Director of Public Prosecutions v Karoll
[2018] VCC 243
•9 March 2018
| IN THE COUNTY COURT OF VICTORIA AT MELBOURNE CRIMINAL DIVISION | Revised Not Restricted Suitable for Publication |
Case No. CR-18-00014
Indictment No. H11476916.1
| DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS |
| v |
| BRADLEY WILLIAM KAROLL |
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JUDGE: | HER HONOUR JUDGE CONDON | |
WHERE HELD: | Melbourne | |
DATE OF PLEA HEARING: | 27 February 2018 | |
DATE OF SENTENCE: | 9 March 2018 | |
CASE MAY BE CITED AS: | Director of Public Prosecutions v Karoll | |
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION: | [2018] VCC 243 | |
REASONS FOR SENTENCE
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Subject: CRIMINAL LAW
Catchwords:
Legislation Cited: Sentencing Act 1991
Cases Cited:
Sentence:
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APPEARANCES: | Counsel | Solicitors |
| For the DPP | Mr S. Davidson | Solicitor for the Office of Public Prosecutions |
| For the Offender | Mr A. J. Patton |
HER HONOUR:
1 Bradley William Karoll, you have pleaded guilty before me to aggravated burglary, causing injury intentionally, theft, possess drug of dependence, deal with property suspected of being proceeds of crime, committing an indictable offence whilst on bail and unlawful assault. The relevant maximum penalties for these offences are twenty-five years’ imprisonment for aggravated burglary, ten years’ imprisonment for intentionally cause injury, two years’ imprisonment for deal with property suspected of being proceeds of crime, one year imprisonment for possess drug of dependence, ten years’ imprisonment for theft, three months’ imprisonment for common assault, and three months’ imprisonment for commit indictable offence whilst on bail. The exact circumstances surrounding your offending were contained in the Summary of Prosecution Opening marked as Exhibit “B” upon the plea. However, I will briefly summarise the circumstances surrounding your offending.
2 At the time of the offending you were residing at the Gatwick Hotel (“the Gatwick”) in Fitzroy Street, St Kilda. On Friday, 26 May 2017, Sharon Coley (“Coley”), was visiting a friend at the Gatwick. While there, you approached her and requested that she speak with you in your room. You then spoke to her about a matter involving a person by the name of Theo Batanaras (“the victim in this matter”) about him and a motor bike. You then became aggressive towards her and hit her three or four times in the face with an open hand (this relates to the summary charge of unlawful assault). You were also verbally abusive towards her and told her that you were going to go to Mr Batanaras' house. You then left the Gatwick and met Daniel John Stewart (“Stewart”) along the way. Stewart is a co-offender in these matters.
3 Shortly after meeting Stewart, the three of you got into a car and drove to the victim’s flat. Between 11.00pm and 12.00pm that night, Mr Batanaras, was at home and heard the buzzer go off. He asked who it was and Miss Coley identified herself, and the victim allowed her entry into the building. He unlocked and opened the door to his flat and went into the kitchen, believing that Miss Coley was alone. However, Miss Coley went upstairs to the flat with you and the co-accused, Stewart. Mr Batanaras saw you enter the flat, followed soon after by Mr Stewart (this activity constitutes Charge 1, aggravated burglary with a person present). The victim believed that you and Mr Stewart were going to assault him. You went into the kitchen and confronted him. You said “do you know who I am?” and the victim said “yeah, Mickey Blue eyes”. You then told him to sit at the table. The victim went to shake Stewart’s hand and Stewart told him to sit down. You then grabbed the kettle and poured boiling water from it onto the victim’s face and neck (this conduct constitutes Charge 2, intentionally cause injury).
4 The victim ended up on the floor face down. You punched a table and broke it. You then punched the victim and got on top of him and commenced choking him from behind. The prosecution case is that this conduct, being the choking, demonstrated an intention to cause injury.
5 You then pulled a leg off the broken table, you told the victim to sit on his bed, which was in the lounge room, and you then commenced hitting him with the table leg. You hit him all over his body, including on the face, head, ribs, chest arms and legs (this is a continuation of Charge 2, being the charge of intentionally cause injury).
6 After the assault, you demanded the keys from the victim. The victim gave you the key and the security pass, the latter of which allowed entry to the main entrance of the building on the ground floor (this constitutes Charge 3, theft).
7 The victim ran to the St Kilda Police Station. Observations were made that he was very distressed, moaning in significant pain, and that his hair, face, neck and clothing were stained with blood, he had burn marks on his neck and that he was bleeding from his head and had bruising and abrasions to his ear, and that he had several broken and missing teeth. He told police, in detail, what had occurred, including that you were one of the perpetrators known to him as Mickey Blue Eyes. He also told police that he thought he was going to die whilst being assaulted. He was then transported by ambulance to the Alfred Hospital.
8 Mr Batanaras suffered a number of injuries, including:
·three rib fractures and associated bruising
·minor burns to his left ear and neck, and superficial burns to his forehead
·multiple missing teeth and loose teeth
·two lacerations to his scalp
·a number of other lacerations to his facial area and a mild traumatic brain injury, known as Concussive Syndrome.
9 In the opinion of Angela Williams, a medical practitioner with the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine, given Mr Batanaras' age, the effect of his chest injuries may have ongoing side effects for him.
10 At the time of these offences you were on bail (hence the summary offence of commit indictable offence whilst on bail).
11
In the early hours of Saturday, 27 May 2017, the police attended at
Mr Batanaras' flat. No-one was there, but a crime scene was established. Later on that morning, at approximately five in the morning, you were seen by police to enter the foyer of his flat at 150 Inkerman Street. You were arrested and searched, and police located $2,230 in cash and a Multipurpose Taxi Program card in the name of Jennifer Nicholls in the pocket of your pants (this conduct relates to the summary offence of deal with property suspected of being the proceeds of crime.)
12 Police also located on you some keys and a security pass, which they established was the security pass that allowed entry to 150 Inkerman Street, the home of the victim.
13 You were then transported to the St Kilda Police Station and police found a small bag containing a quantity of white powder (this relates to Charge 4 on the Plea Indictment, possess drug of dependence). At around 8.16am that morning you participated in a Record of Interview. For most of the interview you exercised your right to silence. You denied assaulting the victim and made no admissions, save for the fact that the white powder located on you was ice. You were then remanded into custody, and have remained in custody ever since.
14 Your offending has had a profound impact on the victim, Mr Batanaras. Tendered on the plea was a Victim Impact Statement from him, (marked as Exhibit “A”). In the course of that statement he states that he has been diagnosed by medical professionals with forms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. He says he genuinely struggles to cope every day and rarely experiences a good day. He struggles to sleep because he sees images and flashbacks from the incident. He describes the physical injuries that you perpetrated upon him. He is still in immense pain, and has had to have three teeth removed as a result of the incident. He states how, as a pensioner, the incident has affected how safe he feels. It led to him deciding to leave Melbourne, which caused him to lose his Ministry of Housing accommodation, and states he now pays double the rent in his new residence.
15 You also admitted your prior criminal history before me. In March 2017, you were released after having served eight months’ imprisonment for, among other offences, intentionally cause injury and possess controlled weapon. By 7 May of that year, you had been charged with offences relating to a vehicle that was subject to police surveillance that you had been driving. Some two weeks later you were involved in the commission of this serious and violent offending. In March 2012, you appeared in this Court and were sentenced for one charge of recklessly cause injury. You received a head sentence of two-years-and-nine-months imprisonment, with a non-parole period of twenty months. The offending for which you received that sentence of imprisonment occurred in May 2011. Similarly to this offence, the catalyst for your offending was a perceived slight in relation to your then girlfriend.
16 Here it was submitted that the motive for your offending against Mr Batanaras, related to an allegation of sexual assault said to be perpetrated by him against a girlfriend of yours, Vanessa. It appears that whilst in his apartment, prior to the assault, there was some exchange whereby you confronted him with that allegation. There was no evidence before me, however, as to what the precise nature of the allegation was.
17 Given the reactionary nature of your conduct, I accept the submission that it was spontaneous offending, illustrated by the fact that you did not attend the apartment with any weapon and utilised the materials at the victim’s apartment in aid of the assault. However, the presence and involvement of your co-offender, Stewart, is an aggravating feature of the offending, as is the fact that you were on bail at the time of the commission of these offences. Furthermore, your sustained assault on the victim was a serious one, involving the use of makeshift weapons, and constituted by a number of different acts.
18 On 9 January of this year you entered pleas of guilty prior to the cross-examination of any witnesses at committal. In this vein, I accept that your plea of guilty is an early one and consistent with a desire to facilitate the administration of justice. I also accept that it is a plea of guilty consistent with acceptance of responsibility for your conduct. However, you appear to have limited, if any, insight into the nature of your offending. Instead, you describe your behaviour as the consequence of having “lost it” or “snapped”. Neither expression denotes any real insight into the gravity of your offending.
19 Tendered on the plea and marked as exhibit “3” was a psychiatric report from Dr Leon Turnbull. In his assessment, while there were “obvious long-standing disturbances in [your] emotions and behaviour there were not the classic features of permanent delusions and hallucinations that would characterise a chronic psychotic disorder”. He diagnosed you with suffering from a Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (“PTSD”) in response to alleged sexual abuse when you were a child. He was of the view that there was nothing to suggest that you suffered from any form of sustained psychosis outside the direct intoxicating effects of illicit substances. And, furthermore, he was of the view that any particular Psychotic Disorder, such as schizophrenia, could not be confirmed.
20 In Dr Turnbull’s observations, the fact that you were a victim of sexual abuse at the hands of your stepfather and suffering PTSD has not directly led to your offending but, more importantly, your illicit drug use, emotional disturbance and dysfunctional relationships have played a part.
21 You were previously prescribed the anti-psychotic medication, Seroquel. Since having been remanded into custody, your medication regime was re-assessed and you are now in receipt of the anti-depressant, Avanza. In Dr Turnbull’s view, no formal psychiatric treatment was required for you, other than an “ongoing prescription of a low dose antidepressant”. He noted that you were not currently prescribed any antipsychotic medication. You have never spent time in a psychiatric hospital.
22
Tendered on the plea this morning was exhibit "4". This was a letter from
Dr Delene Brookstein on behalf of the Mobile Forensic Mental Health Service at the Metropolitan Remand Centre. That letter confirmed that you have engaged with the Mobile Forensic Mental Health Service at the MRC from
19 December 2017 to 2 March 2018 for the purposes of psychological intervention. During this time you have attended three individual sessions as well as two brief encounters. The focus of these sessions has been on your mental health recovery and relevant psychoeducation.
23 In the context of this offending, you told Dr Turnbull that you were not drug-affected and that you were not taking your medication, Seroquel, at the relevant time. However, in the course of your plea, your counsel submitted that the offending occurred at a time where drug use was a daily occurrence for you. Indeed, according to Dr Turnbull, you have had longstanding issues with illicit substances. You told him that you first used illicit drugs in your teens and that you were introduced to Ecstasy and amphetamines in your twenties, turning to ice later on.
24 I turn, now, Mr Karoll to your personal circumstances. You are now forty-one years of age. You are the product of a dysfunctional upbringing. Your mother had you when she was fifteen years of age and your father left the family home when you were one. At around nine years of age your mother formed a relationship with a man by the name of Don Boulton. He was in your life until you were fourteen. You were sexually abused by him when you were about nine-and-a-half or ten years of age. Your mother suffered from psychiatric problems, being diagnosed with Schizophrenia. She killed herself when you were seventeen years of age, by walking into the ocean at Sandringham. Your education was fractured, as you attended a number of different Primary Schools and High Schools.
25
Upon leaving school, you qualified as a chef and worked at some well-known Melbourne Restaurants. You spent one year working at the Stokehouse in
St Kilda and two years working at Lynch’s restaurant, and then one year working at Jacques Reymond. Apparently you were well regarded in the hospitality industry, where you worked until you were around age twenty-four years of age. You were asked to leave because you had an anger-management problem, which was associated with your developing drug use. You have never been married and you have never fathered any children.
26 As noted by Dr Turnbull, you have been a heavy drug user since your early twenties. I was told by your counsel that you have deployed methamphetamine and MDMA to switch off the pain and emotional response of the experience of sexual abuse from your childhood. You progressed to being an ice user approximately ten years ago, and upon your release from custody in March 2017 began using heroin to counteract the heightened state you experience whilst using ice.
27 It was put that in light of your mental health issues and longstanding drug addiction, a sentence should be imposed which would comprise a significant period of supervision on parole so as to enable the opportunity for rehabilitation to occur and indeed, upon your release in 2013, it appears you did successfully complete a period of parole, which is to your credit, until the commission of the 2016 offence for which you received 8 months' imprisonment.
28 This was a violent offence against a vulnerable pensioner. Given your previous offending in 2011 and 2016, it also reveals a concerning pattern of behaviour whereby you resort to violence in circumstances where you somewhat glibly stated that you “lost it”. This, and your lack of insight into your behaviour, impacts upon my assessment as to your prospects for rehabilitation. Your own counsel conceded that in all the circumstances your prospects for rehabilitation were guarded. I have made a similar assessment.
29 The prosecution submitted that your relevant prior criminal history combined with this more recent offending demonstrated an increased need for a sentence reflecting specific deterrence. I agree with that submission. Further, given that these offences were committed whilst you were on bail, the presumption of concurrency does not apply. However, I have given due consideration to the principle of totality when fixing both the head sentence and the non-parole period, and in the circumstances of this case I propose to only cumulate partially.
30 The basic purposes for which a court may impose a sentence are punishment; general deterrence, both specific and general; rehabilitation; denunciation and protection of the community. In sentencing you, I must have regard to a range of matters, such as the seriousness of the offending, your culpability for it, your personal circumstances and those of the victim.
31 I am required to balance the interests of the community in denouncing criminal conduct with the interests of the community in seeking to ensure, as far as possible, offenders are rehabilitated and re-integrated into society.
32 Please stand Mr Karoll.
33 In relation to Charge 1 of aggravated burglary, Charge 2 of intentionally cause injury and Charge 3 of theft, I sentence you to an aggregate term of imprisonment of 4 years and 6 months. I have determined it appropriate to impose an aggregate sentence in this case as each of the offences form part of a continuing episode of offending in a short time frame. In relation to Charge 4, being possess drug of dependence, I impose a $500 fine. In relation to Charge 5, being a summary charge of deal with property suspected of being proceeds of crime, I sentence you to 14 days ’ imprisonment. In relation to Charge 6, being the summary charge of commit indictable offence whilst on bail, I sentence you to 14 days’ imprisonment and in relation to Charge 9, being a summary charge of unlawful assault, I sentence you to 1 month's imprisonment.
34 I order that the sentence on Charge 9 be served cumulatively upon the aggregate sentence imposed on Charges 1-3. I have ordered that this sentence be served wholly cumulatively as this charge represents a discrete episode of offending against a different victim. This makes for a total effective sentence of 4 years, 7 months and I declare a period of 3 years before you become eligible for parole.
35 Pursuant to s.18 subsection 4 of the Sentencing Act, I declare 286 days, not including today, as pre-sentence detention.
36 Pursuant to s.6AAA of the Sentencing Act, I declare that, but for your plea of guilty, I would have sentenced you to a period of 6 years' imprisonment, with a non-parole period of 4 years.
37 I make the forfeiture order and the disposal order in the terms sought.
38 HER HONOUR: Is there anything else, counsel?
39 MR PATTON: No, Your Honour.
40 HER HONOUR: All right. Thank you, we will adjourn the court, sine die.
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