Director of Public Prosecutions v Leigh
[2020] VCC 1817
•4 November 2019
| IN THE COUNTY COURT OF VICTORIA | Revised Not Restricted Suitable for Publication |
AT GEELONG
CRIMINAL DIVISION
Case No. CR-19-00082
| DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS |
| v |
| GLEN LEIGH |
---
JUDGE: | HIS HONOUR JUDGE MULLALY | |
WHERE HELD: | Geelong | |
DATE OF HEARING: | 25 October 2019 | |
DATE OF SENTENCE: | 4 November 2019 | |
CASE MAY BE CITED AS: | DPP v Leigh | |
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION: | [2020] VCC 1817 | |
REASONS FOR SENTENCE
---
Catchwords:
---
APPEARANCES: | Counsel | Solicitors |
| For the Director | Ms I. Barry | Office of Public Prosecution |
| For the Accused | Mr S. Moglia | Emma Turnbull Lawyers |
HIS HONOUR:
1 Glen Leigh, you have pleaded guilty to 16 charges on Indictment J10670222 and a further three summary offences. The vast majority of charges arise from your violence towards your then young partner who I will refer to as the victim or the primary victim. The other offences involve other acquaintances and I will discuss those in briefer terms in due course.
2 A sentencing task is a difficult one in that finding the proper balance between punishment for your escalating crimes of domestic violence, and the principle of totality is not straightforward. But first I need to outline the nature and circumstances of your offences.
3 You were born on 20 November 1990. Around the age of 27 you formed a relationship with a much younger woman, the victim, who was just 18. And as is so often the way at the beginning of the relationship the victim described it as wonderful, all that she was looking for. The one very problematic aspect of the relationship from the start was your use of methylamphetamines. You introduced the victim to this terrible drug. Within a relatively short period you had become a different person to the victim, resorting to dreadful prolonged violence while under the influence of ice. From the outset I make it clear that your drug use or the influence of drugs on you is no mitigatory matter and your counsel did not suggest otherwise.
4 In February and March of 2018 you became delusionary obsessed, believing the victim was having sexual relationships with others, and that she had taken sexual videos and photos of you. Of course none of this was true but over the three week period in February and March you became intensely certain of the truth of these false beliefs.
5 The prosecution in summarising the overall effect of your violent crimes directed that the victim wrote the following.
'The relationship turned violent during the last three weeks in February, March of 2018. You became obsessed with jealousy and harboured irrational beliefs about the victim possessing videos of them having sex, hiding nude photos of him or carrying on sexual relationships with other people. Most of the violence amounted to torture metered out in an effort to have her confess to his deluded beliefs. Often the assaults took place in the presence of others.'
6
In respect of the charges on the indictment involving the victim the first attack was in mid February and began with you dragging the victim by her hair into the lounge room of the shared house in a suburb of Ballarat. You took out an extendable baton and struck her multiple times on her right leg. This was charged as common law assault and intentionally cause injury, Charges 2
and 3. This sort of behaviour was to be repeated later.
7 At the end of February you wrongly believed the victim was hiding things in an outside shed. You forced her to the shed attacking her by first throwing buckets of water on her and then turning the hose on her and hitting her with a metal pole. All this conduct was charged as a single charge of common law assault, Charge 4.
8 A short time later on 5 March 2018 you convinced yourself, based on nothing but your delusions, that the victim was having affairs with others. Your response was cruel, cowardly and degrading of the victim. You took hold of her and tied her naked to the bed with cable ties. You then interrogated her as she lay there in this most vulnerable set of circumstances as to who she had been sleeping with. This crime was charged as false imprisonment, Charge 6.
9 You made it worse still by punching her repeatedly when she denied all the names you put to her as supposed sexual partners. This was Charge 7, common law assault.
10 After some time you untied her and dragged her to where the computer was. You put her on the computer chair before kicking her and she came off it. You then punched her in the face. This was Charge 8, common law assault.
11 You then got a mag torch hitting her on the head causing a small cut. This was Charge 9, intentionally cause injury.
12 You then kicked her repeatedly to the body until she passed out. This was Charge 10, intentionally cause injury.
13 The victim was originally from Geelong and her mother still lived there. She visited, that is the victim visited her mother on 7 March 2018. Her mother was shocked at the extent of her daughter's injuries and deterioration and visible bruising. The victim was well under your influence even though you were not there. So she lied to her mother in response to her mother's shocked questioning saying that she had sustained the injuries in a car accident. But all this protective actions by her did not appease you.
14 On 10 March 2018 you were angry that the victim had gone to Geelong and seen her mother. You also accused her of sleeping with her flatmate's girlfriend, a nonsense proposition. Your paranoid accusations were accompanied by terrible violence. You pushed her to the ground and hopped on top of her and proceeded to punch her in the head, fracturing her nose. This was charged as intentionally cause injury.
15 You followed that by a type of assault that is frightening and all too common in what the courts now experience with perpetrators of domestic violence. What you did was you grabbed her by the throat, choking her until she passed out. This was frightening and risky behaviour borne out of an intent or a desire to subjugate the victim as a woman that you were, for delusional reasons, displeased with. It is serious criminality. It was charged as a common law assault, Charge 12.
16 After strangling the victim you released her from your grip and got a small tomahawk type axe. You used the blunt end to hit her legs. You also kicked her as she lay helpless. This was Charge 13, intentionally cause injury.
17 You also hit her legs and feet with a boat oar. This was Charge 14, common law assault.
18 The victim was again taken to Geelong, this time on 11 March 2018. She was left with her mother. Her mother was in deep shock and took her to the hospital. The hospital medical staff discovered that she had fractured bones in her wrist, foot, elbow, nose and little finger. Three of the open wounds to her right shin from your hits with various weapons were by that time infected. She had extensive bruising and abrasions. She had to undergo two surgical procedures on her wrist and leg. She was kept in hospital as an inpatient for two weeks. The effects of the injuries made her right side vision defective, also she has numbness in her lower leg.
19 The injuries as seen in the hospital were photographed and I saw these photographs. They were disturbing. The overall physical and especially the psychological effect on the victim has been significant. I will turn to her Victim Impact Statement and that of her mother shortly.
20 However once the victim was in hospital in Geelong, the police in Ballarat arrested you and interviewed you on 12 March 2019. Thereafter you were on remand. You and the victim spoke on the telephone after you were arrested. During those calls and in later letters from the prison you ultimately demanded that she retract her police statements. These were genuine attempts to pervert the course of justice and you were charged as such. Charge 15 on the indictment.
21 In addition your communication with her by phone and letter were persistent breaches of an intervention order that was taken out after she had gone to the police and you were arrested and placed on remand. This was charged as a persistent breach of intervention order, Charge 16 on the indictment.
22 Before assessing the gravity of these appalling crimes against the victim I need to mention two other crimes discovered by reason of what was on your phone and your CCTV footage from your home. On your phone was a video of you shooting a handgun in the shed into a mattress. Your possession of this dangerous gun is very concerning as is your willingness to test shoot it.
23 On 5 March 2018 your CCTV footage from your house reveals you attacking a friend with your tomahawk. He received treatment at the Ballarat Hospital and the notes reveal that he had a small laceration to his head, right chest and jaw and that his jaw and nose were fractured and he had soft tissue and swelling injuries. The footage shows you to be out of control in your violence and behaviour.
24 Finally on 10 March you slapped and threatened another female friend while in your house. You accused her of sleeping with the primary victim. She had no idea of what you were talking about. This was charged as an unlawful assault.
25 On your arrest there was a search of your premises which revealed an array of knife weapons, and these were charged as possession of controlled weapons with one of them a flick knife being charged as possession of a prohibited weapon.
26 In your interview with police on 12 March 2018 you mentioned your obsessive deluded beliefs as to your ex-partner and considered her to be the one at fault who needed to be hit and taught a lesson. You were, in essence, saying that whatever you did, it was she that made you do it. These are very troubling responses revealing that at that point in time you had aggressive attitudes towards her. As will be discussed shortly, you have woken up to yourself in recent times and totally disavowed the attitudes that you expressed in your record of interview.
27 Your crimes have had a significant effect on the primary victim and her mother. As could be seen from the taped telephone calls made from the prison, the victim was very much still under your influence at that time. She has now become aware of what you did to her and the controlling hold you had on her. She has dealt with things by maintaining a heavy use of drugs. She has committed crimes and found herself in prison. She read her Victim Impact Statement from prison and is listening to this sentence from that place today. What she said was compelling in its content and delivery. She wrote the following.
'I had a happy and enjoyable life. I come from a family of my mum and my little sister who adored me just as much as I adored them. I was psychologically stable when I first started seeing Glen. But now I'm a completely different person. I'm so paranoid, I'm scared of anyone getting too close to me, I constantly have flashbacks, I don’t sleep properly. I still have physical trouble due to my injuries.'
28 She goes on about the psychological effect to say,
'I feel as though I was some sort of entertainment. I lost my dignity and my happiness. I am now in gaol for the second time due to my drug addiction and the fact I am constantly carrying a weapon, even extreme weapons because I am so paranoid and scared of what could happen to me because of him. I have so much anger and hate inside of me now. I don't trust anyone, I'm beyond paranoid, and I believe that somehow everyone is connected to Glen.'
29 She does say that she has only recently started to get back, 'I had to learn how to love myself and the new person I have become without wanting to become this person.'
30 Her mother has remained supportive but very upset. She wrote,
'The night my daughter was dumped on my doorstep broken and battered has changed my life forever. What was once a safe house and happy life will never be the same.'
31 She describes spending the time in hospital with her daughter with the operations she had to have and she watched the doctors fix what physically could be fixed. But the physical scars, as she said, will heal but the emotional and psychological scare will never heal.
'I lost the daughter I raised because of what you did. We have both been changed forever.'
32 She speaks about having troubling eating, sleeping and leaving the house. She describes the actions has having damaged the whole of the family. She is hurt angry and frustrated because she has lost her daughter to drugs as a result of everything that you did to her. She takes drugs, she points out, to stop feeling anything and stop thinking about what happened.
33 As to the gravity of what you did, it first needs to be understood that violence against a partner in the house where she should feel safe is offending that is now better understood by the courts. I need to make clear what the guidelines of the Court of Appeal and the State are now with respect to crimes of this nature.
34 In 2014 the Court of Appeal in Pasinis said the following.
'Historically perpetrators of family violence were rarely prosecuted. Even when offenders were convicted of such offences they often received lenient sentences. Fortunately, the criminal law now gives greater recognition to the devastating effects of family violence. It has also been recognised that women who are killed by their husbands, boyfriends or de factos have frequently been assaulted by them many times previously. This makes both specific and general deterrence very important factors in sentencing men who assault their partners.'
35 In 2013 the High Court repeated such sentiments in Munda v Western Australia, giving approval to significant weight being attached to specific and general deterrence, denunciation and the protection of the community.
36 The High Court took that approach again in the important sentencing decision of The Queen v Kilich. That was a case involving a single incident of very serious violence perpetrated by a man against a previous partner. The case analysed the role of current sentencing practices in the sentencing tasks of judges in Victoria. The court said this.
'The requirement currency recognises that sentencing patterns for particular offences or types of offences may change over time reflecting changes in community attitudes to some forms of offending. For example, current sentencing practices with respect to sexual offences may be seen to depart from past practices by reason of changes in understanding of the long term harm done to victims. So too may current sentencing practice for offences involving domestic violence depart from previous sentencing practices for this category of offence because it changes in societal attitudes to domestic relations.'
37 A comprehensive analysis of the topic was undertaking by the Court of Appeal of Victoria in late 2017 in Kalala v The Queen. I need to quote at some length from this decision. What the court said was that on the plea the prosecution had referred to the community's abhorrence to the then applicant's motive which was to punish his spouse for perceived infidelity. Senior counsel submitted on the plea that the particular sentencing considerations relating to family violence were enlivened so that general deterrence, denunciation and just punishment would be given even great primacy. The Chief Justice, who was the sentencing judge, emphasised the importance of general deterrence and denunciation in her sentencing remarks.
38 The court went on. The Crimes Statistics Agency reports that between January 2012 and December 2016 Victorian Police identified 340,926 family incident related offences. This was an increase over the period.
39 The court went on.
'The trial courts of this state are imposing sentences for family violence offences with greater frequency. This court has repeatedly emphasised the need to condemn family violence in line with community expectations. In Filiz v The Queen the court acknowledged the "shameful truth" that family violence is a leading cause of illness, disability and death among Victorian women between the ages of 15 and 44.'
40 Unsurprisingly, counsel for the applicant did not suggest that their client's moral culpability or his deliberate criminal conduct was anyway reduced by the perception of infidelity which actuated the offence. In our view the position is quite the contrary. The applicant's motivation, that is to have her killed as punishment for perceived infidelity, is expressive of the very worst of male attitudes towards women.
41 It follows that this offending must be viewed as involving moral culpability at the highest level. Sentencing law has long recognised the prevalence of violence by men against women in or after domestic relationships and the importance of general deterrence in such circumstances.
42 A further and important decision of the Court of Appeal is in the DPP v Meyers where the court there spoke of there being 'an epidemic of domestic violence'. Very recently in August 2019 the Court of Appeal said the following in Degney v The Queen [2019] VSCA 183 at paragraphs 50 to 53.
'An aggravating feature of this offending is that it was committed in circumstances of family violence. It was rightly conceded by the applicant's counsel in the written case that the great emphasis placed on family violence context by the sentencing judge was not misplaced. There is now far greater recognition of the devastating effects of family violence on victims including and importantly for this case the effects which are not confined to physical injury.'
43 The court went on.
'It follows, as Her Honour accepted, general deterrence had to be a significant sentencing purpose here. There has been an increase in community disquiet over violence of males towards their females or ex-partners and this is one reason why denunciation of this conduct must be given full expression in the sentence. The applicant argued that unlike in some cases involving domestic violence there was an absence of a history of family violence. In our opinion the offending conduct in its own terms was a serious instance of offending in a family violence context involving alarming conduct towards a vulnerable female partner. The absence of a history of family violence does not diminish those features. Thus the community has expressed abhorrence to such crimes and such attitudes. The time of softer approaches to domestic violence is well gone.'
44 I cannot ignore such sentiments. My sentence here today must be a stern one.
45 What makes this serious offending is that it involves multiple violent offences, each on their own a disturbing example of subjugation and the increasing fear created in the victim. Crimes were persistent to try and get her to admit to a false delusion that you had. There was nothing she could do but be beaten. Thus there was a pointless cruelty to it all. The height of the cruelty was tying her to the bed while naked and thus acutely vulnerable and punching her as each name was denied. This just has to be said for its bewildering gravity to be exposed.
46 The offending occurred over an intense three week period. In that sense it was mercifully short compared to other cases where a woman has to endure years of violence but to this victim it was still three weeks, thus it was nonetheless not brief or isolated offending. The physical attacks only came to an end when the victim's mother intervened and took her to a hospital and you were arrested. Even then though you tried to continue your dominance and control over the victim in order that she would buckle and not maintain her truthful account of what you did.
47 There is no doubt in my mind that this offending is very serious in the scale of violence against women. The other crimes, especially the attack on your male acquaintance with a tomahawk are serious and deserving of stern punishment.
48 As to your personal circumstances. You are soon to turn to 29. Your upbringing was far from ideal. In fact that is an understatement. What you witnessed and experienced was significant violence perpetrated by both your parents in the context of your father's aggressive drunkenness and frank alcoholism and your mother's serious mental illness.
49 Your parents' troubled relationship ended when you were 13. Thereafter you spent time with both parents but neglect and deep problems persisted. You and your siblings often had to fend for yourselves. There was a particular difficulty as your younger brother suffered from an acquired brain injury from when he contracted meningitis in childhood. Often you were required to provide care for him.
50 You left your mother's home around the age of 13 couch surfing and living on the streets and with your father for the next three years or so. When with your father he was still chronically troubled by alcoholism. Your older brother did not fare well ending up often in prison and with deep mental health problems. Your two sisters have done much better. Qualifying and working, one in nursing and the other as a social worker in the disability field. This sister, who works with those with disabilities, has taken on the care of your brother with the acquired brain injury. She provides you with support as well and wrote two very helpful letters which were tendered in evidence on the plea.
51 Despite your father's violence during your childhood his death on 10 March 2018 caused you more grief than you thought it would. You had begun to build a relationship just before his sudden death.
52 Your schooling was of not much benefit to you as your abuse and neglected home made it difficult for you to apply yourself. After school you did most but not all of a bricklaying apprenticeship. Otherwise you have worked in property maintenance and repairs. You have an interest in computers providing friends with help and fixing problems. You injured your back some time ago, about five years ago, while doing property maintenance work and have not done that sort of work since then.
53 Your use of methylamphetamines commenced in your late teens. You smoked it daily and occasionally injected it. You frankly admit it caused paranoia and psychosis. It is the source of your delusions about the victim that I spoke of earlier. As I have indicated, it is not mitigatory and it does not diminish your high moral culpability.
54 However, since being on remand post the early period of time when you attempted to persuade the victim to change or withdraw her statements, you have, while drug free, become clear headed. You have developed a greater insight into your dreadful behaviour. You have disowned the sentiments expressed in your record of interview. You now take full responsibility for what you did. You hope the victim and her mother recover. You want them to know you will not, on release, contact or cause them any problems at all. I accept this as genuine.
55 Your time in prison has been well used, doing courses and programs to assist your rehabilitation. You have also mentored other young prisoners. You have said, frankly to your credit, that you needed time and the prison at Ravenhall has done you well.
56 It is your first time in custody. Indeed despite your chaotic upbringing you remained out of trouble, first committing offences in 2009 when in your teenage years. This, relevantly, did involve intentionally cause injury and assault with a weapon. You were placed on a community based order which you breached and ultimately you were given a three month suspended term of imprisonment and a community based order. That was the last time that you offended before this. Thus you have a very limited prior criminal history.
57 The psychologist, Mr McKinnon, who saw you to prepare a report to assist me, considered that with your past and your positive approach at the present while on remand that you do not have ingrained antisocial or criminal characteristics. He thought absent drugs you do not pose a high risk of aggression or violence and you have the motivation to rehabilitate yourself into a law abiding citizen.
58 Your sister was very much of the same view. The psychologist was of the view that you had developed genuine remorse for what you inflicted on the victim or your various assaults. Overall the psychologist's view was that your prospects for reform were strong.
59 Your counsel's sharply focused and helpful plea conceded that the gravity of your offending and its nature as cruel suborning domestic violence warranted a gaol sentence. Without seeking to diminish the effect on the victim he pointed out that unusually this was a short lived relationship of four months with three or so weeks of intense offending. It was not, as is too often seen, repeated episodes of violence within a relationship over years with intervention orders breached routinely.
60 The drug induced psychosis was not put as a mitigatory matter but rather that once the effects of the drugs had lifted you were someone whose prospects of rehabilitation significantly improved. I accept that. The point made relating to the effect of the drugs was that it revealed that absent drugs you were a genuine chance to rehabilitate. Your inherent character has emerged expressing remorse.
61 The prosecution contended that this was high end domestic violence offending with aspects of torture and certainly of cruelty. It had left its mark on the victim causing her life to rapidly and seriously deteriorate such that she now is in prison. The prosecution emphasised the sentencing purposes of deterrence and denunciation must be given real weight.
62 Both counsel assisted on the difficult question of cumulation and concurrency. The issue raised by me was that the nature of the offending was that by the unpredictable but continuing and escalating violence the cumulative effect was to bring subordination and indeed terror to the victim such that the victim may comply with whatever is demanded. The principle of totality is to ensure that the total sentence is proportionate to the criminality which may well have common links and causes. Superficially examined it may be thought that these episodes of violence over a relatively short period of drug induced delusions was merely a course of criminal conduct warranting significant concurrency.
63 I asked if such an approach would undermine the gravity of this type of offending and fail to see the true criminality that is involved in domestic violence of this kind. In the end, of course, I will follow the approach of the Court of Appeal in Victoria with regard to the practical implementation of the principles of totality.
64 I have reread the decision in Grabovac and the significant and important summary of those principles in Azzopardi in that judgment from paragraph 57 through to 68.
65 What the court in Azzopardi said in quoting from Grabovac, it said the following.
'In general a court must avoid imposing artificially inadequate sentences in order to accommodate the rules relating to cumulation. In other words, as the High Court has said.'
66 They are referring to Mills.
'Where practical when applying accepted rules of sentencing as to totality, proportionality and the like and in order to fashion an appropriate total effective head sentence in relation to a series of offenders, it is preferable to achieve a satisfactory result by passing appropriate individual sentences and to make those sentences wholly or partially concurrent rather than by orders or orders for cumulation of unnecessarily reduced individual sentences. Nevertheless, a rule of this kind can only be a pre-set or a guideline to be applied as and when practical. In particular though, concurrency is often preferred. A degree of cumulation ought to be ordered where sentences represent separate episodes or transactions which ought to be recognised, though at all times avoiding the imposition of a crushing sentence.'
67 In analysing these matters in Mills it was pointed out that the aggregate sentence must be arrived at that is sufficient punishment but no more than is necessary to satisfy the sentencing objectives that will create a proportionate sentence to the overall criminality of the offender. Is was pointed out that there may be misunderstandings, as if the court is not treating each offence as seriously as it would have if the offender fell to be sentenced for that offence alone thereby devaluing the effect of each offence on its victim and treating the offender as though he was able to have committed many of the offences almost with total impunity. That tension arises in this case by reason of the number of offences and by reason of the psychological effects of domestic violence which I have spoken about.
68 These principles, as expressed in Azzopardi and Grabovac, mean that I have to see the totality of your offending and ensure that the offences remain proportionate or the penalty remains proportionate. The discretion to order concurrency or cumulation is a wide one and it must itself incorporate all the matters contemplated in individualised sentencing. That is aspects personal to you as well as to the gravity of the crimes.
69 I have mentioned the key sentencing purposes in the course of these reasons. I repeat them for clarity.
70 The principle sentencing purposes are denunciation of your dreadful violent attacks on the victims and the victims that you gave the impression that you loved or were friends with. The denunciation must have a practical dimension beyond my words. That is, the community is well tired of cowardly men violently attacking vulnerable women. The practical dimension is expressed by the imposition of years of incarceration. Nothing less is just or appropriate.
71 The other principle sentencing purpose is deterrence, generally to others but also because of this offending to you to some degree. As the Court of Appeal has made clear, sentences must operate to deter other men from such corrosive and abhorrent violence in relationships.
72 Your rehabilitation is not overlooked but in all the circumstances it is of lesser weight. Fortunately your prospects are brighter than may have appeared the case at first. The key is, of course, that you, Mr Leigh, remain free of drugs upon your release. That is up to you but you do have some support and importantly insight. What I have to facilitate your rehabilitation is limited but I will allow for the potential for parole. When and if you are released is for others, not me.
73 Your plea of guilty and its timing mean that the sentence I am shortly to announce will be much lower than it otherwise would have been. You have saved the victim the added trauma of going through these experiences again in court. You have saved the resources that are available to the courts to hold trials and the like. These are no small matters.
74 Just dealing with each charge one after the other I will impose the following sentences then I will return to describe the orders for cumulation and then the total effective sentence.
75 So for Charge 1, the handgun offence you are sentenced to eight months' imprisonment.
76 Charge 2, common law assault, three months' imprisonment.
77 Charge 3, intentionally cause injury, 12 months' imprisonment.
78 Charge 4, common law assault, four months' imprisonment.
79 Charge 5, recklessly cause injury on the male victim, 12 months' imprisonment.
80 Charge 6, false imprisonment, two years' imprisonment.
81 Charge 7, common law assault, seven months' imprisonment.
82 Charge 8, common law assault, six months' imprisonment.
83 Charge 9, intentionally cause injury, 12 months' imprisonment.
84 Charge 10, intentionally cause injury, 18 months' imprisonment.
85 Charge 11, intentionally cause injury, two years' imprisonment.
86 Charge 12, intentionally cause injury, two years' imprisonment.
87 Charge 13, intentionally cause injury, two years and four months' imprisonment.
88 Charge 14, common law assault, six months' imprisonment.
89 Charge 15, attempt to pervert the course of justice, two years' imprisonment.
90 Charge 16, persistent breach of the intervention order, eight months' imprisonment.
91 The summary offences, possession of controlled weapons, one month imprisonment, for possession of the prohibited weapon, two months' imprisonment and the unlawful assault on the other female victim, one month imprisonment.
92 Now the orders for cumulation are one month of Charge 1. Three months of Charge 3. Four months of Charge 5. Eight months of Charge 6. One month of Charge 7. Three months of Charge 9. Six months of Charge 10. Nine months of Charge 11. Nine months of Charge 12. Nine months of Charge 15 are accumulative upon each other and upon the sentence of two years and four months on Charge 13.
93 That gives a total effective sentence, if my mathematics are right and I will need it checked, of six years and nine months and I order that you serve four years and six months before being eligible for parole.
94 The PSD is today?
95 MR MOGLIA: Six hundred and two days.
96 HIS HONOUR: Six hundred and?
97 MR MOGLIA: Two.
98 HIS HONOUR: Six hundred and two. You have already served 602 days in custody on remand. That is a staggeringly long figure I must say but I make it clear that the 602 days having been reckoned, I declare it is part of the sentence that I have just imposed and I will ensure that this is entered into the records of the court. That declaration having been entered into the records of the court, the prison authorities will be left in no doubt you have already served 602 days.
99 Had you pleaded not guilty to these offences and then found guilty of them I would have imposed a sentence of eight years and six months with a minimum of six years and six months.
HIS HONOUR: Now Mr Leigh, the lawyers will just have to do – just stay seated. The lawyers will just have to do some mathematics for me. There are other orders relating to disposal and the like, is that so?
MS BARRY: Yes Your Honour, there's just a disposal order.
HIS HONOUR: I'll just sign those orders.
MS BARRY: Your Honour, can I just confirm the non parole period you ordered.
HIS HONOUR: Yes. Four years and six months.
MS BARRY: Thank you, Your Honour. I have the same calculation as Your Honour, six years and nine months total effective.
MR MOGLIA: As do I.
HIS HONOUR: Thank you. Thank you very much. Mr Leigh, it's been protracted but necessarily your lawyers have assisted me greatly. You need to now head downstairs and commence this part of your sentence. Thank you. Ms McEwan, insofar as you can hear me, we'll end the link soon. There's just one other matter I just wish to raise with you quite separately from this and that is that your own appeal was coming before the courts indeed very soon but I felt that there was just a difficulty and a conflict in me dealing with Mr Leigh's matter with you as the victim and dealing with your own appeal. So I've asked for the court in Melbourne to find a date as soon as possible so that another judge in Melbourne can deal with your appeal. Do you understand?
MS McEWAN: Yes, I understand.
HIS HONOUR: Thank you. All right. So Ms Barry you're taking all that up I presume?
MS BARRY: Yes, Your Honour.
HIS HONOUR: Thank you. Ms Ayre in Melbourne and Mr Chapman in Melbourne will find a judge next week.
MS BARRY: Yes Your Honour, I - - -
HIS HONOUR: This week, I'm sorry.
MS BARRY: Yes, I believe the 11th may have been - - -
HIS HONOUR: The 11th, next Monday. All right. Thank you. Thank you, we'll end the link to Dame Phyllis Frost. Thank you. I'll just stand down.
- - -
0