Director of Public Prosecutions v Law

[2014] VCC 1279

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

AT MELBOURNE
CRIMINAL JURISDICTION

CR-13-01089

DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS

v

JARDI LAW

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JUDGE:	HIS HONOUR JUDGE MAIDMENT
WHERE HELD:	Melbourne
DATE OF HEARING:	11 August 2014
DATE OF SENTENCE:	11 August 2014
CASE MAY BE CITED AS:	DPP v Law
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION:	[2014] VCC 1279

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

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APPEARANCES:	Counsel	Solicitors
For the Offender	Mr Ginsbourg
For The Queen	Ms C. Sedgwick

HIS HONOUR:

1Jardi Law, stay seated for the time being.  You have pleaded guilty to an indictment charging you with attempted armed robbery.  And you admitted court appearances and convictions.  The convictions, I think are subsequent to the offending that is the subject of this charge which occurred on 6 January 2013.  The prosecution tendered and relied upon a summary of prosecution opening for the plea.  And it showed that you committed this offence with a weapon in circumstances where you had had an argument with your girlfriend, and the offence was committed on a unarmed and defenceless individual who it turns out also suffered from schizophrenia. 

2The prosecution also relied upon his victim impact statement.  And you could not but have been affected by the way in which he described the attack upon him, the fear that it caused him and the forgiveness which he offers you.    I think it is important that you realise in future that conduct of that kind can have some pretty severe consequences on people who are totally innocent and deserve better.  You would not appreciate it if somebody behaved that way against you, and I hope that it has had some effect that that victim impact statement was read out to you this morning in the way that it was.

3Attempted armed robbery is a serious offence, and ordinarily it would demand a term of imprisonment.  You have been assessed by Forensicare and it seems clear that you have had contact with the Goulburn Valley mental health services in the past, and that they have made a provisional diagnosis of schizophrenia.   That seems to be supported by Dr Deakin in his report dated 7 August 2014. 

4I do not think it excuses your conduct, but it at least I think reduces your moral culpability somewhat and I think in those circumstances I can deal with the matter in a way that does not involve a custodial sentence.  In the course of the conversation today, you introduced us to your girlfriend.  You told us about the fact that you are now off drugs.  She disapproves of illicit drugs.  You have moved into the home of a friend of yours who is a married person, and you are being looked after and supported by them it seems.

5I am prepared to accept that you are now clean in the sense that you are not currently taking drugs.  I endeavoured to ensure that you understood that with your mental condition, it was important that you did not take illicit drugs because that would interfere with the prescription drugs that were designed to help you and you indicated that you understood that.

6The future for you, I think will be somewhat bleak.  It will be in and out of gaol unless you are able to deal with two things.  One is your mental illness, and to get onto a regime that ensures that that is all under control and that you are functioning well.  And secondly that you stay away from illicit drugs because you cannot both.  You cannot fix the mental health issues and do illicit drugs.  

7If you do fix those two things and you are able to get a job and hold one down, it seems to me that there is a fairly good future ahead of you.  There is no reason why you should not function perfectly well in society and hold down a decent job and lead a decent life and provide for a family if you are lucky enough to settle down with your girlfriend in the future and lead an honest and productive life.  But you are going to need a lot of help and it is not going to be easy for you.  You are not out of the wood in any event because you have got some further court appearances to deal with.  But it seems to me that for somebody who is as young as you are, and you have recently turned 20.  It is better for the community that the court offers you what support it can to try and ensure that you stay out of trouble in the future.

8The offence occurred now 18, 19 months or so ago.  And a fair bit of time has passed since then.   You have got into more trouble, but the other thing that has happened is that you have had two community correction orders which you have breached.  You have failed, it seems, to participate, to keep appointments and basically to cooperate with corrections in carrying out those orders.   For that reason, they have quite fairly said you are not suitable on your current performance.  And that is all they have got to go on.  They have your promises, but they cannot point to anything that is concrete enough for them to be able to say you are suitable for a community corrections order.  They might be right, I am hopeful that they are wrong, and the only person that is going to be able to prove them wrong is you.

9I know it will not be easy for you to keep those appointments, I know that there will be difficulties along the way.  I know that you will have issues with corrections but you are going to have to fight very hard to try and minimise those issues with corrections.  You are going to have to get stuck into letting them help you.  I am not going to impose an order which requires you to do further unpaid community work.  You are already on two community correction orders at the present time, and still to be dealt with the breaches of those orders where you were required to do a fair bit of unpaid community work.   You still owe a fair bit of time on those orders.  So I have got no control over what happens to you when you appear in court on, was it Friday, is it Mr Ginsbourg?

10MR GINSBOURG:  Yes.

11HIS HONOUR:  Friday of this week.  The court may decide that they have to send you to gaol.  I don't know, but for my part, it seems to me that  the whole community is best served if you can be assisted to keep on a straight and narrow road and keep out of trouble.  I do not think that you want to go to gaol.   If you do breach this order that I am about to impose, you will leave the court with very little choice other than to impose a term of imprisonment.

12As I say, I have got no control over what happens at the Shepparton Magistrates' Court, you may go to gaol

13HIS HONOUR:  So I have got no control over that, but I do propose to make a community corrections order if you consent - if you agree to go on one.  There is not much point in you agreeing, if you are going to be back before me in a months' time or two months' or three months' time is there?  So you are going to have to give this a red hot go and demonstrate that you are fair dinkum about it.  Do you understand?

14PRISONER:  Yes, Your Honour.

15HIS HONOUR:  All right, the order I make is for a period of two years, and the conditions obviously - there are substantive conditions and those will be gone through.  In addition to those I will have you on supervision, so there will be supervision appointments to keep and the other conditions will involve your assessment and treatment for mental health issues, also for alcohol and drug treatment and assessment.

16I will also put you on a condition that you participate in offending behaviour programs to the extent that they are deemed to be useful.  You mentioned anger management.  It may be that going on an anger management course will help you, and I would imagine that that would be coupled with the mental health treatment that you will be receiving.  I would imagine what will happen is that you will be put back in touch with Goulburn Valley Mental Health and you will have to keep regular appointments with them and they will have you presumably on a treatment regime and in addition to that, you will be perhaps asked to do things like anger management courses which in addition to the mental health treatment will give you strategies for dealing with anger and so on.  All right? 

17Two years is quite a long time to be maintaining your appointments but it is going to be two years before you are really out of the woods here, it seems to me.  You are at a stage where you are going to need help for at least the next two years.  So this order is designed to help you to receive that help. 

18That to some extent is to be regarded as punishment in itself, because you are going to have to stick to the conditions.  The other aspect is that it is particularly important to see you do not commit any further offences, because if you commit further offences punishable by imprisonment, then you will be in breach of the order and you will be up for punishment for those offences, but you will be up for punishment for the breach of the order, which is up to three months' imprisonment.  And, you will be up for re-sentencing on this attempted armed robbery conviction, do you understand?  So, all in all, just for these matters you will be up for a lot of imprisonment.

19So the choice is yours, and I hope that you will take it.   The order I make is that you are convicted and I order that you be the subject of a community corrections order which will begin today and last for a period of two years with the extra conditions that I have outlined.  That order will be drawn up now and you will be asked to go through it with Mr Ginsbourg and make sure you understand it, and if you are happy with the content of it then sign it and the job is done.

20MS SEDGWICK:  As Your Honour pleases.

21HIS HONOUR:  Thank you.

22MS SEDGWICK:  Your Honour, there were ancillary orders that were sought ‑ ‑ ‑ 

23HIS HONOUR:  There were, weren't there?

24MS SEDGWICK:  And the disposal in relation to the garden stake and DNA application, Your Honour.

25HIS HONOUR:  Yes.  So the owner of the garden stake doesn’t get the garden stake back again?

26MS SEDGWICK:  I asked the informant, and he wasn’t able to identify them.

27HIS HONOUR:  It was, yes all right.  So the ancillary orders were the disposal order and the ‑ ‑ ‑ 

28MS SEDGWICK:  A forensic sample application, Your Honour ‑ ‑ ‑ 

29HIS HONOUR:  All right.  I think you've given me a draft of all the orders.  The draft of - all right, there's a suitable form of the draft here.  Mr Law, one of the orders that I am about to make is for you to provide a forensic sample, that is scraping from the inside of the mouth, to provide a sample of your DNA.  There will be a police officer authorised to ask you for that sample and indeed you all have to report to a police station for the purposes of providing that sample.  When you do report, if you provide the sample that is all well and good.  Otherwise, the officer is also authorised to take a blood sample if you refuse or fail to provide a scraping from the inside of the mouth.  And the blood sample could be taken using reasonable force to obtain that sample.  I am sure you will not put the police officers to that trouble.

30So which police station would it be, would it be Shepparton police station?

31MR GINSBOURG:  Shepparton.

32HIS HONOUR:  Shepparton?  All right.  Yes.  Mr Ginsbourg, if you wouldn't mind accompanying Mr Travis up to your client's area so you can ensure he's comfortable with the order.  All right, those orders are now in place.

33MR GINSBOURG:  Your Honour, in relation to the disposal order, there just needs to be a date added ‑ ‑ ‑ 

34HIS HONOUR:  Sorry, did I not date it-  I do apologise.

35MS SEDGWICK:  Given that Your Honour's already signed it could I hand that back to Your Honour?  It's just under the ‑ ‑ ‑ 

36HIS HONOUR:  Yes, I know where it is.  I just didn't do it.  That's two copies of the order. The other one I need to do as well.

37MS SEDGWICK:  Your Honour's Associate may have received a copy.;

38HIS HONOUR:  I think you may have the third copy. 

39MS SEDGWICK:  Thank you, Your Honour.

40HIS HONOUR:  Your client can leave the dock now, Mr Ginsbourg.  Mr Law, I mean this in the nicest possible way.  I hope we don't meet again.  At least not in those circumstances.

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