Director of Public Prosecutions v Jamie Chatfield

[2019] VCC 256

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

AT MELBOURNE KOORI COURT
CRIMINAL JURISDICTION

CR-17-01655

DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS

v

JAMIE CHATFIELD

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JUDGE:	HIS HONOUR JUDGE GRANT
WHERE HELD:	Melbourne
DATE OF HEARING:	21 February 2019
DATE OF SENTENCE:	8 March 2019
CASE MAY BE CITED AS:	DPP v Jamie Chatfield
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION:	[2019] VCC 256

REASONS FOR SENTENCE
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APPEARANCES:	Counsel	Solicitors
For the Director	Ms A Bhai	OPP
For the Accused	Mr Brugman	Michael Brugman, Barristers and Solicitors

HIS HONOUR:

1       Jamie Chatfield, you have pleaded guilty to one charge of home invasion and one charge of intentionally cause injury.  You also pleaded guilty to one summary charge of commit an indictable offence whilst on bail. The maximum penalties for these offences are as follows:

·    Home Invasion, 25 years’ imprisonment;

·    Intentionally cause injury, 10 years’ imprisonment; and

·    Commit an indictable offence on bail, 30 penalty units or 3 months imprisonment.

2       Your offending can be briefly summarised. At about 6.30 am on 12 March 2017, you went with your nephew Donald Chatfield to an address at 381 Occupation Lane, Garvoc. Nathan Chatfield lived at the address with his partner and six-year-old daughter. He rented the property from Daniel Thompson who lived in a nearby farmhouse. You are Nathan Chatfield’s uncle and Donald is his cousin.

3       Upon arrival at the property an outside light was unscrewed and a camera smashed. The power was turned off. You both then went into the lounge room where the victim had been sleeping. You were wearing hoodies and carrying torches. Donald had a bandana covering his face and he was carrying an axe. The victim’s wife and child, who had been sleeping on a mattress in the lounge room, ran and hid under a bed in another room. The victim’s wife called Daniel Thompson and whispered to him that her husband needed him at the house.

4       In the meantime, Donald Chatfield grabbed the victim by the shirt, threw him up against the wall and punched him in the head, neck and jaw. He threatened him with an axe. He turned him around, holding the axe across his neck. He then sat him on a chair and when the victim tried to get up, he cut him across the collarbone and chest. You were standing behind Donald and acting as if you had something up your sleeve.

5       Donald demanded drugs, guns and money. He threatened to chop the victim’s fingers off and bury him in the forest. He continued to hit the victim to the head. They were hard punches. He continued threatening, choking and hitting the victim until Daniel Thompson entered the house. He called out, "Boys, what are you doing here?" You both had a conversation with Mr Thompson in the kitchen before returning to the lounge room where Donald repeatedly yelled at the victim that he owed him $300. He started punching the victim and you joined in. Donald then pulled you off the victim and walked towards Mr Thompson, who walked outside. You both walked to the car and left the scene.    

6       You were arrested two days later and interviewed, when you made a no comment interview. You were remanded in custody.

7       The male victim suffered physical injuries, namely, bruising, headaches and scratches to his chest. He was sore all over. He and his partner have provided impact statements. A statement has also been provided on behalf of the child. The statements detail the profound impact the offending has had upon their lives.  Your cousin and his partner have had their feelings of safety dramatically compromised. Even though they bear no responsibility for what you did, they nonetheless feel that they failed to protect their daughter; a child who has suffered considerably from witnessing your violent and aggressive behaviour.

8       Clearly, this is serious offending.  You admit through your plea that when you attended the premises you did so with the intention of entering the home and assaulting the victim. Whilst your nephew was the principal offender, you acted to support him. The power was switched off and an outside camera smashed before you both entered the victim’s home. It was early in the day.  When you entered, you must have known that it was likely that the victim’s partner and young daughter would be present in the house. You carried on nonetheless. Although you did not carry a weapon, you were obviously aware that Donald was carrying an axe. You were present when Donald assaulted the victim initially and you joined in the assault later on. The psychological and emotional impact on the victims has been significant, none more so than upon a young six-year-old girl. When you committed these offences, you were on bail for other offences. 

9       In this case, general deterrence - that is, the need to send a strong message to others in the community who might be tempted to behave in the way that you did - is an important sentencing consideration. Just punishment and denunciation are also relevant sentencing considerations.

10      You have an alarming number of prior convictions. You have been a regular and persistent offender since your first appearance in the Magistrates’ Court in 1991. There are a large number of violent offences. Your criminal history means that the principles of specific deterrence and community protection are also relevant sentencing considerations. Your prior criminal history also helps explain why I am extremely guarded about your prospects of rehabilitation.    

11      I now turn to matters relevant to your background. 

12      You were born on 10 May 1973. You are 45 years old.

13      You are an Aboriginal man who comes from a background of great hardship and deprivation. You were born in the Silverwater Correctional facility in New South Wales, where your mother was in custody. I was told that you spent nine months with your mother before being placed into the care of your grandparents, a maternal aunt and paternal uncles. You were raised on the Framlingham Reserve with four brothers and five sisters.

14      In a report dated 3 January 2019, Dr Matt Treeby, a Clinical Neuropsychologist and Clinical Psychologist, speaks about your childhood in these terms, and I quote: 

“Mr Chatfield described a particularly chaotic upbringing, and it appears he was exposed to considerable adverse early childhood experiences. He said that he [was] routinely subject to physical abuse by his uncles, was often 'slapped around' and hit to the head during his formative years. He said he was rendered unconscious on at least two occasions at around the age of ten during episodes of alleged physical abuse. It would also appear Mr Chatfield experienced neglect during his formative years and was not provided with consistent supervision. He said that his caregivers were often intoxicated, or partying, and that he was left to his own devices. He said that from the age of ten he was in frequent contact with police due to disorderly conduct while intoxicated on the streets. He noted that [the] majority of his family and associates were also in contact with police and that he grew up in an environment marred by heavy substance use.”

15      You were introduced to the use of alcohol at the age of 6 or 7 and you were a heavy drinker by the time you entered your teenage years. Alcohol abuse has been a major issue for you throughout your life. You were also introduced to cannabis at the age of 12 or 13 and you have consistently used that drug ever since. You first used amphetamine when you were 17 and quickly moved to the drug ice. You have a history of binging on that drug. You were affected by alcohol and ice at the time of the current offences. 

16      

Given this history, it is not surprising to read of your difficulties in primary school. Your intellectual disabilities, which I will speak about in more detail shortly, exacerbated the effects of your social disadvantage. You had no integration aid at your school and you repeated Grade 2. You left school at the end of

Grade 4. You spent some of your adolescence in the Turana Youth Training Centre and much of your adulthood in prison. You have no employment history.

17      

Dr Treeby conducted various tests to assess your intellectual capacity.

On assessment, you performed in the extremely low range, indicating longstanding intellectual difficulties. You obtained a Full Scale IQ of 59, placing you in the bottom 0.3 percentile. He said this in his report, and I quote:

“Mr Chatfield appears to have had a tumultuous upbringing and experienced multiple adverse childhood events during his formative years, including physical abuse and neglect. Trauma of this nature is known to compromise developmental trajectories including with respect to intellectual, social and emotional development. I note that Mr Chatfield began engaging in polysubstance use during late childhood and very early adolescence and it is likely that early exposure to substances compromised his brain development during this key developmental period. He also has an extremely limited formal education (Grade 4) and this would have almost certainly hindered his intellectual development and socialisation.”

18      The doctor goes on to note that your long history of substance abuse and multiple documented traumatic brain injuries over the last ten years are likely to have resulted in some degree of enduring cognitive impairment, which constitutes an acquired brain injury.  

19      

Dr Treeby expresses the undoubtedly correct opinion that your cognitive impairments, including marked executive dysfunction resulting in poor emotional and behavioural control, partly explains your offending behaviour. 

In addition, your decision making, impulse control and problem-solving abilities are likely to be even more impaired during times when you are substance-affected. Finally, he notes that you do have Antisocial Personality Disorder traits which also contributed to your offending. He notes, correctly, that you have multiple risk factors for recidivism and that you are a high risk of reoffending. The risk would be reduced, he says, but not eliminated should your mental health and substance abuse problems be appropriately monitored and addressed. He recommends a high degree of support be provided to you when you re-enter the community. You would need a substantial degree of case management support and ongoing close monitoring. You would also benefit from a referral into the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

20      There are a number of matters in mitigation.

21      First, you offered an early plea of guilty to the charges for which you were ultimately arraigned. The plea is an acceptance of responsibility and indicates remorse. In addition, it has saved the victims from the trauma of giving evidence and saved the community the cost involved in running a criminal trial. You will be given credit for all these matters.

22      Secondly, you have suffered significant hardship and disadvantage in your formative years, and for this reason, there should be appropriate moderation of the application of the principles of deterrence and denunciation. On the other hand, your harsh background has left you with a concerning propensity to behave aggressively and violently. This means I have to carefully balance the moderation that flows from your disadvantaged background with the need to protect the community.

23      Thirdly, your intellectual disability and acquired brain injury allows for a modest reduction in your moral culpability. I am also satisfied that imprisonment is more onerous for you than it would be for someone without your cognitive impairments. On this last point, you are currently undergoing very onerous conditions on remand. You told me that because of problems you have in the prison system, you requested to do your time “in the slot”. I received a letter from Mr Jack Walker, the Aboriginal Wellbeing Officer indicating that you have spent a significant amount of your remand time in either management or intermediate regimes. This means that you have been on 23-hour individual lock down with one hour in the yard on your own or with a limited number of other prisoners.  You have therefore experienced additional hardship not experienced by other prisoners. I also take this into account in determining sentence.   

24      Fourthly, whilst on remand for the current matters, you were dealt with in the Magistrates' Court for various matters and sentenced to three months imprisonment. Although this is not a prior conviction, it is a matter relevant to my sentence, because of the operation of the principle of totality. In constructing my sentence, I am required to consider the total sentence that would have been imposed, had all of the offences fallen for consideration on the same occasion. In other words, I must ensure that the total sentence I impose is just and appropriate for all your offending. In addition, because it has taken some time for the current matters to come before this court, you have lost the opportunity for some concurrency as between the orders made in the Magistrates’ Court and the orders I make today.  

25      

Next, there is the issue of parity. I am satisfied that your level of culpability was less than that of your co-offender. When you got into the car with your

co-offender, you were not aware that he was going to your nephew’s house.

It was not your idea to commit these offences. You were not armed with a weapon, you did not wear a bandana, you did not make threats and you were not involved in the initial assault of the victim. Whilst your prior history is worse than your co-offender’s and he had more weighty matters concerning totality, you do have important matters in mitigation that did not apply to him. This explains why there is some difference between your sentence and his.   

26      

Finally, you consented to having the charges heard in the Koori Court. In doing so you agreed to participate in a process that involved appearing before Elders from the Aboriginal community. It was obvious to me from the way you participated in the process, that you were sorry for what you had done.

You forcefully expressed your remorse for offending against your cousin. You expressed deep regret for offending against him. You also frankly admitted the difficulties you have had maintaining a drug free, law abiding life when living in the community. You recognised the truth of what Dr Treeby said about your need for intensive support upon release back into the community.

27      Your counsel submitted that it would be appropriate in your case to impose a Community Corrections Order with the opportunity for you to attend Wulgunggo Ngalu, a facility run by Corrections that offers Aboriginal men on a CCO the opportunity to reside in a safe place while undergoing assessment and treatment for the issues that lie behind their offending. 

28      I am unable to accede to your counsel's submission. First, the seriousness of this offending speaks against the making of such an order. Secondly, as beneficial as that program generally is for most offenders, it does not offer the level of intensive support, supervision and case management that would be necessary in your case. The fact that you have been on orders to that place twice before and failed to remain there, reinforces my view that such an order would not be appropriate.    

29      

I did request an assessment of your suitability for the intensive rehabilitation program known as Ngarra Jarranouth Place. That program is designed to support Aboriginal men who use or are at risk of using family violence, to make positive changes to their lives. The strength of that program is that it offers

16 weeks of intensive residential support to an offender with an additional level of ongoing support of up to 18 months in the community. Among other things, it requires participants to be drug free and alcohol free. I ordered the assessment because I was weighing up whether it might be appropriate to defer sentence and bail you into that program. In the end, it became an academic exercise because you have been assessed as unsuitable.   

30      Mr Chatfield, in the circumstances of this case, the only appropriate order is an imprisonment order. Whilst I understand that it is entirely a matter for Corrections where you serve your sentence, I do note that in 2014 you seemed to do very well whilst you were at the Fulham Correctional Centre.    

31      On the charges on the indictment, you will be sentenced to the following periods of imprisonment:  Home invasion, three years and ten months. Intentionally cause injury, six months. And on the summary offence, one month.  

32      I order two months of the sentence on Charge 2 be served cumulatively upon the sentence on Charge 1.

33      This makes a total sentence of four years' imprisonment. I fix a minimum term before you will be eligible for release on parole of three years.

34      I make a declaration that you have served 632 days' pre-sentence detention.

35      Had you pleaded not guilty and been found guilty after trial, I would have sentenced you to a total effective sentence of 5 and ½ years, with a minimum term of 4 years.

36      Are they all the matters, Ms Bhai?

37      MR BRUGMAN:  As Your Honour pleases.

38      HIS HONOUR:  Thank you, Mr Brugman.  Yes, Mr Chatfield can be removed.     

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