Director of Public Prosecutions v Priest, Bradley
[2013] VCC 717
•9 May 2013
| IN THE COUNTY COURT OF VICTORIA | Revised (Not) Restricted Suitable for Publication |
AT LATROBE VALLEY
CRIMINAL DIVISION
| DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS |
| v |
| BRADLEY PRIEST |
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JUDGE: | HIS HONOUR JUDGE SMALLWOOD | |
WHERE HELD: | Latrobe Valley | |
DATE OF HEARING: | 9 May 2013 | |
DATE OF SENTENCE: | 9 May 2013 | |
CASE MAY BE CITED AS: | DPP v Priest, Bradley | |
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION: | [2013] VCC 717 | |
REASONS FOR SENTENCE
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Catchwords:
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APPEARANCES: | Counsel | Solicitors |
| For the Crown | Mr K. Doyle | Office for Director of Public Prosecutions |
| For the Accused | Mr D. Dann |
HIS HONOUR:
1 Bradley Priest, you have pleaded guilty to one count of aggravated burglary, one count of causing injury recklessly and one count of criminal damage. Those crimes carry maximum penalties of 25 years, 5 years and 10 years respectively. You pleaded guilty at an early opportunity and must get the benefit of that. Very little evidence of remorse but I accept that you made admissions to police and accordingly I will give you the benefit of the doubt in so far as that is concerned.
2 You must, of course, get the utilitarian benefit of that plea of guilty of saving the community the cost and time of a trial.
3 You do have prior convictions though for someone with such a longstanding alcohol problem there is not a lot for violence. However, there is threat to inflict serious injury. There are unlawful assaults and it says threat to kill and a reckless injury. Whilst those are not matters of real gravity they do cause concern. Most of your priors are for what would appear to be driving offences.
4 Firstly, pursuant to s.464 of the Crimes Act I make an order that you provide a saliva sample for DNA testing. That order having been made I must advise you that should you refuse to comply with the request for same police may use reasonable force to take it from you.
5 The circumstances of the offending are contained in commendably brief Crown opening. The victim was a Mr Keith Semple. He, from what I can gather, lived next door to you in the caravan park in Morwell. On the evening of 6 October 2012 he ended up at a unit in Morwell with one, Mr Ormrod and one, Patricia Wood.
6 I am told from the Bar table and accept there is some confusion about what occurred prior to you arriving at that address in Tarwon Street. It is clear from the material that you and Mr Semple had been drinking home brewed Vodka and each of you would appear to have been very significantly intoxicated. During the course of that drinking session it appears that you were taking offence at various things that Mr Semple may have been saying to you and potentially, at least, vice versa.
7 In any event you got it into your head that Mr Semple needed a hiding. Soon after midnight on that day there was a knock on the door in Tarwon Street. Mr Ormrod went to open it and there you were with a pick handle. You walked in saying, "I'm going to get you, Keith." Mr Hume, your co-accused, had driven you there. I will be dealing with him later. Ms Wood, who was there, got up from the living room area and went to ring the police.
8 Attempts were made to calm the situation down to no avail. You began hitting Mr Semple with the pick handle and on his version struck him three to four times in the ribs, head and left forearm. I have seen the photographs of the injuries that were sustained by Mr Semple and I say that they are at the lower end, particularly when one considers that he is supposed to have been hit so frequently with a pick handle.
9 Nevertheless, I suspect that the lack of injury or lack of serious injury is brought about more by good luck than good management. You just may not have been sober enough to deal with him as effectively as you probably wanted to.
10 In any event, Mr Ormrod, left the house and saw Mr Hume outside. You followed Mr Ormrod and you and Hume chased him up the street. You are not charged with that. When police attended at the scene Ormrod and Semple were both apparently too intoxicated to be even spoken to in any significant manner. About 15 minutes after the police left. You reattended. You were still armed with the pick handle, knocked on the door and Mr Ormrod opened it. This time the safety screen was locked and Mr Ormrod refused you entry. The police were called again. You then used the handle to break the windows of the house and damaged the security screen.
11 You then both went away in the car being driven by Mr Hume. It is of concern that having gone through this exercise once you must have stewed over it sufficiently to want to go back again.
12 The situation is that whilst I can safely say it is not the worst case of aggravated burglary I have ever seen it is a situation where I can understand how it came about and I can understand the milieu in which it took place.
13 In endeavouring to apply general deterrence in social situations, such as this, in my view is fantasy but the fact of the matter remains that aggravated burglary, where a weapon is taken and there are people present and an assault is not only countenanced but carried out has to be treated as serious. It calls for the application of general and specific deterrence in a fashion as well as denunciation and obviously an appropriate punishment.
14 The situation, is I think, that a custodial sentence is inevitable and it must be a custodial sentence which reflects the seriousness of aggravated burglary. In a clear plea your counsel explained your history to me. You are 28 years of age. You live in Morwell. Your parents separated when you were two and you were brought up by your mother. You went to school in a local area and went to a special learning facility at such some stage during your secondary schooling. You had been diagnosed quite early as having ADHD. You found school very difficult.
15 In Year 9 you were apparently were at Yarram for a period of time. After leaving school you went to Cann River. You worked there at the pub there for a couple of years but unfortunately that would appear to be where you were introduced to alcohol. From that time on and this is confirmed by your criminal history you would appear to have been a heavy drinker.
16 At the age of around about 18 you went to Bairnsdale to be with a brother. As I understand it you were working at a sawmill and also at Paddy's Pies. Unfortunately, your brother was involved in an incident whereby he was charged with culpable driving and ended up receiving seven with a four. After that you returned to Morwell.
17 Of more recent times you are a carer for your mother who has emphysema. It is not suggested that that gives rise to exceptional circumstances but it is a matter that I take into account in that it will weigh heavily upon you as you undergo this sentence. You had previously been in a relationship with one, Natasha Swallow. There is a four year old child of that relationship.
18 At around about the time of this offending or shortly before you had been having access problems and I can understand that that may have contributed to the state of mind that you were in.
19 It is obvious that you have had over the years a fairly significant anger problem in the face of what you perceive as slights against you.
20 Tendered on your behalf was a report from Mr David Bruce which effectively confirms that. There is nothing in his report which brings into play any of the principles involved in Verdins or any of those sorts of decisions.
21 You, in more recent times, as I have said have been a carer for your mother and also for a gentleman, I am told, who has subsequently passed away. It would seem that if you do not drink you are pretty unlikely to offend.
22 The prospects of your rehabilitation obviously depend upon whether you drink or not and perhaps in terms of getting anger management counselling again. You have had it once but it is the sort of thing that, I think, Mr Bruce confirms and needs to be gone into more often. The risk of you re-offending is almost totally dependent upon your rehabilitation and at 28 that is far from extinguished.
23 There has been a lot of discussion in recent times about the penalties for aggravated burglary and I have some concerns about the discussion that have taken place. However, the fact of the matter remains that whatever your state of mind, whatever circumstances that might have come from, whatever you had been drinking, you simply cannot take a pick handle into someone else's house and start flogging people. It is simply not on.
24 Taking all those matters into account there is no PSD is there?
25 MR DOYLE: No.
26 HIS HONOUR: Taking all those matters into account you are sentenced as follows. On Charge 1, of aggravated burglary, 18 months. On Charge 2, three months and on Charge 3, two months. I direct that one month of the sentence imposed upon Charge 2 and one month of the sentence imposed on Charge 3 be served cumulatively upon each other and upon the sentence imposed upon Count 1. That gives an effective head sentence of 20 months.
27 Because of the matters that have been put to me by your counsel and because I think this is a situation that if you can address your alcohol you can address your offending. I have determined that a slightly lower minimum term than might otherwise be the case should be imposed and accordingly I direct that you serve nine months before becoming eligible for parole.
28 Just so you understand the benefit of your having pleaded guilty but for your plea of guilty you would have been sentenced to be imprisoned for a period of two and a half years with a minimum term of 15 months.
29 MR DANN: If Your Honour pleases.
30 MR DOYLE: If Your Honour pleases.
31 HIS HONOUR: We will just adjourn.
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