

DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS

v

GARRAT PATRICK DOYLE

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JUDGE:	HER HONOUR JUDGE SMALLWOOD
WHERE HELD:	Latrobe Valley
DATE OF HEARING:
DATE OF SENTENCE:	24 June 2014
CASE MAY BE CITED AS:	DPP v Doyle
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION:	[2014] VCC 1043

REASONS FOR SENTENCE
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Subject:
Catchwords:
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Cases Cited:
Sentence:

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APPEARANCES:	Counsel	Solicitors
For the Director of Public Prosecutions	Mr J. Fitzgerald
For the Accused	Ms S. McCrickard

HIS HONOUR:

1

Garrat Patrick Doyle, you have pleaded guilty to one charge of aggravated burglary, one charge of criminal damage and an uplifted summary matter of use amphetamine.  Those crimes carry maximum penalties of 25 years,

10 years and one year, respectively.

2You are now 28 years of age.  You pleaded guilty at the earliest reasonable opportunity and, indeed, made a confessional record of interview.  I accept that your plea of guilty is accompanied by appropriate remorse and you must also, of course, get the utilitarian benefit of that plea of guilty.  You do have prior findings of guilt, but they relate to drunkenness and driving, and are of no real significance in the function which I am about to perform.

3Firstly, pursuant to s.464ZF of the Crimes Act, I make an order that you provide a saliva sample for DNA purposes.  That order having been made, I must advise you, that should you refuse to provide such a sample upon request, the police may use reasonable force to take it from you.

4The circumstances of the offending are that you had been in a relationship with one Emma Crabtree for six of the seven years preceding this offending.  Between you, you have two young children and previously shared the address at which this offending took place, in Market Street in Yarragon.

5In early to mid-December of 2003, Ms Crabtree ended the relationship and you moved back to your parents address.  She and the children remained at the Yarragon address.  From that date on you had apparently been regularly driving past the house and making observations.  On 13 January 2014, you repeatedly called her mobile phone wanting to speak to her about the relationship.  She did not answer the calls and reported the calls to police.  At around 11.00 p.m. you drove to her premises in a drugged and irrational state, and prior to leaving you did burn-outs and were yelling threats of self-harm.  These matters, obviously, all go towards the context of how this arose.

6At around midnight on Thursday 16 January 2014, you drove past the premises.  At that time you recognised a vehicle parked outside the premises, belonging to a Mr Tony Barnes.  You were enraged at the presence of Barnes and came to a stop outside.  Police were notified but you had left the area prior to their arrival.  You then went to a mates premises in Warragul.  Later that morning you made a number of unanswered phone calls to Crabtree and Barnes.

7At approximately 6.00 a.m. you drove back to the premises with the intention of physically confronting Barnes.  You did not announce your arrival and you hid in a neighbours front yard by crouching beside a tree.  After a short time, Ms Crabtree discovered a number of missed calls from you.  As a result, she looked out the lounge room and saw you hiding in a neighbour's yard.  Upon seeing her, you ran to the lounge room window in an angry state and yelled "Open the fucking door, I'm going to kill that fucking cunt.".  You then started to walk towards the front bedroom where Barnes was lying in bed with his young daughter.  You found a 1.3 metre length of timber in the front yard, pulled the external fly wire off, and slid open the unlocked window.

8Whilst armed with a piece of wood, you climbed into the bedroom and stood in close proximity to Barnes.  You held the piece of wood above your head and yelled words similar to "You've got this coming.".  At that time Barnes was lying in bed and trying to protect his screaming daughter.  Upon you becoming aware of the presence of the child, you abandoned the plan of assaulting Barnes, and climbed back out through the window.  That gives rise to the charge of aggravated burglary.

9You then smashed the driver's side windows and side mirror of Barnes's vehicle and there was damage to the extent of $1,656.60 for which I have now made a compensation order.  You then drove away.

10You surrendered yourself to police during the course of the day and, as I indicated, in a video interview you made fulsome confession as to what you had done.  You indicated that you were unaware that there were kids present in the premises at the time, and I have no reason not to accept that.

11I have a victim impact statement before me in which you partner says her main concern was for your own safety and the potential of you self-harming.  She points out, as was indeed the case, that you have been battling an Ice addiction, which, in her view, caused you to act in an erratic and very out of character way.  She says you are not a bad person or a crook, you are an Ice addict and the rest of the family live in fear of you hurting yourself.  The opening says she is the primary victim, I think Mr Barnes probably is.

12But the matters contained in that victim impact statement do tend to go to your general character, and I note, for somebody who has been addicted to amphetamine and Ice now for something in the order of five or six years, you do not have any prior convictions for it.  It also gives me greater faith in your capacity to rehabilitate, that you have a former partner who clearly wants you to have a relationship with your children and you, yourself, want to have that relationship as well.

13You have now been in custody for 68 days.  The children have not visited you, because you do not want them to, and that is understandable.  You have maintained contact via the telephone.

14The circumstances of this sort of offending can vary greatly.  In your particular situation, you had clearly been stewing over this during the course of the preceding days, and you had been using the drug Ice, the effect of which is now becoming, fortunately, well known to people.  The paranoia and similar feelings that Ice induces clearly seem to have had an effect on you.

15Insofar as the aggravated burglary is concerned, the weapon was picked up in the yard of the house, and in that sense can be seen as unplanned.  I can understand the circumstances under which you, in a confused and drugged state, carried this out.

16To your credit, you had sufficient sense, once you realised that the child was present, to abandon the project, if I can put it that way.  It is fortunate that really serious harm did not occur, but the fact of the matter is that it did not, and this is the situation we are now in.

17On the other hand, concerns about this particular aggravated burglary are that it was done in the presence of a child, although I accept that you did not realise that, and desisted once you became aware of such an occurrence. It is also an example of, in that sense, domestic violence, and that cannot be condoned.

18Obviously, in the normal course of events, offending such as this calls for the application of general deterrence.  I really do think, in your scenario, now that you have been in custody and will be for some time yet, that specific deterrence does not play a significant part, but there must also be an element of denunciation, and obviously appropriate punishment.  Sentences for this type of offending can vary considerably.  Yours must be an active custodial sentence, and your counsel did not demur from that position.

19I then look at matters personal to you.  As I have indicated, your prior history is very limited and apart from one drunken matter some years ago, does not involve violence.  You were brought up in the Gippsland area, as I understand it.  You are an only child, you left school in Year 10 and took up an apprenticeship as a roof tiler.  From what I can gather you have completed that apprenticeship, and upon you release, there is no reason why you could not conduct your own business in roof tiling.

20You have been addicted to amphetamine, and in more recent times Ice, for a very significant period of time.  Clearly, that by being addicted to that drug, your capacity to work as a roof tiler has been severely affected.  Your mother is in court here today to support you, and I accept that you do have good family support.

21Insofar as your addiction is concerned, there was an attempt at rehabilitation over about a five week period some year or two ago, but that did not last.  You have the support of, as I have indicated, your family.  You have the support, it would appear, of the mother of the children.

22So far as your addiction is concerned, as your counsel correctly pointed out, there is nearly always some sort of underlying mental health issues involved.  You, as a child, were diagnosed with ADHD and was prescribed dexamphetamine.  I am not going to go into displaying judicial notice of that form of treatment, which has occurred in the past, and which has been a situation where I have seen a significant number of people in your circumstances with a history of use of that drug.  It would appear to prepare a person, I would think is the only way of describing it, for the use of amphetamine for the feelings that it gives.  Clearly I accept this from your counsel, you have an underlying problem with depression over a significant period of time, and the use of the amphetamine and the Ice would be, in part, self-medication for that.

23So, at 28, with a long history of drug use, very few prior convictions, a trade, family support and, I think, appropriate remorse for this matter, your prospects of rehabilitation should be good.  The risk of you re-offending, I think, clearly will be based upon your capacity to not use drugs.  Up until your drug use became too strong, your work history was good and I am prepared to accept that, whilst you may have been keeping a close eye on the house, your intention to enter and assault was a spur of the moment decision.

24As I have indicated, a custodial sentence is inevitable, but I think in your particular circumstances it does not have to be for the duration which might otherwise have been the case. Insofar as the criminal damages are concerned, and the use of amphetamines are concerned, I would not have gaoled you for those, were they in isolation, so I do not propose to make any part of those sentences cumulative, on the sentence for the aggravated burglary.

25Accordingly, in all the circumstances, taking into account as best I can the principles relating to this on the charge of aggravated burglary, you are sentenced to be imprisoned for a period of 15 months.  On the charge of criminal damage a period of one month, and on the charge of use amphetamine, seven days.  I direct that you serve a minimum term of eight months before becoming eligible for parole, and I direct that 68 days be reckoned as having been served under this sentence.

26

So that you understand the benefit of you having pleaded guilty, pursuant to s.6AAA I say that, but for your plea of guilty on the aggravated burglary charge, you would have been sentenced to be imprisoned for a period of

24 months with 12 months to be served.

27Are there any other orders I have to make?

28MR FITZGERALD:  No Your Honour.

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