Director of Public Prosecutions v Mann

[2014] VCC 639

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

AT MELBOURNE
CRIMINAL JURISDICTION

CR 13-02160

DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS

v

DANIELLE SUZANNE MANN

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JUDGE:	HIS HONOUR JUDGE SMALLWOOD
WHERE HELD:	Melbourne
DATE OF HEARING:
DATE OF SENTENCE:	2 May 2014
CASE MAY BE CITED AS:	DPP v MANN
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION:	[2014] VCC 639

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

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APPEARANCES:	Counsel	Solicitors
For the Director of Public Prosecutions	Ms D Hogan
For the Accused	Ms O Trumble

HIS HONOUR:

1Danielle Suzanne Mann, you have pleaded guilty to one charge of attempted armed robbery and one charge of theft.  Those crimes carry maximum penalties of 20 years, and then years respectively.

2Firstly, I make an order pursuant to s.464ZF o the Crimes Act that you provide a saliva sample for DNA purposes. That order having been made, I must advise you that should you refuse to provide such a sample, the police may use reasonable force to take it from you. That order is made and handed down.

3Today is your 19 birthday.  You pleaded guilty at the earliest reasonable opportunity and must get the benefit of that.  I accept that your plea is accompanied by remorse and you must also of course get the utilitarian benefit.  You do have a significant number of prior findings of guilt, however they are all from the Children's Court.

4The circumstances leading up to this offending which I will describe shortly are that you had an extremely troubled childhood.  Your parents separated when you were about three years of age, and you stayed with your mother until you were about the.  Your mother has and has had serious psychiatric difficulties herself.  When you were ten, she went into involuntary care, and I understand it, for approximately two years.  You were then placed with your father who was a violent alcoholic.

5There had been Department of Human Services involvement since you were around about two or three years of age.  You were put in various placements, foster care and the like.  None of those placements would appear to have been successful.  Ultimately, at around about the age of 15 or so, you were placed into housing which involved other young people.  It was at that point in time that you commenced offending.

6It is comforting that there was no criminal offending up until about that age, despite the very severe difficulties of your background.  I point out at this stage that I am directing that all the material that was provided on your behalf, so far as your background and your psychological state is concerned is to be retained on the court file, so that anybody with a genuine interest in it may seek to look at it.

7In those circumstances, I do not see any need to go into massive detail about your background.  You know more about it than any of us do, and it is indeed a sad one.  You have had difficulties over the years with youth justice orders, with compliance and with dealing with various people to whom you had become answerable.

8Ultimately, you were sentenced to nine months Yes, that's correct. In September 2012.  You were released from custody in December 2012 on parole.  You had a number of people assisting you, and were still subject to Department of Human Services, and obviously the matters that could be provided by the Parole Board.  You were on Youth Parole until 7 June 2013 when your supports ceased.  In May 2013 when you turned 18, the Child Protection Services also ceased.

9In July 2013, after all these supports had been withdrawn from you, you made a suicide attempt ad were then held as an involuntary patient, but then quickly discharged.  The nature of that detention was explained to me.  It would appear that you were kept in circumstances where your detention involved you being strapped to a bed, on and off over a period of some five days.  Attempts were made by people to see you, and ultimately you were released back into the community.

10It is around about that time that you met up with a Mr Foster who you had apparently known earlier from a residential placement.  You had used drugs to excess in your earlier life, and at this point in time, you commenced using them again, in particular Ice.  The relationship between you and Foster was a patently poisonous one, and in the end resulted in this offending.

11On 20 August 2013, you and Mr Foster attended a service station on Hallam Road in Hallam.  I point out that I have already sentenced Mr Foster for a number of armed robberies and the like, and it would seem pretty clear to me that parity is simply not an issue in this matter.

12Mr Foster drove to the store with you in the passenger sat.  You parked at the rear of the store and walked to the front.  Each of you had t-shirts wrapped around your heads.  You were carrying a large knife that you had earlier stolen from Woolworths.  The male attended at the store observed the two of you approaching, locked the front doors to stop you from entering, and Mr Foster used his hand to attempt to force open the door, but was unsuccessful.  The duress alarm was activated and the two of you left.  The presence of the knife as I understand it was detected by CCTV.  That gives rise to the attempted armed robbery, and the knife from Woolworths is the theft.

13The offending has to be regarded as serious in itself.  This sort of offending causes great difficulties for people.  Sometimes people can be off work for very long periods of time and suffer long term psychological effects, if they are on the receiving end of this sort of conduct, and indeed victims of Mr Foster from earlier armed robberies expressed exactly that.  In the normal course of events this calls for application general and specific deterrence as well as denunciation and appropriate punishment.

14You were released on bail, and since that time have done in my view extremely well.  I heard sworn evidence from Ms (indistinct) from the Brosnan Centre.  He said that you from December last year have been significantly different.  You have been able to resist the use of drugs, and she pointed out that the difference between you now, and you a year ago, is dramatic.  There was a period of time in around February of this year where you spent three weeks or so as an involuntary patient in Dandenong Psychiatric Unit.

15What has come out of that is this.  You are now, as I understand it, for the first time in your life medication compliant which is a very, very good thing.  You are on a community treatment order which can be extended in February of next year for a year if necessary.

16You had last year gone and re-enrolled in school.  That became impossible because of the psychiatric admission, but you have in recent times enrolled in VCAL, the equivalent of Year 10 as I understand it, and as the Berwick TAFE.  Those time last year, leading up to the offending, you were a paranoid, very troubled, very down young lady.  You are now one with supports, you attend the gym, and you are endeavouring to make the most of your existence.  The report from the Brosnan Centre is very encouraging, and I also take into account obviously the surrounding circumstances.

17In January 2012, you were the victim of an attempted murder.  A man some eight years your senior, who had commenced that relationship when you were about 16 it would seem, tried to kill you by running over you.  I have now had the opportunity of reading the Crown opening in the plea that is taking place in the Supreme Court and as described your counsel is chilling. Indeed, how much that was said to undercover police was simply bravado, I do not know, but I tend to think it was probably true.

18You have survived a situation where a lot of people would have died.  You suffered multiple serious injuries.  The most significant for my purpose is being a brain haemorrhage, a cerebral edema and traumatic brain injury.  On my reading of it, you had something in the order of 31 days, post traumatic amnesia which is a very long time indeed.

19Because of your earlier problems with the law, previously you had neurological assessment since.  You have gone from - because of this accident, there is much more detail contained within the file which I will leave there, from a person with an overall IQ of 102 to a borderline IQ of 74.  It is quite obvious that you have had difficulty and suffered a lot of frustration in adjusting to that.  It would appear from what I can read here that you are an intelligent young woman who has just simply had a very significant number of behavioural problems to deal with.  You are certainly capable of learning, and I think at the present period of time, you are very desirous and determined to do so.

20That being the situation, I think that the prospects of your rehabilitation are dependent upon you maintaining that positive attitude, and being under the auspices of the Brosnan Centre.  The risk of you re-offending is dependent upon that rehabilitation.  I think only the sensible option open here was to have you assessed for a community corrections order, and everybody is in agreement about that.

21I have now had you assessed and you are deemed to be with reservation apparently acceptable.  In your particular situation, where you have had trouble dealing with people in "authority" previously, I see no reason to disturb the present regime in which you operate voluntarily.

22Accordingly, I do not propose to put into the community corrections order which I am determined to make, if you agree, that you have the drug counselling and treatment or the mental health treatment.  Each of those is being attended to on a very personal level by people who clearly care about you on a personal level.  That is by far better for you than to become a number within the criminal justice system.

23That being so, I think the appropriate form of the community corrections order is that it simply be with supervision. As I learnt about an hour ago, that makes you subject to s.3 under the Firearms Act, so do not go around with a sawn-off shotgun, because you are a prohibited person so I now find out. That will give you the assistance if you need it, and they will keep an eye on you.

24I will also include within it, a requirement for judicial monitoring.  We will start that with coming back on one day on 2 September this year at 9.30 a.m.  If everything is going to plan at that point in time, I may or may not fix another date in the future.  I have been told by people who have had extensive history who are on judicial monitoring, that gives them short term dates to aim at, and to observe second challenges for themselves.  So I am very confident that your life can be very much turned around, if you stay away from the drugs that had previously been your bugbear. 

25So taking all those matters into account, and obviously taking into account materials that had been provided and the very, very helpful, if I have not already said so, submissions made by counsel on your behalf, on each of the charges you are sentenced to be placed upon a community corrections order, with conviction, which is a punishment in itself, and indeed is your first adult conviction as I understand it.  That will be for two years duration, and will include supervision and the judicial monitoring that I have mentioned.

26What you need to understand is that if there is mess ups with the community corrections order, you can be brought back before me and I can either amend it, I can cancel it, I can do various things, but as you well know, you are 19 years of age now and things that might have got you a youth justice order when you were 16, can get you in gaol now.  So you are doing really well and I think you will continue to do well, we will see how we go.  All right, now there is no orders I need to make are there, which you need to understand?

27MS HOGAN:  No Your Honour.

28MS TRUMBLE:  No other orders.

29HIS HONOUR:  All right, that order is made.  Can I just talk to you for a second Danielle.  What I have done is you are on a community corrections order okay and I have been through this, and I am not going to embarrass you by going through all that again, you do not need it, but can I just ask you to do this, I do not want to see you back all right, but if you have difficulties, and if you have difficulties with people, and that can happen as you well know when you are dealing with organisation, but whatever you do, all right get in touch with Sarah, like do not throw one okay.

30OFFENDER:  Yeah.

31HIS HONOUR:  Yes, all right.  This what happens in Koori Court we have this yarn all right.  So do not throw one, get in touch with her because I am trying to have it with as less restrictions on you as possible.

32OFFENDER:  Yeah.

33HIS HONOUR:  But you know if you throw one on someone, well I have got to do more about it, and I do not want to do that and you do not want me to do that, and Olivia does not want you to do that either all right?

34OFFENDER:  No.

35HIS HONOUR:  Okay.

36OFFENDER:  All right, thank you.

37HIS HONOUR:  So look after yourself, have a Happy Birthday as much as you can and hopefully we will see you on the 2, and it will all be going real well.

38OFFENDER:  Yeah.

39HIS HONOUR:  Okay.

40OFFENDER:  All right.

41HIS HONOUR:  Thank you for that.

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