Director of Public Prosecutions v Robjant

[2014] VCC 1324

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

AT MELBOURNE
CRIMINAL JURISDICTION

CR-14-00686/87

DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS

v

LUKE ROBJANT

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JUDGE:	HIS HONOUR JUDGE MAIDMENT
WHERE HELD:	Melbourne
DATE OF HEARING:	27 June 2014
DATE OF SENTENCE:	27 June 2014
CASE MAY BE CITED AS:	DPP v Robjant
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION:	[2014] VCC 1324

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

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APPEARANCES:	Counsel	Solicitors
For the Director of Public Prosecutions	Mr M Roper
For the Offender	Ms P Murphy

HIS HONOUR: 

1Luke Robjant, you can remain seated for the time being.  You pleaded guilty to an indictment charging you with two offences of armed robbery, one of reckless conduct, having placed a person or persons in danger of serious injury, and one of being a non-prohibited person possessed of an unregistered Category A long arm.

2The maximum terms of imprisonment for those offences are, for the attempted armed robberies, 20 years' imprisonment, reckless conduct endangering serious injury, five years' imprisonment, and being a non-prohibited person in possession of the Category A handgun, two years' imprisonment.

3You have also admitted prior court appearances.   I note that on the occasion upon which you appeared before the Frankston Magistrates' Court, on 16 September of last year, the offences did not result in any conviction being recorded against you.

4The prosecution has tendered and relied upon a Crown opening on the plea, which is Exhibit A.  That was read to the court this morning, I am not going to go through it again.  It sets out the details of two separate attempted armed robberies to each of which you went armed with a firearm and on the second occasion the firearm was loaded.  Whether or not you knew it was loaded prior to you pulling the trigger is a matter of conjecture.  I am by no means satisfied that you did not, but on the other hand I am not prepared to make a finding beyond reasonable doubt that you did know that that firearm was loaded.

5It was incumbent upon you, if you were taking what you believed to be an unloaded firearm to an armed robbery simply for the purposes of scaring your victims, to ensure that it was indeed unloaded.   The fact that you at least very negligently, recklessly, pulled the trigger on that firearm in circumstances where the gun was pointing in the direction of the victim of your second armed robbery was a highly dangerous thing to do.  I see you nodding, I have no doubt that you acknowledge that now.  It could have been fatal.  It certainly placed your victim at serious risk of serious injury.

6That offence is the worse for the fact that it was within the dwelling house of the second of your victims.  The first one was at the dwelling house of your first victim, albeit not inside the dwelling house.  Armed robberies are very serious offences, going armed with a firearm is an aggravating feature and I have to treat that very seriously.  The other feature, of course, of carrying a firearm, is that it tends to be extremely frightening for your victims and cause them lasting effects.  There is no doubt that each of these victims will remember that occasion for the rest of their lives.

7It seemed to me that they are actually quite robust and that they have forgiving natures, each of them, is fortunate from your point of view, but that might not have been so.  You take your victims as you find them and you might have had an even more significant effect upon those people's lives than it seems that you have fortunately had upon these, it seems, quite robust individuals.  Nevertheless I am bound to take in to account the victim impact statements and the effect of your crimes upon your victims and I propose to do that.

8Turning to matters personal to you, your counsel provided me with, if I may say so, a very well-constructed and balanced written submission, along with medical reports which go back some years and a psychological report from Carla Lechner, which also is, I think, quite well balanced and a very useful assessment of the context in which your offending occurred.  The medical reports show that context goes back to childhood when you were diagnosed with ADHD.  I have no doubt that that will have interfered with your education, to some extent, and going on in to adulthood will have left you perhaps more vulnerable to the peer group pressures which are all too common and which no doubt contributed to your engaging first in recreational drug use and then in the use of ice.

9Enough has been said about ice today, for me not to say much more about it, but I have no doubt that it was the single most significant factor in leading you in to offending of this kind.  In my judgment, had you not become involved in ice it seems unlikely that you would have offended in this way and I do not see evidence of you having that kind of aggressive and cynical and uncaring and disinhibited nature that would ordinarily underscore conduct of this kind.

10However, you did engage in the conduct, you did commit the offences, and you leave the court with no choice other than to impose sentences that are appropriate.  However, the submissions made on your behalf do point out some other very important factors that I am bound to take in to account in assessing the appropriate sentence.

11You have pleaded guilty at the first available opportunity and ordinarily that does give rise to a substantial reduction in sentence.   When it is part of a course of conduct which began when you were arrested for these offences, in frankly and openly admitting the conduct that you engaged in on these occasions and coupled with the remorse that you have expressed, then it seems to me that particular credit needs to be given both for your plea of guilty and your expressions of remorse.

12Your counsel, through you, provided me with a letter which is Exhibit 4 on the plea hearing, written by yourself.   It was written prior to Ms Murphy becoming involved as your counsel in the case and I have no doubt that it conveys your true feelings about your offending conduct, what led to your offending conduct, your remorse for your conduct, and your empathy towards your victims.  Although they did not see that letter, they were in Court and heard your evidence, and they were clearly impressed enough to have done something which in my experience is really quite unusual.   That is to come forward and offer their views about you and the words that you used and what they felt about your prospects for the future, and their wishes for you in the future.

13That, I think, does speak volumes about the sincerity that you have shown in this court and in the material you have provided through your letter and in what you have said, not only to the police but to Ms Lechner and others.  That does, I think, bode very well for your future.  It suggests that you are a very good candidate for rehabilitation and I think that, provided you are able to take advantage of the opportunities that will be offered hopefully to you in the prison system, and afterwards, whilst on parole, that you have a pretty good prospect of leading an honest and trouble free life in the future.

14I take in to account the fact that your prior court appearance pales in to insignificance compared with these offences.  Clearly the fact that you are still only 23 years' of age is highly relevant.  In most cases it is a very significant factor and rehabilitation really trumps the other sentencing considerations but in cases where people go armed with firearms court has to look to other sentencing considerations as well and put them, perhaps, above rehabilitation.  Although rehabilitation is still important, because the community often is best served by ensuring that you stay away from drugs in the future and you lead an honest life and therefore it is still very important.  I shall have to balance those considerations, of course, but I think that it is necessary for me to reflect in the sentence the need to promote your rehabilitation as far as I reasonably can.

15The report of Ms Lechner supports the proposition that you have had, and perhaps still do have, mild depression, that you have had a stimulant use disorder and the fact that you have been substantially addicted to ice will present and continue to present risks for you in the future and hurdles for you in the future in sorting yourself out and staying clear of trouble.  It is, of course, vital that you pursue every reasonable avenue of drug rehabilitation and/or psychological counselling that will go with it, to meet those challenges.

16You are fortunate that you have strong family support and it seems a loyal girlfriend and I hope that she sees her way through the time that she will have to wait for you and continues with that support.   But I have no doubt that whatever happens between you two in the future your family will still be there for you, in any event.  That too will help you, but do not assume that you can do it without assistance.  It is all too common for people like yourself, sitting there now drug free, and thinking clearly, with the best will in the world to promise the earth as to what you are going to do when you get out but when you do get out the first thing that happens is one of your old mates gets on the phone and says, look, let us go out and have a partty, we want to celebrate, we have got this lined up for you, and before you know it after you have had a drink or two somebody offers you something and you take it.  It is that kind of risk that you have to be aware of, constantly vigilant against, and have the strategies in place to deal with it, because unless you do then there will be a relapse, and you cannot afford that, and you will lose your girlfriend as well, will he not?  Yes, all right.

17Now, doing the best I can to put all that together, it is necessary for me to punish you adequately, it is necessary for me to express the denunciation of this court of conduct of this kind, I do not think that the protection of the public is a high priority here, I do not think that individual deterrence is particularly significant, although it is still there and it is necessary, I think, to impress upon you that if you were to engage in conduct anything like this again that there would be a very significant sentence waiting for you.

18Most importantly, it is necessary for the courts to deter others in the sentencing process and unless people who engage in armed robberies, or attempted armed robberies, particularly with the use of firearms, particularly with the use of loaded firearms, whether they are on ice or not, and plenty of the people who come to this court are, as you are no doubt aware, it is necessary to make it clear that stern punishment awaits people who engage in that kind of conduct.

19I will be giving you sentence of imprisonment, obviously, and it was conceded that I must, it is my duty to do so.  I think that I can make allowance in the non-parole period to reduce the impact of that sentence upon you.  Obviously, assuming you get parole, the sentence will still be hanging over your head and clearly you will be called back to serve it if you were to commit any further offence.  So it still has some punitive effect and hopefully provide some disincentive for you to breach your parole or otherwise to engage in further offending conduct.

20I am ready to impose sentence now, would you please stand?

21Luke Robjant, on Charge 1 of armed robbery I convict you and sentence you to two years and nine months' imprisonment.

22On Charge 2 of attempted armed robbery I convict you and sentence you to imprisonment for a period of three years and three months.

23On Charge 3 of reckless conduct endangering persons I convict you and sentence you to imprisonment for a period of 15 months.

24On Charge 4 of possessing an unregistered Category A long arm I convict you and sentence you to imprisonment for three months.

25The sentence on Charge 2 of three years and three months is the base sentence.  I order that six months of the sentence on Charge 1 and six months of the sentence on Charge 3 be served cumulatively with one another and with the sentence of three years and three months on Charge 2, which makes a total effective sentence of four years and three months.  I order that you serve a period of two years before you become eligible for parole.

26I declare 81 days of pre-sentence detention as time served on the sentence that I have imposed and to be deducted administratively from the sentence you will actually have to serve.

27But for your pleas of guilty I would have sentenced you to a total effective sentence of five years and nine months and I would have ordered that you serve a period of three years and ten months before you became eligible for parole.

28I make the orders for forfeiture and disposal of property and the order for retention of the forensic sample in accordance with the drafts that I impose.

29Before you sit down, before you go, just let me say this, and I say it with sincerity.  I hope that you will take the opportunity, if you get it, of going to Marngoneet and if you do then that I think will go a long way to ensuring that you get parole when you first are able to do that.  It will also, I think, give you the best opportunity of actually kicking this habit and kicking it permanently and coming out a much stronger person.  Of course there are many negative aspects to a term of imprisonment, I accept that, but this I think will, if it is your focus, give you something to work with and build upon and I hope that you do so successfully.

30MR ROPER:  As Your Honour pleases.

31MS MURPHY:  As Your Honour pleases.

32HIS HONOUR:  You can take a seat now.  Mr Roper I have signed those orders and I will hand those down to you.

33MR ROPER:  Thank you Your Honour.

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