Director of Public Prosecutions v Jackson

[2017] VCC 182

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

AT LATROBE VALLEY
CRIMINAL JURISDICTION

CR-16-02189

DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS

v

TYSON JACKSON

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JUDGE:	HIS HONOUR JUDGE SMALLWOOD
WHERE HELD:	Latrobe Valley
DATE OF HEARING:
DATE OF SENTENCE:	6 March 2017
CASE MAY BE CITED AS:	DPP v Jackson
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION:	[2017] VCC 182

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

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APPEARANCES:	Counsel	Solicitors
For the Director of Public Prosecutions	Mr A. Moore
For the Accused	Mr J. Desmond

Pages 1 - 7

 

 

HIS HONOUR: 

1Tyson Jackson, you have pleaded guilty to one charge of robbery, one charge of kidnapping and one charge of theft.  Those crimes carry maximum penalties of 15, 25 and 10 years, respectively. 

2You are now 20 years of age, were 19 at the time of the offending.  Clearly, you have to be treated as a young offender.

3You made a relatively confessional record of interview and pleaded guilty at the earliest opportunity.  I accept, from the material in front of me, that you have displayed appropriate remorse and you must, of course, get the utilitarian benefit of that plea. 

4Of particular importance is that you have no prior convictions. There is one finding of guilt for an unrelated matter and that gives me confidence. 

5When we look at the background how you were brought up and you were very young, it is of some comfort to a sentencing judge to know that this is your first time in serious trouble, at least. 

6I also take into account the milieu in which all this took place.  The circumstances of the offending in your situation can be outlined fairly briefly.  You do have a co-accused in this matter but I do not think parity is an issue.  He is some seven years older than you, with a more significant criminal history.  The only parity that I will be looking at is what occurred in the Magistrate's Court with other co-accused. 

7As I said, at the time of the offending you were 19 years of age.  This incident that I am about to describe, involved you and Mr Bird 26 and eight other offenders.  I point out that insofar as those other offenders were concerned, is a Mr Fraser, who is 24 years of age, who is running a trial and has a large number of prior convictions and Nicole Clark, who was 28, a Trista Diston, who was 29, a Candice Roughton, who is 19, and a Tiffany Crampton, who was 18.  Each of those received a community corrections order in the Magistrate's Court for this very offending. 

8There were two other co-offenders but they were dealt with in the Children's Court and it is of little relevance to me. 

9In any event, Bird, Diston and Clark had known the victim, Mr Sanders, for a number of years.  The relationship had deteriorated because Bird believed that Sanders had broken into his house and stolen his children's Christmas presents.

10In the early evening of 13 June 2016, the three of them were at Diston's address in Churchill.  The young children were present and there was conversation about how Sanders had ripped people off. 

11The three then decided to "touch up" the victim, which they agreed would occur at Diston's house.  At around about 7 o'clock, Mr Bird called you, Mr Jackson, and you were at home with Roughton, Crampton and one Atkinson, against whom charges were subsequent withdrawn. 

12Bird asked to you to come to the Churchill address to help "roll" the victim for his drugs and money.  You agreed but stated that your car was not there.  In any event, toing and froing, you all turned up at Diston's address.

13What occurred in the meantime was that a phone call had been made to Sanders, requesting the purchase of drugs from him.  He was content to do that and arrived at the set-up address with the drugs and went into the bathroom to weight them. 

14I note that at this point in time that he has never been charged, as I understand it, or certainly never prosecuted for the act of trafficking, which he was clearly engaged in.

15In any event, there were ten of you.  You entered the bathroom and planned the robbery, where he was to be invited around to the house, as I have indicated on the pretext of selling - well, not the pretext, the purpose of selling drugs.  He has been invited into the bathroom and then he was going to be robbed. 

16The message was sent and he came around and essentially, what happened was that once he handed over the drugs, the assault took place and Mr Bird demanded money or told him to empty his pockets and then the rest of you all effectively, as I understand the situation, joined in. 

17He lost his iPhone, his car keys and some bank cards.  That was after his pockets had been emptied. 

18In any event, he said that he had a quantity of ice back at the house of a friend and that if you all went around there, that would get him released.  That was his idea.

19He was then taken around in the boot of a car which, as indicated, would have been a pretty terrifying experience for him and at least one of your group made some mention of him being taken out to the bush.  I have no doubt that he was afraid.

20In any event, he got to the house and started to run in through the house and he was then - you, Mr Jackson, tried to detain him, as did others.  There is a large number of you involved in all this and as I have indicated, the community correction orders that were given in the Magistrates' Court for virtually identical offending, in my view, limit very much what should occur in your situation.

21In any event, I would not have gaoled you for this, I would have given you youth detention.  I cannot give youth training and community corrections order in the one sentence and accordingly, whilst I have not even considered the prospect really, of putting a youth detention, I am simply going to give you a community corrections order.

22In doing that, you have been assessed and have been found to be acceptable.  I also take into account in that disposition, that you did 16 days on remand in adult custody after you were arrested for these matters and I am sure that has been a salutary lesson to you and a significant punishment, indeed.

23Tendered on your behalf was some references, a report from Dr Aaron Cunningham and most importantly, in my view, a series of CISP progress reports, that is the supported bail circumstances into which you were released.  The report of Mr Cunningham goes into your detail. 

24You were born to a heroin-addicted mother and were born heroin-addicted, yourself.  I do not think I need to go into all the detail of that but I am well aware of the consequences that that can have in later life, particular in terms of cognitive functioning.

25In any event, you had a very disrupted childhood.  There are circumstances of violence and drug use with your mother who, at one stage, was incarcerated.  You left and you ultimately went to your father's house to live.  You get on well with your father and step-mother and you are currently living with them.  Your daughter, who is living there with you and it seems clear from the CISP report that you have - and I will be reading from that in a moment - that you have spent the time since this offending occurred, wisely.

26You had drug use since an early age, in fact, being introduced to methylamphetamine by your mother.  You, in the 16 days as you did on remand, actually saw a person stabbed in gaol for a nicotine patch. 

27You were given Ritalin as a child.  Mr Cunningham says that you present with trauma and grief and loss issues after a traumatic childhood and that is hardly surprising. 

28His testing of your IQ came up with a full scale of 71, which is borderline in terms of intellectual disability and I certainly take that into account in the way in which the authorities say that must be taken into account. 

29You have come from a very embattled childhood and you are entitled to some credit for that as you stand here to be sentenced for this offending.  The offending has to be regarded as serious, albeit occurring in a milieu as I have described, with Mr Sanders apparently being a drug dealer.  General deterrence and specific deterrence have to play a part as well as denunciation and there has to be appropriate punishment.

30The reason that I have very comfortably decided that a community corrections order with conviction will be sufficient punishment, is the following from the CISP report that was produced after you had been attending with them. 

31Since the commencement is involved - I will paraphrase some of this - on
29 June 2016, "Mr Jackson's maintained consistent engagement with CISP and its integrated components, attendance at the vast majority of case management and treatment agency option.  You had been observed by the writer and other treating professionals as motivated and focussed on addressing the self-identified issues", and you have done that with frank and transparent discussions during your case management and treatment programs.

32You have admittedly self-reported absence from all illicit substance for the entirety of the period that you were with then and you have engaged with alcohol and other drug counselling and developed an awareness of the triggers of your previous substance use.  You also identified that with psychological counselling, you are now able to develop insight into the correlation between your grief and anger and the previous use of substances. 

33You acknowledge residing with your family and the support that they can provide on an ongoing basis and that is in short stability, given the opportunity to focus all your energy on making the necessary changes, as they say, to previous negative lifestyle choices. 

34You are now able to calm down relatively quickly, despite having, previously at least, experienced anger and you now appreciate that substance abuse had been a factor in that anger. 

35You reported that your mental health has stabilised since the cessation of substance use and that is despite experiencing grief associated with recent life events. 

36You told the writer of that report that the involvement with CISP had assisted you in "turning his life around and described CISP participating as 'someone holding your hand and taking you to the places you need to go.'"  You indicated to them that in the early stages of involvement, you found it difficult getting used to having to be somewhere at a specific time.  However, you stated, "Now, it's routine."

37Your self-perception has increased, as has your sense or you self-image, I suppose, is one way of describing it. 

38You indicate that you are disappointed for previous behaviours and have determined that the future will be better for you. 

39In all those circumstances, I am well aware of the authorities such as Tomguenon and Leech.  This is a situation where the interest of justice for, not only yourself but the entire community, are best served by you being placed upon a community-based order, that being a CCO.  It will be with conviction because the offending is still serious offending, at least on the objective basis. 

40If you agree, the community corrections order will be for 18 months, it would be work hours of 200 hours, supervision.  There will be programs for drug abuse and mental health and I direct that time spent, any time spent in drug abuse and mental health programs can be reckoned as hours performed under this order.  Is there anything else I have got put in that?

41COUNSEL:  No, Your Honour.

42HIS HONOUR:  No, all right.  All right, those are the matters.  Just stand up for me just for a second, Mr Jackson.  The reason I have done that, as Mr Desmond has pointed out, you have done really well since all this occurred and there is no reason why you cannot turn your life around and stay out of strife.  Just want to make it really clear to you though, if any offending like this gets brought back before me, all right, and for breaching this for this sort of violence, you will be going through that door, all right?

43OFFENDER:  Yep.

44HIS HONOUR:  We understand each other on that one?

45OFFENDER:  Yep.

46HIS HONOUR:  All right.

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