Director of Public Prosecutions v Robinson
[2010] VSC 165
•8 April 2010
| IN THE SUPREME COURT OF VICTORIA | Not Restricted | |
AT MELBOURNE
CRIMINAL DIVISION
No. 1483 of 2009
| DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS |
| v |
| DOUGLAS FREDERICK ROBINSON |
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JUDGE: | Coghlan J | |
WHERE HELD: | Melbourne | |
DATE OF HEARING: | 17-25 February 2010 | |
DATE OF SENTENCE: | 8 April 2010 | |
CASE MAY BE CITED AS: | DPP v Robinson | |
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION: | [2010] VSC 165 | |
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CRIMINAL LAW – Sentence – Assist offender – Accessory after the fact – Cultivate narcotic plant – Co-offenders undertaking to give evidence – Applicability of parity principle in sentencing – Circumstances of offending – Criminal history – Medical history – Sentenced to 4 years 6 months NPP 2 years 6 months.
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APPEARANCES: | Counsel | Solicitors |
| For the Crown | Mr P. Rose SC with Ms D. Piekusis | Office of Public Prosecutions |
| For the Accused | Mr M. Rochford with Ms E. Ramsay | Andrew George Solicitors |
HIS HONOUR:
Douglas Frederick Robinson, on 25 February 2010 you were convicted by a jury of twelve of assisting an offender in relation to the crime of murder. You were convicted of that offence as an alternative to being found guilty of the murder of Michael Grech. You were also acquitted of a count of theft.
Through your counsel, Mr Rochford, who appeared with Ms Ramsey on your behalf at the trial, you had accepted that you must, on the evidence, be convicted of the offence of assisting an offender. That was so because your defence to murder was that the deceased had been murdered in your presence by Corrado Motta, assisted by David John Campbell. It was put as part of your case that you had assisted Mr Motta in the disposal of the deceased’s body and you were further involved in the general cover-up of the murder.
At the commencement of your trial you pleaded guilty to Count 2 on the presentment, which charged you with cultivation of a narcotic plant, namely cannabis.
Although the cultivation is a discrete offence, as will be seen from the summary of facts which I will set out, that although the enterprise itself was in one sense significant, the results were minimal. Your conviction for that offence will not lead to any increase in penalty.
You are now 63 years of age. You have a long, but seemingly unsuccessful criminal history spanning from 1967 until 1996. You were first sent to prison in 1968. Your crimes were largely for dishonesty up until 1987, after which you have six convictions for armed robbery, for which you received significant sentences. In 1996 you were also convicted of assault in company, assault with a weapon and some firearm offences, including those relating to being a prohibited person in possession of a firearm. Having regard to the sentence that was imposed on that occasion, it appears that must not have been particularly serious conduct of its kind.
You have, however, achieved some success since your last release from prison in December 2004 by becoming a published author of true crime stories. The financial rewards, however, have been modest.
After your latest release you also seemed intent upon making money from a system which you devised for the playing of roulette. Like all such systems it was ultimately unsuccessful.
As a result of your general parlous financial state by the middle of 2007 you decided to grow a cannabis crop with Carrado (Corey) Motta and Dave Campbell. That enterprise involved seeking some help from one James Pastou.
You had known both Motta and Campbell in prison, but separately. As part of your general financial arrangements, you had borrowed significant funds from the deceased, Michael Grech, at very high rates of interest, something like 50 per cent or more, per annum.
The security for those loans was your share in your father’s estate. It was claimed on your behalf that those loans had been repaid. Although I am quite sceptical as to whether or not that occurred, whether it did or not has little effect upon the sentence I am to impose.
In any event, by September 2007 the decision was made to grow a hydroponic cannabis crop. A property was leased at 488 Coburns Road, Melton, in November of that year. You were to be the financier and Motta and Campbell were to be more directly involved in the growing of the crop. Some rudimentary steps were taken to establish the cannabis crop in the house at 488 Coburns Road, as I have already said, it was to be a hydroponic set-up which necessarily involved certain equipment.
On Monday 19 November 2007, you and Motta took Michael Grech out to Coburns Road, where Campbell was staying, preparing for the crop to be grown. The reasons for doing so have never really emerged, but probably related to either Grech taking over financing the crop from you, or otherwise becoming financially involved in the enterprise.
Almost immediately on arrival, Michael Grech was murdered by being beaten to death with a hammer. It is not possible to say how or at whose hand he met his death. The jury were not satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that you alone were the murderer. The Crown had accepted pleas from Campbell and Motta for the crime of assisting the offender and were therefore precluded from conducting a case against you on any basis other than you committed the crime alone.
In their case, you were the offender. In your case, either of both of them are the offenders. Nobody has been convicted of a murder which must have been committed by one or more of you.
Just what happened at Coburns Road, as I have already observed, is not known, and perhaps it never will be.
I am satisfied that Campbell and Motta have not yet told the whole truth, however you were involved in the following matters. The disposal of the body of Michael Grech, the cleaning up of the scene, including the removal of the carpets and paving stones from the house and misleading the Grech family as to the whereabouts of Michael Grech, although you did at an early stage tell Mr Zammit that he should go to the police.
All of those actions occurred in circumstances where you knew Mr Grech was dead. You knew that his body was buried, where it was buried and you said nothing about it. Although you were involved in the sale of two gold chains, one of which certainly belonged to Michael Grech, you were acquitted of the theft of those chains and the question of what happened with them will play no part in this sentence.
Background
You were arrested in April 2008. I have dealt with your criminal past. Your background was described succinctly and simply on the plea. You were born in Morwell on 9 October 1946. You have two older sisters and an older brother. You went to Morwell Technical School until Year 10 and worked for two years as a boiler maker's apprentice.
You married in 1971 when you were 25 and later moved to Melbourne where you ran a domestic cleaning service. You divorced a few years later and you have one child, a daughter, and two granddaughters living in Sydney. It is worth noting that between 1973 and 1983, you were apparently not in trouble with the authorities and certainly not in trouble in Victoria.
You were generally employed as a sales representative and you were a professional cricketer and cricket coach for which you obtained appropriate qualifications. When in prison in 2002, you joined an organisation called the Prison Fellowship, through which you have been close to Mr Neil Scott who was a witness in the trial.
The evidence in the trial given by him related to various conversations he had with you whilst you were on remand. He was a friend of both you and the deceased and suspected that you had played a significant part in Mr Grech’s death, that being his motivation for taking part in those conversations. He also had or was to have some peripheral involvement in the business of growing the cannabis crop.
Your books were a path to rehabilitation, but as I have already observed they were not all that financially successful. Between March 2006 and March 2008, you withdrew $68,210 from your father’s pensioner security account. You were authorised to deal with that account, but the fact of the matter is that those withdrawals exhausted such funds as were in the account and demonstrated how parlous your financial position had become.
You knew Motta quite well in gaol and continued contact with him after release. You took up contact with Campbell again having known him in the past. Your connection with Mr Grech had arisen when he was in prison having had troubles of his own.
The cannabis crop in general terms was a failure. After the murder, the Coburns Road premises were of limited use, although some time, effort and equipment was yet put into the development of the cannabis crop.
In the early part of 2008, you were diagnosed with a malignant tumour at the back of your eye and you attempted suicide. In a note you left, you expressed regret for the fate of Mr Grech. The most that can be said about the cannabis crop is that some plants were grown. They did not reach maturity, none were harvested, and no funds were obtained, let alone any profit being made.
I have received victim impact material from the deceased’s nephew, Jeffrey Zammit, his daughter Beverley and his son-in-law Simon. Mr Grech, who had trouble in his own life, will undoubtedly be missed by those close to him and the victim impact statements were prepared on the basis of the crime of murder.
The grief of the family, however, was increased by the fact that the fate of Mr Grech was unknown between November 2007 and April 2008, although you knew well what had happened to him and they suspected he had come to an unfortunate end.
Motta and Campbell were dealt with in this Court for the offences to which they pleaded guilty. Motta was sentenced to three years nine months on the count of assisting the offender and six months on the count of cultivation. Two months of the second sentence was ordered to be served cumulatively. That is a total effective sentence of three years eleven months with a non-parole period of two years eleven months.
Campbell was sentenced to be imprisoned for two years six months for assisting the offender, six months for cultivation of cannabis, three months for handling stolen goods and nine months for possession of an unregistered firearm. His total effective sentence after orders for cumulation was two years nine months with a non-parole period of one year and nine months.
Motta has a large number of prior convictions for dishonesty offences and Campbell, significantly, has a prior conviction for murder. Both Motta and Campbell pleaded guilty and agreed to give evidence against you which they did. They received substantial discounts in sentence for doing so. That is in accordance with the appropriate legal principles relating to sentencing. It follows that the principles of parity are of little application in this case.
There are factors which differentiate you from both of them with regard to sentencing. You are older, but your criminal history is really more serious, particularly as a serious armed robber who received a number of substantial sentences. On the other hand, you have shown a capacity for rehabilitation through your writing and I accept that.
Your medical situation is complicated. You have blockages in both carotid arteries, one of 50 per cent and the other of 80 percent. Surgical intervention will be inevitable. You felt that you had resultant problems because of those matters during the trial and my own observation of you throughout that time was that you did not appear to be well. You have had other serious medical conditions, including a tumour behind the eye to which I have referred. I am satisfied that because of your medical conditions in particular, your sentence will be more onerous than it would otherwise have been and I have taken that into account in the sentences which I frame.
The role you played in concealing the body and keeping it concealed was an important one. You chose to act by your own code and remained silent about the role played by others. You exercised your right not to talk to the police, but that meant that the case would and did proceed without any critical analysis of the position of Motta and Campbell. To that extent, you have contributed to your own difficult position. I was urged to treat you in a way similar to Campbell.
On the way the cases are put, your involvement was more serious then that of Campbell, and the special discounting features that he received do not apply in your case. It was important, however, that you allowed the trial to be conducted on the basis that it was inevitable you would be convicted of assisting the offender. In truth, the role that you played is to be more closely allied with that of Motta. On the question of prior convictions, your prior convictions bear more similarity to those of Motta than those of Campbell, while not discounting the fact that Mr Campbell has a prior conviction for murder.
Sentence
On the count of assisting the offender, you are ordered to be imprisoned for four years and six months.
On the count of cultivation of a narcotic plant, you are sentenced to be imprisoned for six months and I make no order as to cumulation of that sentence.
I have decided that it is appropriate, because of your medical condition in particular, to fix a slightly lower than usual non-parole period. I fix a period of two years and six months before you are eligible for parole. I declare that you have served 722 days pursuant to this sentence and I direct that this declaration and its details be entered in the records of the Court.
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