Director of Public Prosecutions v Hewison
[2014] VSC 300
•25 JUNE 2014
| IN THE SUPREME COURT OF VICTORIA | Not Restricted |
AT MELBOURNE
CRIMINAL DIVISION
S CR 2013 0030
| THE QUEEN |
| v |
| ANTHONY JOHN HEWISON |
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JUDGE: | DIXON J | |
WHERE HELD: | MELBOURNE | |
DATE OF HEARING: | 7 MARCH, 20 JUNE 2014 | |
DATE OF SENTENCE: | 25 JUNE 2014 | |
CASE MAY BE CITED AS: | DPP v HEWISON | |
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION: | [2014] VSC 300 | |
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CRIMINAL LAW – Sentence - Intentionally cause serious injury - Attack on victim with a motor vehicle driven at a significant speed – Victim very seriously injured including an acquired brain injury with permanent intellectual deficits - Vulnerable victim with an intervention order against the offender - Domestic violence – Offender intoxicated on drugs – Plea of guilty – Offender’s background one of significant deprivation and marginalisation - Total effective sentence of 10 years with non-parole period of 7 years.
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APPEARANCES: | Counsel | Solicitors |
| For the Crown | Mr A Grant | Mr C Hyland, Solicitor for Public Prosecutions |
| For the Accused | Mr J McMahon | Theo Magazis & Associates |
HIS HONOUR:
Anthony Hewison, you have pleaded guilty to one charge of intentionally causing serious injury contrary to s 16 of the Crimes Act 1958. The maximum penalty for that offence is 20 years’ imprisonment.
At about 2.30 am on Sunday 22 January 2012, Danielle Mann and Zoe Bradford were walking along the footpath on Thomas Street, Dandenong. You approached Danielle Mann and argued with her for about 15 minutes. As she walked away from you, you were yelling out to her and she was ignoring you.
Danielle Mann and Zoe Bradford then turned into Walker Street, walking west towards the intersection of Mason Street. You had returned to a stolen blue Toyota Tarago van in which you had travelled to Dandenong from Narre Warren to see Danielle Mann, probably because she asked to meet you because she wanted drugs from you, although you had your own reasons for wanting to see her.
As Danielle Mann and Zoe Bradford stood on the footpath about to cross Mason Street, you came up behind them, driving in a westerly direction down Walker Street. You drove the Tarago van over the kerb onto the footpath and struck Danielle Mann from behind with the front left part of the van. She was thrown approximately 19 metres and landed on the road. You continued west along Walker Street without stopping.
Danielle Mann, who was then aged 16 years, was taken to the Alfred Hospital where she was found to have a closed head injury with a left frontal hematoma, cerebral edema and left and right frontal petechial haemorrhages. She had a fracture to the left orbit and fracture to the left maxilla and facial lacerations above her left eyebrow. She had fractures to the left pubic ramus and left sacrum. She had a fracture of the left tibial plateau. She was in the Alfred Hospital for 17 days in post-traumatic amnesia, distractible and agitated. She had a significant left hemiparesis and initially was non-ambulant in a hoist transfer, not permitted to lie on her left side.
Danielle Mann was transferred to the acquired brain injury unit at Epworth Camberwell in February 2012. After 31 days, she came out of post-traumatic amnesia. That period indicated a severe traumatic brain injury. On neuropsychological assessment, an extremely severe acquired brain injury was confirmed. Significant deficits were noted. Danielle Mann had significantly reduced memory, reduced speed of information processing, and reduced visual perception and visual spatial abilities. Her planning and organisation skills had deteriorated with poor multi-tasking and executive dysfunction. She spent approximately two months in inpatient rehabilitation.
Your counsel drew my attention to medical opinion that Danielle Mann appeared to make a good recovery from her physical injuries and, once discharged, either failed to keep appointments for review or rehabilitation or absconded from treatment centres. What that means is uncertain as she sustained multiple, complex injuries. The prosecution was unable to place before me medical evidence concerning her current physical condition and her future prognosis. I am, however, persuaded that the injuries you inflicted on Danielle Mann have left her with significant permanent intellectual deficit. I cannot be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt whether Danielle Mann has permanent residual physical disabilities or is suffering from psychological disorders, but I am satisfied that she was most fortunate to have survived the severe physical injuries caused by your attack upon her.
On her discharge from Epworth Rehabilitation Camberwell, her treating team commented that she had sustained a very severe traumatic brain injury and a significant degree of cognitive change when measured against neuropsychological assessment prior to her injury. The treating team expected that there would be further recovery during rehabilitation. However, Danielle Mann had a significant history of childhood trauma and past substance abuse. Prior to her injury, her deficits were manifest in everyday life as impulsive behaviours, social disinhibition, oppositional behaviour, disorganisation, poorly regulated attention, poor self-awareness and difficulty learning from consequences. She had developed some unhelpful and maladaptive methods of reducing her emotional and physiological distress, particularly self-medicating poly drug abuse, self-harming and criminal offending.
A further neuropsychological assessment after about 7 months confirmed that Danielle Mann has very significant acquired cognitive impairments, although there is a prospect of natural recovery of some cognitive function in the period of about 2 years from injury. The deficits from the injuries you inflicted on her deprived her of some of her limited cognitive strengths. She exhibits some significant new cognitive deficits and has exacerbated some pre-existing weaknesses in her self-regulation and other executive processes. She has permanent marked deficits in verbal and non-verbal reasoning and verbal and non-verbal executive processes, and limitations in higher attentional functions. Her rate of information processing is significantly reduced and her memory has declined. Her limited capacity for vocational and social functioning before your offending has been further damaged by the additional cognitive deficits inflicted by your offending. These life-long deficits are very serious injuries, perhaps not catastrophic but severely disabling.
I have read victim impact statements from Danielle Mann and her mother Maria Bucetti that each speak of the nature of your relationship with Danielle Mann and describe the consequences of your offending and of Danielle Mann’s struggle with ongoing physical and intellectual deficits.
With her background, it is perhaps unsurprising that Danielle Mann formed a relationship with you. It appears that you met in 2010 when Danielle Mann was about 15 years old, and by January 2011 you were living together in Doveton. Your relationship was characterised by poly-substance abuse and violence, both actual and threatened. Towards the end of November 2011, your relationship further deteriorated when you began to engage in controlling behaviour, suspecting that Danielle Mann was being unfaithful to you. The verbal and physical violence in your relationship with Danielle Mann, which was based in your beliefs that she was being unfaithful, intensified in the weeks leading to Christmas 2011.
On 19 December 2011 in your absence, Danielle Mann had obtained an interim intervention order against you. Then, on 26 December 2011, Danielle Mann telephoned the police while you slept. She requested to be taken into secure welfare, believing that she was at risk if she could not get away from you. The police subsequently arranged for her to be placed into secure accommodation for a period of three weeks. During that time, you attended Danielle Mann’s mother’s home in Reservoir and wrote a message on the front window threatening Danielle Mann that you would ‘hunt her down’. Police served the interim intervention order on you on 30 December 2011. On 10 January 2012, a final intervention order current until 1 May 2013, was made by the Children’s Court at Moorabbin. She remained under the supervision of the Department of Human Services.
Danielle Mann was also receiving advice at this time from family violence crisis response workers about how to improve her personal safety. On 13 January 2012, while she was residing in secure accommodation, Danielle Mann made a statement to the police alleging that she and you had been involved in armed robberies to obtain money for ice. She also told the police about offences that you had committed against her on 25 December 2011. I am persuaded that Danielle Mann was fearful of her safety with you and determined, despite the attractions of her affections for you and the availability of drugs, to end her relationship with you. Clearly, she went to some lengths to look out for her safety while breaking up with you. That you offended against her when she was attempting to end her relationship with you and had obtained an intervention order is a serious aggravating factor.
Shortly prior to the incident in Walker Street, Dandenong, Danielle Mann left the secure accommodation and moved into a residential care facility supervised by the Department of Human Services in East Bentleigh. You continued to have contact with Danielle Mann. On the Friday before the incident, you approached her when she was in company with Zoe Bradford and told her that you wanted to resume your relationship with her and that you would not hurt her if she took you back. She told you that she was ‘not going back there again’.
I accept that while you and Danielle Mann had a dysfunctional relationship characterised by argument, abuse and violence, and poly-substance drug abuse, you also expressed considerable affection for one another. I am satisfied that Danielle Mann did not consistently discourage you from contact with her. It is probable that on the night of the incident you attended in Dandenong in a stolen car to meet up with Danielle Mann because she had invited you to do so. I am also satisfied that by reason of the troubled and disrupted upbringing that each of you had experienced, the psychological, emotional and educational deficits that you each appear to have and your substantial poly-substance abuse issues, neither you nor Danielle Mann had any understanding of, or capacity for, an appropriate intimate relationship. You were each motivated by your own selfish needs.
You told a consultant psychiatrist, Dr Danny Sullivan, from whom your legal team obtained a report, about the circumstances of your offending. You said that you and Danielle Mann had fallen out over her drug use. You told Dr Sullivan that you were aware of the intervention order and that you believed that Danielle Mann was a police informer because the police knew things about you which only she could have known. Dr Sullivan reported that you admitted to using ice and to having consumed Alprazolam, cannabis and alcohol on the night of your offending.
You told another consultant psychiatrist, Dr Katinka Morton that you could recall your offending, suggesting that it was motivated by your victim’s behaviour. You gave Dr Morton a detailed history of your drug consumption on the evening of your offending, but I am not persuaded to accept that detail. I am satisfied that you were commonly significantly intoxicated as a result of drug abuse. Although you were intoxicated when you offended, you were able to give Dr Morton an account of your behaviour before and during your offending. You were angry with Danielle Mann before you saw her in Dandenong, and remained so after she walked away from the argument you had with her.
I am persuaded that you had become increasingly controlling in your relationship with Danielle Mann through verbal and physical violence and the supply to her of drugs or money for drugs in the months preceding your offending. Possibly the greater part of your reason for arguing with Danielle Mann on the night of the incident was your desire to regain control over her, a desire fuelled by your concerns that she was informing on you to the police.
You were also motivated to offend by your feelings of rejection by Danielle Mann. I accept your counsel’s submission that you were receiving conflicting messages of encouragement amongst strong messages of discouragement. While Danielle Mann’s contradictory behaviour is not entirely unsurprising given her history and her interest in drug abuse, it affords no justification or excuse for your violent and controlling behaviour.
A third explanation for your offending emerges from the message that was left on Danielle Mann’s mother’s window. It appears that you were aggrieved by what you saw as the theft of cash and drugs from you by Danielle Mann. You said you intended to hunt her down. As I said, when you saw her that night, you were angry.
About two months after the incident, when you were in the Dandenong police cells, you had a conversation with two covert police operatives and in that conversation you volunteered each of these motivations for your behaviour. There are inconsistencies, even outright lies, in what you said in the Dandenong police cells and what appears from other evidence to be the true circumstances. I accept your counsel’s submission that I should regard your statements on that occasion as including expressions of ‘gaol talk bravado’, but that does not diminish the callousness of your response to your offending at that time.
Nevertheless, after making that allowance, and on the whole of the evidence, I am satisfied that you were motivated to run Danielle Mann down with the Tarago van by three broad considerations that fuelled your anger towards her; her rejection of your demands that she get back together with you, the fact that she had informed on you to the police, and the theft from you of money and drugs.
It is not clear to me precisely when you determined to intentionally seriously injure Danielle Mann. I am not persuaded that you had that intention before you met her in Dandenong that evening and I do not sentence you on the basis that you went to Dandenong with the intention of seriously injuring her. There is no doubt in my mind that when you were driving down Walker Street and saw her waiting to cross the road, you decided to run her down. In that sense your offending was opportunistic, rather than planned. You were probably in a rage because your objectives in meeting with her had not resolved in your favour and because she had walked off and ignored you while you shouted at her.
When you saw your opportunity as you drove up Walker St, you drove the car up on to the kerb while travelling at a very substantial speed for such a manoeuvre. Forensic investigation estimated the speed of the van at the time Danielle Mann was struck at between 42 and 55 kph. The manner in which you used the van as a weapon was highly effective for inflicting very substantial injuries instantaneously. Danielle Mann was hit from behind. You gave her no opportunity to avoid the impact. She was completely vulnerable to your cowardly attack on her. Using a car driven at a significant speed in this way as a weapon is a significant aggravating factor in your offending.
I am persuaded by the psychiatrists’ reports that you were not suffering from a mental disorder or impaired mental functioning at the time of your offending. There was a suggestion that you may suffer from schizophrenia and the prospect that your offending was in some way influenced by impaired mental functioning initially could not be discounted. Clearly, you were intoxicated and aggressive at that time, but I find that impaired mental functioning did not contribute to your offending. I am not persuaded that your moral culpability for your offending is ameliorated because of the state of your mental functioning that night. I will later say a little more about your mental functioning as it appears from the reports from the psychiatrists.
I do accept that the diagnosed disorders and the social and emotional deprivation that characterised your upbringing and the circumstances of your existence before the offending are relevant when considering the degree of your moral culpability.[1] I accept your recourse to violence when you cannot cope with your demands not being met is an impulse that you struggle to control because of those matters. I will come back to this issue later. That said, it remains the fact that a background of substantial deprivation is not uncommon in offenders such as you and while I give it weight in my deliberations, I bear in mind that it’s mitigatory relevance is not the same for all sentencing purposes.
[1]Bugmy v The Queen [2013] HCA 37.
I was referred to two other cases where serious injury has intentionally been caused using a motor vehicle.[2] In each of those cases, although contact was made between the vehicle and the victim on more than one occasion, the speed at which the vehicle was travelling was considerably less. The speed at which you were travelling, the fact that you caused the vehicle to mount the kerb, the fact that the victim was hit from behind and thrown approximately 18 metres, and the photographic evidence of the damage to the van, persuade me to the required standard that you intended to cause really serious injury, to inflict the maximum harm upon Danielle Mann.
[2]The Queen v James [2011] VSC 596; Ashworth v The Queen [2011] VSCA 326.
As I have noted, at 16 years of age, Danielle Mann was a young, vulnerable person who sustained very serious life-threatening injuries through your use of extreme force She now has a permanent intellectual disability. Although the injuries sustained by Danielle Mann fall just short of the catastrophic types of injury that result in sentences at the extreme end of the range for intentionally causing serious injury, her injuries are extremely serious. She will carry the disabilities that you inflicted upon her for the rest of her life. I am persuaded that when you ran her down you intended that she suffer not just serious injury but permanent serious disability and that too is a significant aggravating feature of your offending.
Comparison of the manner of assault in other serious injury offences is unhelpful, although I have had regard to the matters that are routinely taken into account by sentencing judges and table of cases collected by the Court of Appeal in Nash v The Queen.[3] I am not persuaded that the manner of your attack was any less savage than the circumstances of other offending at the upper end of the range that may have involved sustained beatings, multiple offenders and weapons, or, when a car was the weapon, multiple contacts between the car and the victim.
[3][2013] VSCA 172, [6] - [10].
Taking all these factors into consideration, I am satisfied, objectively speaking, that your offending is at the upper end of moral culpability for this offence.
Having been born in March 1989, at the time of your offending you were 22 years of age. You are now 25. You no longer qualify as a youthful offender, but you are relatively young and rehabilitation should play some, but not a primary, role in the sentencing process. Your offending was wanton and unprovoked viciousness. Offending against young women who seek escape from relationships with violent controlling men are so prevalent that general and specific deterrence and denunciation of the conduct must be the primary sentencing considerations.
I now turn to the matters put by your counsel in mitigation.
You pleaded guilty when arraigned before me to the charge of intentionally causing serious injury. Until an amended indictment was filed, you were charged with attempted murder. You contested that charge at a committal hearing over three days in March last year. Fourteen witnesses, including your victim, gave evidence.
Your counsel submitted that you pleaded guilty to the charge of intentionally causing serious injury at the first available opportunity, being entitled to maintain that you were not guilty of attempted murder. I am not persuaded that you pleaded guilty at the first available opportunity. Although I accept that the Crown’s amended indictment followed negotiations between your present counsel and the Crown, I am not satisfied that negotiations could not have occurred earlier. I will allow a discount for the utilitarian benefit of your plea as it has saved the victim and all other witnesses from giving evidence before a jury and saved the community the costs of a trial. That utilitarian benefit is not, however, as fulsome as when an offender pleads guilty or negotiates for a plea of guilty prior to a contested committal.
More difficult is assessment of the extent that your plea of guilty demonstrated your remorse, your willingness to facilitate the cause of justice, or your acceptance of responsibility. Even allowing for gaol-house hyperbole, some of the observations you made to the undercover operatives some months after your offending are inconsistent with you feeling any remorse or accepting any responsibility for your actions. I do not detect any willingness on your part to facilitate the course of justice during and after your contested committal. The Crown case against you appeared strong. However, I accept your counsel’s submission that the stability or security of life in gaol, together with both medical attention and appropriate medication, may have enabled you to gain some insight into the consequences of your actions. By late last year some change appeared in your attitudes as a result of your time in jail that supports an inference that your decision to plead guilty is evidence of some degree of remorse and acceptance of responsibility for your actions. That change in attitude became evident at the time you instructed your counsel that you would plead guilty to an amended indictment.
The prosecutor submitted that your exaggeration of mental health symptoms and the extent of substance abuse when giving your history to health professionals demonstrated an unwillingness to accept responsibility for your offending. To the extent that may be so, it is a consideration that lessens the assessment of your remorse in your favour, but there are other considerations that may explain your hyperbole and I am not persuaded on this account to take an uncharitable view of the extent of your remorse.
Bearing all these factors in mind, I propose to allow a moderate discount to reflect the mitigatory implications of your plea of guilty in each of the respects that I have mentioned.
Your childhood was extremely traumatic. Your culture and ethnicity is Maori on your mother’s side. Your mother abandoned you as an infant and you emigrated to Australia at 9 years of age. You have only one full sibling, a sister with whom you have no contact and seven half siblings from relationships your father has had with different partners. You claim to have been physically abused as a child by your father and some of his partners. You saw a child psychiatrist at about 11 years of age, diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and you once engaged in self-harm during conflict with your father. Your schooling was a failure as you had difficulties with peer relationships and there was violence, fighting, truancy and expulsions. From the age of 13 you were either in child protection placements or homeless, living on the streets.
By that age, you drank alcohol to excess and used illicit substances, initially sniffing petrol and paint and graduating to methamphetamines. You have described using, with varying frequency, many other illicit substances like cannabis, heroin, and LSD. You also described abusing prescription drugs such as oxycontin, benzodiazepines, oxazepam and you started illicitly using quetiapine, an anti-psychotic medication approved for treatment of schizophrenia and bipolar affective disorder, because it made you docile.
Your criminal record commenced in 2007 with appearances in Queensland magistrates courts for theft offences on three occasions over two years. In 2009, you were convicted by the Tasmanian Supreme Court of unlawfully setting fire to vegetation. In April 2010, you were convicted of unlawful assault, using threatening words and being drunk at the Dandenong Magistrates Court and you were referred to participate in a Salvation Army positive lifestyle program. Although you have served some months in prison, you presently face a significant prison sentence effectively for the first time. I take that fact into account and I also note that your criminal record could be described as modest, given your background.
Since you came to Victoria in about 2008 you have rarely lived in stable accommodation and have mostly lived on the street, in abandoned houses, or ‘couch surfing’. You have associated with drug-using and disaffected peers. You have no employment history of note. Apparently you enjoy weight training, football and occasional boxing. You had a relationship with a young woman who bore your son, Levi about 4 years ago but you have no contact with either of them. You have been living an itinerant and marginalised existence following an abusive upbringing that placed you in the welfare system. Within days of your offending you were admitted to the emergency department at Casey Hospital suffering acute sedation from harmful drug use. You were unfit to be interviewed by police. Soon after, bail was refused and you have been in custody since that time. It was noted on your admission that you were experiencing drug withdrawal.
You have now spent considerable time in custody on remand. Dr Sullivan suggested incarceration is burdensome for you due to your problematic mental health but I remain unpersuaded that this factor warrants any significant mitigatory allowance. You have been diagnosed with a number of disorders and neuropsychological testing suggested that you endorsed extremely severe symptoms of depression and anxiety. Dr Sullivan found no clear evidence of mood disorder and Dr Morton did not allude to any symptoms of depression or anxiety. Diagnosis of your mental state has proved complicated. Prison medical staff are now prescribing 1300 mg of quetiapine daily. You instructed your counsel that you feel much better, and much more relaxed, than you felt before your offending. Your counsel submitted that prison is good for you because you are improving your functioning. Although Dr Sullivan was concerned that this high dosage might confound neuropsychological testing, Dr Hughes reported that you presented as alert and not sedated by medication. Dr Morton described your presentation as fact oriented and alert, demonstrating excellent concentration.
Your counsel submitted that there are positive signs from your response to a long period in remand. You have been able to access mental health services and your needs are being met better in prison than they were when you were living on the streets. There is evidence of negative drug testing that supports your claim to have ceased using illicit drugs for more than 12 months now. Medically controlled drug use is assisting your mental state, which may in turn allow you to develop some anger management strategies. There is a prospect that you can break the cycle of placement in management units through less violent interaction with other prisoners. You have been able to complete a release related harm reduction program. I am satisfied that your life is easier in custody with security of accommodation, regular meals and access to medical and other services. Although it has taken time, your counsel submitted, and I agree, that prison has turned you towards a prospect of rehabilitation, but you are no more than a few steps along a long road.
When you were examined by Dr Sullivan, he diagnosed antisocial personality disorder and severe substance use disorder. Dr Sullivan favoured a diagnosis of methamphetamine-induced psychotic disorder to the diagnosis of schizophrenia that was made by a psychiatric registrar in the Metropolitan Remand Centre, principally because of your history of inconsistently reported or atypical symptoms that do not meet the diagnostic threshold for schizophrenia. I accept his reasons for doing so. His diagnosis is supported by a further report obtained from Dr Morton. Dr Sullivan concluded that you function in the borderline range of intellect and that neuropsychological testing was required to support a diagnosis of acquired brain injury.
You submitted to neuropsychological testing with Dr Hughes. In her report, Dr Hughes questions the validity of your reported history both of your drug taking and of events that carry risks of acquired brain injury, which she considered to be embellished. Your performance in testing produced incongruent results and an atypical neuropsychological profile. You may have better abilities than are revealed on testing, which in most areas of function measured as borderline or in the extremely low range. Dr Hughes found it difficult to express a firm opinion on your current capacity for cognitive functioning. I cannot dismiss the prospect that you may have an acquired brain injury but the evidence does not establish that diagnosis.
Dr Morton confirms Dr Sullivan’s diagnoses of anti-social personality disorder and substance use disorders of moderate severity at the time of offending. Dr Morton suggests that your behaviour in childhood and adolescence demonstrates that a diagnosis of Conduct Disorder would have then been appropriate.
Dr Morton described your developmental history as deplorable, characterised by deprivations and abuse. You had no supportive or stable emotional attachments in your early life to teach you appropriate life skills and you now suffer from that loss, which is no fault of yours. Your social and academic development was markedly impaired resulting in your use of violence as a coping mechanism for distress and expression of anger. Later your adolescence was unstable, marked by homelessness and participation in an antisocial peer group. I accept Dr Morton’s description as apposite. I also accept, as I said earlier, that your deprived and marginalised development is relevant in assessing the degree of your moral culpability for your offending.
I am persuaded that if you have any prospect of rehabilitation, it lies not so much in treatment for your diagnosed disorders as in recognition of the fact that you use violence and expression of anger to cope with distress and to respond to poor or adverse outcomes in matters that affect you. Your inability to maintain emotional stability and to form ongoing relationships will require that you become motivated to learn substantially different social and personal skills, especially when dealing with adversity. Abstaining from substance abuse in the long term is a critical goal for you and your social engagement skills must develop significantly to permit integration into the community in the future. You are likely to require ongoing psychiatric support in prison and will, in particular, need drug and alcohol counselling, anger management interventions and counselling about healthy relationships and your attitudes of violence towards women.
In determining the proper sentence for you, the principles of general and specific deterrence remains a primary object of a proper sentence. It is important that the sentence that I impose on you be of sufficient severity to make it clear that persons who contemplate indulging in the type of violent conduct that you did should expect to lose their right to live within society for a substantial period of time. It is also important that you contemplate the need for significant changes in your attitudes from those you have learned during your deprived and marginalised upbringing . It is clear that the community is intolerant of violent behaviour towards women and expects the courts to send a strong message that behaviour of this kind is totally unacceptable. Women in domestic situations are entitled to feel safe from the violently abusive behaviour of their ex-partners. The court’s denunciation of your conduct will be clear.
I have also taken account of all of the submissions put by your counsel in mitigation, particularly your plea of guilty, your background circumstances and your prospects for rehabilitation and I have made an allowance for those considerations by reducing the sentence that I otherwise would have imposed.
I am required to impose a punishment that is limited to what is just in all of the circumstances and of a severity commensurate with the seriousness of your criminal conduct. Balancing all of these considerations as best as I am able, on the charge of intentionally causing serious injury to Danielle Mann you are convicted and I sentence you to a term of 10 years’ imprisonment.
The spark of a prospect of rehabilitation that I have identified will require careful support and monitoring if you are to integrate back into the community. A significant opportunity for supervision of your integration into the community is likely to be needed. You will become eligible for parole after 7 years.
Pursuant to s 6AAA, I declare that the sentence I would have imposed, but for your plea of guilty, would have been 11 years and 6 months.
I declare that you have spent 796 days in pre-sentence detention (not including today) and that this period be reckoned as already served under this sentence, and I direct that the fact of that declaration and its details be entered into the records of the court.
I grant the application that the saliva sample taken from you on 26 January 2012 be retained.
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