Director of Public Prosecutions v Mang
[2023] VCC 1413
•14 August 2023
| IN THE COUNTY COURT OF VICTORIA | Revised Not Restricted Suitable for Publication |
AT MELBOURNE
CRIMINAL JURISDICTION
CR 21-01032
CR-23-00350
| DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS |
| v |
| SANG MANG |
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JUDGE: | HIS HONOUR JUDGE JOHNS |
WHERE HELD: | Melbourne |
DATE OF HEARING: | 31 July 2023 |
DATE OF SENTENCE: | 14 August 2023 |
CASE MAY BE CITED AS: | DPP v Mang |
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION: | [2023] VCC 1413 |
REASONS FOR SENTENCE
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Subject: CRIMINAL LAW - Sentence
Catchwords: Aggravated home invasion – Recklessly causing serious injury – Theft – Intentionally causing injury – Two indictments – Plea of guilty –
Cases Cited:DPP v Mang [2020] VCC 606; DPP v Mang (unreported, County Court of Victoria, Judge Meredith, 25 June 2021) Bugmy v The Queen 249 CLR 571; Worboyes v The Queen [2021] VSCA 169.
Sentence:Total effective sentence of 6 years’ imprisonment with a non-parole period of 2 years and 11 months.
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APPEARANCES: | Counsel | Solicitors |
| For the Director of Public Prosecutions | Ms O. Chan | Office of Public Prosecutions |
For the Offender | Mr C. Thomson | Valos Black & Associates |
HIS HONOUR:
1Sang Mang, you have pleaded guilty before me following a sentencing indication hearing to two separate indictments. Indictment L12770032.1 contains a charge of aggravated home invasion, which has a maximum penalty of 25 years' imprisonment, two charges of recklessly causing serious injury, that charge carries a maximum of 15 years' imprisonment, and a charge of theft which has a maximum of 10 years. The date of the commission of these offences was 24 November 2020.
2On Indictment M12618361 you pleaded to a charge of causing injury intentionally which has a 10 year maximum. This offence was committed in custody after your remand on the earlier matters and it was committed on 16 December 2020.
3You have admitted a criminal record disclosing relevant prior convictions for violent offending. You also have subsequent convictions which have relevance to the sentencing exercise.
4The circumstances of your offending in respect of each indictment is set out in two summary of prosecution openings, Exhibit A relating to Indictment L12770032.1 and Exhibit B relating to the second indictment.
5I will summarise these circumstances in briefer terms, first I will set out a chronology of relevant events that puts the matters before me in context.
Chronology
6You are a 23 year old man with significant prior and subsequent convictions and you have spent a depressing percentage of your adult life in detention or adult jail.
7You were born in a small village in Myanmar in February 2000. You and your family are members of the persecuted ethnic Chin minority in Myanmar.
8At the age of five you fled to Malaysia with your mother and siblings to join your father in a crowded refugee camp. Eventually you resettled in Australia with your family as refugees when you were seven.
9Your siblings are high achievers. Your parents are hard workers. You, unfortunately, have had difficulty in your childhood and teenage years integrating and following productive pursuits and you have descended into gang-related dysfunction, violence and criminality from a young age.
10You began alcohol and substance abuse around 14 and this factor, along with affiliation with other disaffected youths with whom you share a refugee, and in some case ethnic background, has led to offending.
11On 3 May 2018 you were sentenced to 10 months detention in a Youth Justice Centre. It is unclear to me when your release date was but you were remanded into adult custody on 29 September 2018 according to the sentence/remand report filed in your hearing.
12On my analysis of that summary, since 29 September 2018 you were in the community for almost two months between 30 January 2019 and 23 March 2019; for three months between 30 August 2019 and 1 December 2019; for nine days between 11 May 2020 and 20 May 2020; and for three months between 27 August 2020 and 27 November 2020 when you were remanded. You have been in custody since that time.
13On the day of your release on 11 May 2020 you were sentenced by Judge Allen of this court to 456 days' imprisonment, in combination with a CCO for attempted armed robbery and criminal damage. 456 days of pre-sentence detention was declared. I have read Judge Allen's reasons for sentence.[1]
[1]DPP v Mang [2020] VCC 606
14On the day of your release on 27 August 2020 you were sentence to 100 days and had pre-sentence detention of 100 days for aggravated burglary and theft of a motor vehicle.
15Following your release you committed offences of home invasion and associated charges on 17 November 2020.
16On 25 June 2021 you were sentenced by Judge Meredith of this court to a head sentence of four years and nine months with a non-parole period of three years. You are currently serving that sentence. I have also had access to Judge Meredith's reasons for sentence.[2] Both sentencing remarks indicate youth gang affiliation as a criminogenic factor at that time.
[2]DPP v Mang (unreported, County Court of Victoria, Judge Meredith, 25 June 2021).
17On 24 November 2020, three days after the home invasion you are serving sentence for, you committed the offences the subject of Indictment L12770032.1. You were remanded in custody. As I have stated, on 16 December you committed the offences the subject of the second indictment. This offence was committed, it seems, the day after you were re-sentenced by Judge Allen of this court for breach of his community corrections order and you were re-sentenced to two years' imprisonment with 456 days of pre-sentence detention declared.
18I will now turn to the matters before me.
Circumstances of Offending
Indictment L12770032.1
19You were 20 years of age at the time of the aggravated home invasion.
20Late in the evening of 24 November 2020 you and three co-offenders armed with machetes and a pole knocked on the door of a home at Silvereye Crescent Werribee. Your victim, Mr Spicer, opened the door. Another victim, 62 year old Mr Sinfield, was also in the house. Both victims were unknown to you and your co-offenders.
21You all entered as trespassers. Your victim could see the weapons you carried. He backed away towards a bedroom. You all attacked the occupants. One intruder attacked Mr Spicer with a machete. Another offender attacked Mr Sinfield with a machete. The car keys belonging to Mr Spicer were taken. His car was then stolen.
22Both victims received serious injuries as a result of the attack. The extent of those injuries is set out in Exhibit A.
23In summary, both victims suffered serious lacerations and fractures.
24Random home invasions of this nature, accompanied by such a disturbing level of violence by four intruders, constitute a very serious example of the offence of aggravated home invasion.
25You were on a community corrections order at the time for violent offending.
26You were one of four armed strangers forcing their way into a person's home. You then seriously injured them for no reason and you left with a set of car keys. It is appalling and outrageous behaviour deserving of condign punishment.
Indictment M12618361
27You were remanded in respect of the above incident and were at the Melbourne Remand Centre on 16 December, as was your victim, fellow remandee the late Mr Sleiman.
28As I have noted, according to the criminal record you were dealt with by Judge Allen in this court for contravention of the CCO he had placed you on the day before your commission of this serious offence.
29The commission of your crime was captured on CCTV which was exhibited on the plea. I have viewed that CCTV footage, it is chilling viewing. It depicts you loitering, wearing black gloves with your hands clasped behind your back. You approach Sleiman from behind, without warning, and slash him down the right side of his head and face in a downward motion with a weapon you had concealed. It is quick, forceful and extremely violent and vicious. A fight then breaks out and you slash him further underneath the left side of the jaw.
30Your weapon was an improvised jailhouse 'shiv' comprised of a blade from a pencil sharpener inserted and screwed into the white plastic handle of a broken eating utensil.
31Photographs of the injuries inflicted are contained within Exhibit B. I am satisfied that the injuries are at the upper end for those falling within the category of injury. There is no explanation for your conduct. You were not charged until December 2021.
32It is disturbing indeed that this incident occurred less than a fortnight after your remand on serious charges and the day after being sentenced to gaol for contravening a community corrections order.
33In a psychological report from Alison Mynard dated 2021, it is reported that upon your remand you were experiencing paranoia and methylamphetamine withdrawal. At paragraph 44 Ms Mynard stated:
“When he was remanded at the MRC, Mr Mang admitted that he was very paranoid. He explained that he didn’t sleep for five days and was hallucinating, seeing the walls with artwork all over them, and feeling as though the walls were closing in on him. He saw 'funny faces' on the officers and was hearing voices, believing that the officers were 'playing with him.' He admitted he had been smoking a lot of ice prior.”
I accept on balance that that provides some context to the offending in December 2020.
34Ms Mynard's report was provided in 2021. At that time Ms Mynard opined that you needed counselling to deal with childhood traumas. She also predicted that your risk of recidivism was high if you did not engage in treatment and rehabilitative programs.
Personal Circumstances
35I accept that you were exposed to significant trauma as a child. Fleeing a country torn apart by civil war, as part of the persecuted minority, and spending years in overcrowded refugee camps in Malaysia, must have exposed you to all manner of negative experiences and traumas. These have shaped you, no doubt, and explain to some degree your descent into wayward behaviour as a youth, your progression into gang-related criminal offending and your resort to extreme violence when disinhibited by intoxicants.[3]
[3]Bugmy v The Queen 249 CLR 571
36You have been in custody throughout the pandemic responses, that has led to conditions in custody being extremely restricted and difficult throughout your time in custody.[4]
[4]Worboyes v The Queen [2021] VSCA 169
37I am told that your family is still supportive of you. As I noted, your family are high achievers and hard workers. In previous sentencing remarks there was material before the courts indicating their ongoing support. For me, other than a submission that they are still supportive, there is nothing in particular that would indicate that your family are still of the view that you have much to contribute upon your release. I do accept, however, on balance that you have that support of a productive family when you are released.
Other Sentencing Considerations
38Clearly, the most significant issue from a sentencing point of view in your case is the consideration of delay and totality.
39I accept that your pleas across both indictments are significant pleas in their context. By that I mean you avoided running a trial on each of the matters in circumstances where perhaps a trial could have been run.
40Under your current sentences, your earliest eligible date for parole is 5 June 2024. Your current head sentence will expire in March 2026. That sentence was imposed on 25 June 2021. As I understand it there were only 20 days of pre-sentence detention because you were sentenced previously as I have described.
41You were charged with the first indictment matters before me and the second indictment matters during your time in custody. You have been in custody, as I have stated, since November 2020.
42I am required to consider the total criminality in all of the offences for which you are to be sentenced and the offences for which you are currently serving sentence. I must evaluate the overall criminality involved in all of the offences so as to ensure that there is an appropriate relativity between the totality of the criminality and the totality of the effective length of the sentences to be, and which have been imposed.
43In applying that principle and arriving at the appropriate sentence, I have had regards to the importance of general deterrence and denunciation for these serious offences. I have also had regard to your relative youth. You are still a young man and you have been in custody, as I have noted, for a shockingly substantial portion of your adult years.
44In order to give effect to the principle of totality it has been necessary to moderate individual sentences and the total effective sentence and I have arrived at a non-parole period which gives you something to aim towards, which would, nonetheless, when you are released, leave a significant period of the sentence hanging over your head.
Sentence
45Turning to sentence now.
46On Indictment L12770032.1, Charge 1 aggravated home invasion, you are sentenced to three-and-a-half years' imprisonment.
47Charge 2, recklessly causing serious injury, three years' imprisonment.
48Charge 3, recklessly causing serious injury, three years’ imprisonment.
49Charge 4, theft, six months' imprisonment.
50Six months of the sentences on Charges 2 and 3, so that is six months on each of those sentences imposed, will be cumulative on each other and on the sentence imposed on Charge 1, making a total effective sentence on that indictment of four-and-a-half years' imprisonment.
51On Indictment M12618361, the charge of intentionally causing injury, you are sentenced to be imprisoned for three years and nine months.
52Eighteen months of this sentence is to be served cumulatively on the sentences imposed on the first indictment, which makes a total effective sentence of six years' imprisonment.
53I set a non-parole period of two years and 11 months from today's date.
54Pursuant to s6AAA, were it not for your pleas of guilty you would have received a total effective sentence of seven-and-a-half years with a non-parole period of four-and-a-half years.
55There is a forfeiture order that is sought in respect of a machete, mobile phone, hooded jumper, Adidas pants and black runners and I make that forfeiture order.
56Now, are there any other ‑ ‑ ‑
57MR THOMSON: Your Honour, we were discussing whether this PSD can be attributed to this sentence. My learned friend thinks that it's 211 days, I'm not sure about that figure. I would ask you to reserve on that until we can reach a proper conclusion as to that. I'm not sure there is ‑ ‑ ‑
58HIS HONOUR: Well, I think there is. It's all been counted, hasn't it ‑ ‑ ‑
59MS CHAN: I'm not submitting that there's 200 days PSD.
60HIS HONOUR: Yes. I mean, I thought about that, it's all been declared.
61MR THOMSON: Yes, previously ‑ ‑ ‑
62HIS HONOUR: And he's serving sentence at the moment and I've set a new non-parole period which really, as of yesterday, it would have been pretty much exactly three years. So it's an extra day then but rather than talk about days I've set it as two years and 11 months.
63MR THOMSON: Yes.
64HIS HONOUR: There's emergency management days and that, that he must have oodles of them ‑ ‑ ‑
65MR THOMSON: That will be a matter for Corrections to ‑ ‑ ‑
66HIS HONOUR: And that's a matter for Corrections. So I'm just stating that to make it clear in case you were thinking, oh, we've done a day worse than was quoted on the sentencing indication.
67MR THOMSON: Not at all, Your Honour, no.
68HIS HONOUR: Thank you, Mr Thomson. Thank you very much, we'll adjourn the court.
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