Director of Public Prosecutions v Milner

[2025] VCC 1157

IN THE COUNTY COURT OF VICTORIA

AT SHEPPARTON

CRIMINAL DIVISION

Revised
Not Restricted
 Suitable for Publication

Case No. 25-01056

DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS

v

LEIGH MILNER

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JUDGE:	HER HONOUR JUDGE WILMOTH
WHERE HELD:	Shepparton
DATE OF HEARING:	5 August 2025
DATE OF SENTENCE:	14 August 2025
CASE MAY BE CITED AS:	DPP v Milner
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION:	[2025] VCC 1157

REASONS FOR SENTENCE
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Subject: Criminal law - sentence   

Catchwords:          pleas of guilty to one charge of dangerous driving causing serious injury and one charge of failing to render assistance -          

Cases Cited:Spagnol v R [2016] VSCA 317

Sentence:                 3 years non parole period 2 years.         

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APPEARANCES:	Counsel	Solicitors
For the DPP	Mr A. Grant	Office of Public Prosecutions
For the Accused	Mr P. Skehan	Camerons Lawyers

HER HONOUR:

1Leigh Milner, you have pleaded guilty to one charge of dangerous driving causing serious injury and one charge of failing to render assistance after a motor vehicle accident.

2The maximum penalties for these offences are five years and 10 years' imprisonment respectively.

The offending

3The offending occurred on 22 January 2025. That day you had been in Melbourne for the day, with Sherrie Trott, also known as Sherrie Walley, with whom you were in a relationship at the time. You had been in that relationship for about six months.

4She had been doing the driving, but after leaving Melbourne she became tired, and you took over the driving.

5Whilst driving past the Kilmore East train station you began to feel tired but continued to drive as you thought you could make it to your home in Kilmore.

6At the time you were unlicensed, your driving licence having been cancelled on 9 June 2023 at Seymour Magistrates' Court, for driving offences.

7You were driving west bound on Kilmore East Road in a silver 2004 Mitsubishi Station Wagon, registered 1BG 4B1. Ms Trott was the front seat passenger.

8Kilmore East Road is a three-lane undivided road, with one lane in the east bound lane and two lanes in the west bound lane. The road has a posted speed limit of 80 kilometres per hour. The lanes are separated by double solid white lines. There is a limited bitumen shoulder leading to a grass verge on each side. Semi-rural residential properties line the road on the north side with sparse scrub and trees between the road and wire fencing of the properties.

9The road was dry and the road surface in good condition with no visible defects. The sun was setting.

10While travelling past the intersection with Wallders Road, you crossed the double white lines into the opposite lane, then drove off the road onto the grassed edge and down a slight embankment. The front of the car hit a tree, rotated, and then the passenger side heavily impacted a second larger tree. This gives rise to the charge of dangerous driving causing serious injury.

11You were able to get yourself out of the car but Ms Trott was unable to do so. You ran off in a north-westerly direction, leaving her trapped in the car with serious injuries. This is the charge of failing to render assistance after an accident.

12Shortly afterwards you were seen by Ethan Biancon crouching down behind a trailer at the rear of his property. Mr Biancon approached you and used his mobile phone to record you. When Biancon asked you why you were on his property, you told him that you had been bashed and you were trying to get away. You then ran and Mr Biancon chased you across the road to an adjacent sports field. A neighbour called Triple 0.

13A motorist passing the scene of the collision, Phillip O'Dwyer, saw steam rising from the engine of your car and observed that the driver's side door was open. He performed a U-turn and returned to the site. He approached the car and saw Ms Trott in the passenger seat.  She was conscious. Mr O'Dwyer saw some injuries, in particular an injury to the left side of her head. While he was calling Triple 0 the car's engine bay was smoking and caught fire.

14Police arrived and attempted to remove Ms Trott from the car, by forcing open the passenger door. Another officer used a fire extinguisher to put out the fire at the front of the car, before breaking the front passenger side window.

15Other services including an ambulance arrived, and Ms Trott was freed from the car and taken to hospital with life-threatening injuries.

16Her injuries were later recorded as including a Grade 5 splenic laceration, a Grade 4 liver laceration, a blood clot in a major blood vessel, an aortic injury, multiple rib fractures, a partially collapsed lung and a fractured left fibula. She underwent surgery and had her spleen removed.

17On the night of the collision you were sent from Seymour Hospital to the Royal Melbourne Hospital, where you told staff that you had been involved in a motorbike accident. Police attended the hospital and arrested you. You were cautioned and your rights explained to you, and you remained in hospital under police guard.

18On 24 January you took part in a record of interview, during which you made admissions as to having become tired while driving, and that after the collision you panicked and ran away to your parents' house, and that you knew you were unlicenced to drive.

Seriousness of the offending

19The collision resulted from you driving while feeling tired, and unable to pay proper attention. It is apparent that you fell asleep, resulting in your car leaving the road and colliding with a tree. This in turn was the cause of Ms Trott's injuries.

20These were serious and life-threatening injuries, as I have already specified. You then extricated yourself from the car and made no attempt to help Ms Trott. The fire in the car was able to be quickly extinguished owing to the quick actions of Mr O'Dwyer and the police.

21When the collision scene and the car were inspected by investigators, they observed that the passenger side front seat belt was in a retracted position consistent with it not being worn at the time of the collision.

22Mr Skehan on your behalf submitted that I can take this into account in attributing to Ms Trott some degree of contribution to the extent of her injuries. She has not provided a Victim Impact Statement, and so beyond the fact that the injuries were very serious there is no evidence of the impact upon her since her recovery, nor as to any long-term effects.

23In Spagnol v R[1] it was submitted to the sentencing judge that the victim's failure to wear a seatbelt was a contributing cause to her injuries. The Court of Appeal held that in the absence of any evidence to establish that her injuries were worse as a consequence than they would have been had she been wearing a seatbelt, it was not a causative factor. Even if it had been, the applicant in that case was also responsible for it, since he was under a legal obligation to ensure that his passenger's seatbelt was done up. Therefore, little if any weight should be given to the failure to wear a seatbelt. That analysis applies in this case in the same way.

[1] [2016] VSCA 317

24Your actions in leaving the scene and thereby abandoning Ms Trott were cowardly and selfish, as you did so in a state of panic because you knew you were unlicenced. Thereafter you told lies to Mr Biancon and the hospital staff, in an apparent attempt to avoid the consequences.

25Even in the absence of aggravating factors which are commonly present in relation to these charges in other cases, such as speed or the presence of alcohol or drugs, your failure to assist Ms Trott adds significantly to the seriousness of your offending, elevating it to the mid-range of seriousness. I have had regard to those authorities which determine that failing to render assistance should be regarded as warranting a more severe sentence than has sometimes been imposed in the past.

26You are a 30-year-old man with a fairly extensive criminal record, beginning when you were 19, with drug and dishonesty offences. Your poor driving history began at around the same time, indicating little regard for court orders.  You have been convicted of driving in a manner dangerous four times. In July 2023 you were convicted of two such offences, together with other offending including four charges of driving whilst authorisation suspended. This appears to be part of a consolidation of charges at that time, and you were sentenced to four months' imprisonment with a Community Correction Order.

27Your licence had been suspended in June 2023 and that order was still current at the time of the present offences. You were also subject to a Community Correction Order imposed by the Magistrates' Court on that date.

28Those matters increase your moral culpability and add to the gravity of the offending. Otherwise, your criminal history is relevant to an assessment of your prospects for rehabilitation, and I will return to that later.

Matters in mitigation

29After an initial committal mention you applied for a summary hearing of these charges, but on 11 June that was refused. On that date you indicated a guilty plea, and the case came to this court as a plea. In these circumstances your plea is accepted as an early one, indicating some remorse and resulting in your entitlement to a discount on your sentence. Your plea has avoided the need for a trial, and importantly, has spared Ms Trott and other witnesses from having to give evidence. This, and the saving of time and expense for the criminal justice system, are taken into account in determining that discount.

30You are a single man, who had been living with your mother before the offences. You have a three-year-old daughter from a previous relationship, but there is an intervention order in place preventing you from seeing her.

31You were assessed by the psychologist, Mr Jeffrey Cummins, by video-link to Ravenhall Prison, on 7 July 2025. Mr Cummins outlined your personal background. Your parents separated when you were a boy, and you were raised by your mother. After some difficulties apparently linked to your drug use, you have reconciled with your father and brother who now support you.

32At school you struggled and were suspended many times, until leaving school with a Year 8 pass. You apparently suffered from dyslexia and reading and writing still remain difficult for you.

33You worked as a labourer and concreter, but maintained regular illicit drug use over the years, partly through connections with your fellow workers. You have been promised work with your previous employer when released, but you intend to try and distance yourself from the company of other drug users.

34You used cannabis and methamphetamine for most of the time since your early teenage years, and abused alcohol as well.

35You told Mr Cummins that you knew you should not have been driving at all, especially when feeling tired, and you expressed what Mr Cummins thought was genuine remorse, and displayed empathy with Ms Trott as to her injuries. In your record of interview you became visibly upset when asked about your relationship with her, and you asked the police officer if she was okay.

36In that interview you made admissions as to your driving, stating that you should not have been driving, and you volunteered having misled Mr Biancon by telling him you had been bashed.

37Mr Cummins concluded in his report that your history indicated that you are at risk of being diagnosed with an Antisocial Personality Disorder, although you did not speak in an antisocial or anti-authoritarian manner. His opinion was that you will need assistance, most likely residential treatment, to overcome your drug dependency, and that the strategies you have been considering, such as relocating to Echuca and relying on work, are superficial and inadequate to address the longstanding dependency.

38About two years ago you served that four month sentence that I referred to earlier, but upon your release you had no drug treatment. Perhaps you were relying on the fact that you had avoided drug use for two years while in a previous relationship, although you eventually relapsed. You said in your record of interview that you had not used drugs for three days before the collision, and this may be an indication of some insight on your part into the potentially catastrophic results of drug use. That was not an aggravating factor in this offending, nor were there others, save for your awareness that you had become tired while driving, and that you should not have continued driving.

39I can only conclude from these matters that your prospects for rehabilitation are poor, and subject to intensive drug treatment. Mr Skehan submitted that at the age of 30 you may have reached some increased maturity, but beyond the possibility of developing insight there is little to support that.

Sentencing

40I was referred to several sentences with some similarity with this case, but none on point. There is authority to the effect that failing to render assistance after a motor vehicle accident is the more serious offence and warrants a sentence which reflects this by means of appropriate cumulation.

41General deterrence is very obviously an important sentencing principle in a case such as this, indeed it is of primary importance. It follows that denunciation and protection of the community are also of high importance. Specific deterrence is the recognition of the need for appropriate punishment, which takes into account your culpability, as well as your personal circumstances and any prospects for rehabilitation. The charges do not attract the standard sentencing scheme of the Sentencing Act, nor are they offences which otherwise attract mandatory prison sentences. But the seriousness of each charge calls for a head sentence with a non-parole period, as submitted by the prosecution and not resisted by Mr Skehan on your behalf.

42Mr Milner, for dangerous driving causing serious injury I sentence you to 12 months' imprisonment, and for failing to render assistance, two years and six months. That is the base sentence, and I order that six months of the first sentence is to be served in cumulation upon it. That results in a total effective sentence of three years.

43I order that you serve two years before being eligible for parole.

44You have been in custody for 203 days, not including today. I declare that time is to be reckoned as already served., and I shall note it on the court record.

45Any licence or permit to drive is cancelled and you are disqualified for obtaining a further licence or permit for 18 months, in respect of Charge 1. In relation to Charge 2, the cancellation period is four years. Both are mandatory minimum periods, and both commence today.

46If you had pleaded not guilty to these charges, I would have sentenced you to five years' imprisonment with a non-parole period of three years.

47Are there any other matters, Mr Grant?

48MR GRANT:  No, thank you, Your Honour

49HER HONOUR:  Mr Skehan, anything further?

50MR SKEHAN:  No, no Your Honour, thank you for that.

51HER HONOUR:  Thank you.

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