Director of Public Prosecutions v Saunders

[2020] VCC 1859

IN THE COUNTY COURT OF VICTORIA

Revised

(Not) Restricted

Suitable for Publication

AT GEELONG

CRIMINAL JURISDICTION

CR 17-00227

DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS

v

CHRISTOPHER SAUNDERS

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JUDGE:	HIS HONOUR JUDGE MULLALY
WHERE HELD:	Geelong
DATE OF HEARING:	10 March 2020
DATE OF SENTENCE:	10 March 2020
CASE MAY BE CITED AS:	DPP v Saunders
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION:	[2020] VCC 1859

REASONS FOR SENTENCE

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APPEARANCES:	Counsel	Solicitors
For the Director of Public Prosecutions	Mr T. White	Office of Public Prosecutions
For the Accused	Mr N. Hanos	Victoria Legal Aid

HIS HONOUR: 

1This matter has been brought on very quickly as you know.  Once we got to a point where you were able to enter a plea and as you have after negotiating it through your lawyers.  Things have not been as smooth throughout the whole time this case has been in the court.  It was only in the County Court really because of your mental health issues that you are unfit to stand trial.

2Intervention orders are important and they have got to be abided by.  There is always deep emotions attached but people have got to feel secure.  So it is a matter of concern when someone breaches an intervention order to try and locate someone that they were in a relationship with and they are not supposed to. 

3However, the breaches of those intervention orders are persistent breaches.  Two charges.  And the various ways that you did breach them do not amount to a serious example of that sort of offence.  Many times people are subjected to serious violence or threats or other frightened behaviour well beyond what was involved here. 

4You sought out your ex-partner directly through her friends, through her family.  At the back of your mind was various things relating to your child and family law matters.  So, the offences I said to you multiple times during the course of trying to manage this case would not have attracted the sorts of terms of incarceration that you have gone through.  But that did not get us anywhere and you were placed back in custody a number of times including at Thomas Embling.  Things have sorted themselves out and you are well.  And that is a relief.

5It hopefully will show the benefits of anti‑psychotic medicine, that you can get settled and it does not take your life away and you can start again.  That is what I hope.  And we never see you again because to be frank this case is seriously worrying, almost to the level of traumatising the judges that have had to deal with it because it did not have to be here and yet it took so long with a man in custody for so long.

6I am not going to impose a sentence of 616 days for these crimes.  That is just so out of proportion, it does not bear thinking about.  Effectively, you should get about a month of imprisonment because you have done it.  There is no point in me fining you or putting you on a community corrections order.  But even a month really stretches proportionality in this case. 

7Fundamental to any sentencing consideration is that you have been mentally unwell for a significant period of time.  Those matters reduce your moral culpability.  They very much reduce any weight to be given to general deterrence.  They are as significant in this matter as any other that I have come across.

8Thus, a sentence of a month for each of these two charges, to be run concurrent, and the matter of the possession of drugs that having been proven as discharged.  Am I entitled to do that?

9MR WHITE:  Yes, Your Honour.

10HIS HONOUR:  Yes.  That matter of the drugs is - having been proven, the matter is discharged.  There is no penalty for that whatsoever.  Of course, I declare that you have served 616 days of pre-sentence detention in this matter.  That means you have done so many more than one month - so many days more than one month that it does not bear contemplating.  So the prison authorities will be left in no doubt that you have served every single day of the sentence that I have just imposed.

11You will be released, I just do not know whether the system here is such that you can be released from the dock there.  I hope that can be the case.  The senior Corrections people will help me with that.  In any event, you are going home now with your mother to Portland and you need to go to the community mental health people down there in Portland.  They will continue the treatment that has worked through the time that you have been at Thomas Embling.  From November in Warrnambool court to where you are now is just - it is a gulf.  It is a very big gulf that has been overcome by reason of the work of the mental health practitioners.  So you have got to stick with them.  If you do not, then it will all off the edge again.

12I am not ordering you to do it.  I cannot and I would not anyway because my job is involved with the criminal justice system.  You need to just keep engaging with the mental health system and manage from hereon in.  You understand?  Yes.

13All right.  6AAA I suppose has to be announced.  Had you pleaded not guilty to these matters and been found guilty you would have got three months concurrent. 

14The order relating to the disposal of cannabis will be made.  Is there any other orders required?

15MR WHITE:  No, Your Honour.  

16HIS HONOUR:  All right.  So can the prison authorities help me?  I will sign a warrant court order now to say that articulates the order.  Do you have to check with Central Records or something or what do you have to do?

17PRISON OFFICER:  (Indistinct words.)

18HIS HONOUR:  No, there is a different pilot in Melbourne.  We will not trouble you with that.  So I think what has to happen, Mr Saunders, is you go with these folk while they just check that you can be released and you will be released from there.  Do you understand that?

19OFFENDER:  Yeah.

20HIS HONOUR:  And your mother will be waiting for you and you can get on the road back to Portland and start again.  All right?

21OFFENDER:  Okay, no worries. 

22HIS HONOUR:  Thank you.  Just head downstairs with those gentlemen.  Thank you, Mr Saunders, for all that you have put up with.

23MR HANOS:  Thank you, Your Honour. 

24HIS HONOUR:  Thank you Mr Hanos.

25MR HANOS:  If I could be excused, Your Honour.

26MR WHITE:  Might I also be excused, Your Honour?

27HIS HONOUR:  Yes, I will just give you a disposal order.

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