Director of Public Prosecutions v Scordo
[2023] VCC 2265
•29 November 2023
| IN THE COUNTY COURT OF VICTORIA | Revised Not Restricted Suitable for Publication |
AT MELBOURNE
CRIMINAL JURISDICTION
CR-23-00645
| THE DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS |
| v |
| STEPHEN SCORDO |
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| JUDGE: | HER HONOUR JUDGE GAYNOR |
| WHERE HELD: | Melbourne |
| DATE OF HEARING: | |
| DATE OF SENTENCE: | 29 November 2023 |
| CASE MAY BE CITED AS: | DPP v Scordo |
| MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION: | [2023] VCC 2265 |
REASONS FOR SENTENCE
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| Subject: | CRIMINAL LAW |
| Catchwords: | Home invasion – Causing serious injury recklessly – Plea of guilty – Co-accused – Early plea – Psychological difficulties – Pre-sentence detention |
Legislation Cited: | Sentencing Act 1999 |
Cases Cited: | |
Sentence: | 5 years and 6 months’ imprisonment |
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APPEARANCES: | Counsel | Solicitors |
| For the Director of Public Prosecutions | Mr D. Ellwood | |
| For the Accused | Mr A. Jackson |
HER HONOUR:
1 Stephen Scordo you have pleaded guilty before me to once charge of home invasion and one charge of recklessly causing serious injury.
2
The facts underlying your offending are as follows. The offending occurred against a tangled set of circumstances whereby your co-accused,
Dylan Williams had separated from his partner, Lauren Roberts, about five days before the offending.
3
In the meantime, Mr Williams had formed a relationship with one Sarah Ingliss, who had separated from her partner, Samuel Richards, a close friend of yours and also a person with whom you engaged in a wrecking business on a partnership basis in Echuca. It appears that Mr Richards became aware of
Ms Ingliss' involvement with Mr Williams and it is in that context that this offending occurred.
4
Essentially, on 1 May 2002, the victim, Mr Williams and Ms Ingliss visited
Mr Williams' mother's house, during which time Ms Ingliss received a phone call from Richards threatening Mr Williams. Later that day Ms Roberts began texting Mr Richards as she believe Mr Williams and Mr Ingliss were together, and then Ms Roberts decided to go to Mr Williams' mother's house where she saw Mr Williams and Ms Ingliss in his bedroom. A heated discussion ensued and she then left at about 9.30 pm.
5 At 9.54 pm Mr Richards sent a text to Ms Ingliss saying she needed to stop this behaviour, 'before you seriously hurt someone or cause someone to commit suicide'.
6
At 10.14 pm, Ms Roberts contacted Mr Richards, telling him she had caught
Mr Williams and Ms Ingliss together and Mr Richards asked for Mr Williams’ address, sounding angry as he did so. He picked Ms Roberts up, drove her home and told her that Mr Williams and Ms Ingliss were, 'both fucked'.
7 Meanwhile, Mr Williams and Ms Ingliss drove to Ms Ingliss' home where they watched TV and ordered in food, then in the early hours of the morning they decided to go out to play the pokies, doing so at the Prince Mark Hotel in Doveton where they stayed until 4.45 am.
8
While at the pokies Ms Ingliss noticed a man she knew as a friend of
Mr Richards, who was on the phone and believed he was calling Richards. In fact, this man, Aiden Spencer, was calling you. He also rang you after
Mr Williams and Ms Ingliss left the pokies.
9
The pair arrived at Ms Ingliss' home at about 4.57 am. Walking in the door,
Ms Ingliss noticing the front door deadlock was unlocked, that the TV was on and that a flyscreen on a kitchen window was pushed in. What had happened was that you and Mr Richards had entered the house whilst Mr Williams and Ms Ingliss were at the pokies were still there.
10 Those actions by you underlie Charge 1 on the indictment, home invasion.
11 Ms Ingliss also noticed that her bedroom door was closed, which was unusual. She opened it and immediately saw you. You charged at her, grabbing her hands and pushed her into the bedroom where she fell on the floor and you said to her, 'I dare you to come out then you will get seriously hurt' and then you left the bedroom.
12 You approached Mr Williams in the hallway and he confronted by you, (you were a stranger to him) and punched you in the face twice and then a fight broke out in which both you and Mr Williams exchanged blows.
13 The fight moved into the kitchen and at that stage it appears Mr Williams lost consciousness due to blows to the head. It is not known who delivered those blows as Mr Williams has no memory of this due to injuries he received. He has no recollection of seeing Richards and did not know you by name.
14
However, Ms Ingliss from the bedroom heard Richards say, 'That's what you get for taking another man's girl'. Mr Richards came into the bedroom, told
Ms Ingliss she was a cheating slut then called for you to come and watch
Ms Ingliss.
15 Mr Williams was then bashed severely. It is the prosecution case that which particular offender inflicted which injury is unknown but that both you and Richards inflicted these injuries, making you both equally guilty.
16 Your actions in injuring Mr Richards in the way you did underlie Charge 2 on the indictment, recklessly causing serious injury.
17 Some time later, Richards walked Ms Ingliss to the front loungeroom with hands over her eyes and told her to sit down and shut up and Ms Ingliss then heard grunts and moans, as if someone was in pain but by saw no one.
18 Ms Ingliss and Richards left the house and went to do some shopping at a Reject Shop, which they did between 10.33 and 11.18 am that morning and while they were out you sent a message to Richards saying, 'He was trying to get me so I dropped him’.
19 After Richards and Ms Ingliss returned to the house a decision was made to get some help to clean up the scene of the attack on Williams and to get Williams away from the scene.
20 You contacted one Walton-Brian by phone, both you and Richards speaking to him and offering to pay him $2000 to drive Williams back to his house.
21
In any event, Mr Walton-Brian eventually arrived at the house and saw Williams lying on the floor on a pillow with injuries and you and Richards then, incredibly, had some lunch while Mr Williams lay on the floor. Richards told Walton-Brian that Mr Williams was a paedophile and that he had been giving Ms Ingliss GHB and you both told Walton-Brian to get rid of Mr Williams's phone, remove the evidence and clean the house, telling him to burn everything and either take
Mr Williams to his house or his nan's or drop him in the bush.
22 You also told Mr Walton-Brian that Mr Williams had been worse in the night having seizures and not moving..
23
Eventually Richards wrapped Mr Williams in a doona, picked him up and carried him out to a car driven by Walton-Brian. You opened the rear door and
Mr Williams was put in the back seat. Eventually Mr Williams was changed to another car. Messages were exchanged and in the meantime Ingliss, Richards and yourself drove back to Echuca.
24
Mr Williams was left in the car and then local CCTV footage at 5.10 pm that day shows Mr Williams staggering across Lyle Avenue towards the
Warrital South Reserve, where it appears he remained for about five hours before coming out, going to a house on Lyle Avenue and knocking on the door and collapsing on the front lawn.
25 The occupant, a Mr Aguoray located him, tried to talk to him and eventually after an hour phoned Triple 0 and police attended.
26 Mr Williams was taken to Dandenong Hospital, then due to the seriousness of his condition, moved to The Alfred where he underwent emergency surgery to remove swelling on the brain. He was then placed into an induced coma.
27 He had suffered two fractures to his skull, inter-cranial bleeding, a fractured cheek, a fractured nose, a fractured jaw and significant swelling to the head and face, t the cause of which was determined to be by use of a blunt object.
28 Police tracked the movements of Mr Williams and Ms Ingliss as well as you Richards, Walton-Brian and Walton-Brian's girlfriend Ms Antares, using CCTV footage and discovered further communication from your phone. You sent a message to Mr Walton-Brian on 3 May at about 2.08 pm, querying as to whether the area had been cleaned and that there was nothing left, Mr Walton-Brian replying in the affirmative and you asking if he had got rid of Mr Williams' phone, which was one of the instructions given to him.
29 Eventually, police made their way to the house where the assault occurred in Cormorant Close, where they discovered blood spatter on the kitchen ceiling and cupboards, damaged plasterboard in the front passage wall, consistent with a body striking it, blood spatter on the front passage and front door frame, a fresh hammer hole in the plasterboard and broken plasterboard with spots of blood in the rubbish time.
30 You, Richards and Ms Ingliss were arrested on 17 May at the car wrecking business in Echuca. You conducted a no record of interview.
31 Walton-Brian and his girlfriend were arrested the following day at a motel where they lived in Doveton.
32 A report was prepared by Dr Sungala of the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine, which in summary stated that Mr Williams sustained a severe head injury due to multiple impacts of blunt force, trauma and multiple penetrative injuries to his skull. The penetrative injury to Mr Williams skull exposed his brain and may have been caused by a sharp object or contact with a pointed object.
33 The fractures on the left side of the head may have been caused by either stabbing or blunt force trauma or a combination of both. Other fractures were caused by blunt impact, including a wide impact such as from a stomp or similar mechanism which may have been responsible for the constellation of injuries which comprised a depressed frontal lobe fracture, an orbital refracture and an extensively fractured nose.
34 It was Dr Sungala's opinion that Mr Williams would have died if he had not had emergency treatment most likely due to swelling of the brain herniating outside the brain cavity into the brain stem. Part of Mr Williams’ ongoing injury has been the loss of part of his skull and he now has to wear a protective helmet.
35 I received a victim impact statement from Mr Williams, who described the assault as completely changing his life. He is in a permanent state of hypervigilance. He never feels safe. He is anxious about everything. He responds more angrily than in the past and has been told this is due to the brain injury he received as a result of this assault, which is impacting not just his life but that of his three children.
36 He has retreated from being a very social man to a man who spends most of his time in his room. He ruminates over his inability to go back to work as a concreter, a trade he had always held.
37 He has significant pain in shoulder, hip, groin, neck and wrist. He has difficulty walking. He has difficulty sleeping due to pain. He is unable to lift his hands above his head. He has difficulty with simple tasks like getting dressed. He has suffered many seizures following the assault, which means he can no longer drive. He is still awaiting to undergo cranioplasty for the missing part of his skull.
38 Financially he has suffered significantly as he is no longer able to work. He finds it impossible to contemplate the psychological work he needs to undertake in order to overcome this trauma, as well as the significant surgery he has yet to undertake.
39 The maximum penalty for home invasion is 25 years and is a category 2 offence. The maximum penalty for recklessly causing serious injury is 15 years. You have been remanded in custody since 17 May 2022.
40 A contested committal was conducted on 26 and 27 April 2023 and resolution in this matter however was reached in your case. The committal I should add was a joint one, involving both you and Richards on 24 May 2023.
41 I now turn to your personal circumstances. You are now 27 years of age. You were born in Dandenong, moving to Hallam, where you lived with your mother. In 1996 your father was diagnosed with cancer, eventually dying in 2008. You had a brother who suffered a number of serious illnesses and he died in 2013 when he was 27. You were particularly close to him and found this devastating. Your grandmother, to whom you were also close, died in 2021. You have an older sister.
42
You were expelled from school in Year 10 due to a fight, at which time you said you were feeling generally pretty angry about life. You repeated these are matters reported to a psychiatrist, Dr Sachin Jindal, whose report dated
20 November 2023, was tendered on the plea.
43 You went on to undergo a construction course at TAFE but quit following the death of your brother. You were unemployed for a while and then when you were 18 began working in traffic control. You have been working for sometime in your own wrecking business, prior to this offending, with Richards.
44 You have had a number of relationships, the longest lasting for two years ending about 12 months ago.
45 You told Dr Jindal that you began using cannabis when you were 13, which was the year after your father's death, using it daily until you were 25, stopping because it became problematic for you and began using ecstasy and methylamphetamine or ice when you were 18, in the year after your brother's death and were using it daily, including at the time of this offending.
46 You had also at around this time been using GHB weekly for about two years. You also drank a 10 pack of bourbon about three to four times a week.
47 Essentially, Dr Jindal found that you suffered no particular psychologic or psychiatric conditions beyond what he described as an adjustment-like disorder with prolonged duration, which he described as being due to your maladaptive partial emotional adjustment to the lost of your father and brother. He also diagnosed you as suffering a substance abuse disorder.
48 In other words, Dr Jindal said that the way in which you dealt with your life after the deaths of your brother and your father were by turning to drugs, essentially, for self-soothing. He did not find you met the full criteria for a personality disorder at this stage.
49 You have been in custody, as I said, ever since this offending. You were originally placed in the Melbourne Assessment Prison. You were then sent to Port Philip, the to Fulham and then to Margoneet.
50 Because of the COVID restrictions at the time you were placed in isolation for two weeks on each occasion the institution changed. You work in the kitchen at Margoneet and you have undertaken the Atlas remand program which has nine modules. The Atlas program is essentially a program designed to point offenders in a different direction in their lives and the modules include subjects such as family friends and community, adapting, taking stock, recalibrate, houses and homes, healthy relationships and jobs and couriers and the like.
51 You told Dr Jindal that you bitterly regret your involvement in this offending. You said you wished you had never been involved and indeed this offending represents a marked escalation in your criminal record.
52 That record began in 2018 and you have been dealt with over the years for offending, such as unlawful possession, criminal damage by fire with a view to gain, attempting to obtain financial advantage, contravening intervention order, possessing a prohibited weapon without exemption or approval, intentionally damaging property, possessing a prohibited weapon, possessing ecstasy, committing an indictable offence on bail, possessing cannabis and ice and so on.
53 It seems looking at your record, apart from one short stint in gaol you overwhelmingly been dealt with by way of a community corrections order and of which you have been given a number by the courts.
54 Although not particularly long your criminal record is remarkable because it forms such a contrast to this very serious offending in which you involved yourself.
55 You are fortunate, Mr Scordo, that you are not facing a murder charge here. Do you know what people get for murder? You would be looking at something like 21 with an 18 if you were lucky. All right? That means you would probably be looking at getting out of gaol, what, you know, in your late forties, most of your big energetic years gone. This offending is incredibly serious offending.
56 Mr Williams, a man you did not even know, is probably going to continue to suffer the effects of the assault you inflicted upon him for the rest of his life. He may never be able to work as a concreter again. Part of his skull is missing. You did not even know this man and you involved yourself in this extraordinarily serious assault, which on the medical evidence before me would have resulted in Mr Williams death, had he not received proper attention.
57 You involved yourself in cleaning up the scene and getting Mr Williams' body away. Mr Williams ended up lying around it would seem in the bush in a reserve for five hours. If he had died there you and Richards would have been facing charges of murder, manslaughter at the very least.
58 Now, I do not know how much you are thinking about what you have done or what this has led you to, Mr Scordo but you missed a very long term, serious term of imprisonment that would have taken away your most productive years by a hair's breadth.
59 I repeat, had Mr Williams died out in the bush on that day that would be your position. Now, I understand that you regret what you did and I also accept that this time in prison has led you to reflect on what your life has been.
60 Clearly, the loss of your father and your brother were extremely traumatic but you have continued to have the support of your mother and your sister. You have always had a home to go to.
61 You are not like many people who this court deals with who are ill treated by their parents from the day they were born, introduced to drugs, sexually abused, physically abused, nowhere to live, periods of homelessness. You have suffered none of these things. You have suffered two significant deaths and your way of dealing with it to spiral off into a land, ultimately, of drugs and alcohol and to commit the sort of offending that I am sure your parents never thought was going to be a part of your life when they raised you.
62 You loved your father. You loved your brother and I am assuming from that, you were born into a caring family. You continue to enjoy the support of and a home with your mother. These are massive opportunities and supports in your life which you would well know, given the time you have spent in custody, many other people in gaol do not get a whiff off. Am I making sense to you?
63 All right. I am satisfied that the way in which you were brought up is a protective factor in itself, in that it seems that in this time in gaol as I have said, you are reconsidering your life and I commend you for making the decision that when you leave custody you will seek residential rehab, treatment. If you do not get yourself off these drugs, Mr Scordo, the offending is going to keep on and one day you will find yourself homeless and with no support. (Although it is certainly the experience of these courts that mothers hang on to the bitter end.) But do not waste the opportunities life has given you.
64 As it is, you have severely injured another human being, a man as I said, whom you did not even know. Your counsel has informed me and it appears from what you told Dr Jindal, you were regularly using ice at the time and this appears to have been a part of the appalling decision-making process by you to treat a virtual stranger in this way.
65 In sentencing you I am satisfied that just punishment and general deterrence are the primary factors to which I should have regard. I do take into account your relative youth, the difficult conditions you have suffered in gaol. I take into account the fact that you seem to be progressing well in gaol. But it must be said that unless you attend to your drug problems (and it would seem your alcohol problems,) your prospects of rehabilitation can only be described as guarded and therefore protection of the community is a principle to which I must also have regard.
66 Your counsel has sensibly conceded that what you did is a serious example of this offence and that the only way in which I can deal with you is by way of a term of imprisonment to be immediately served and comprising both a maximum and minimum term.
67 You have also saved the court the time and expense of a trial. The plea was entered in May, at which time the court was still struggling with the backlog caused by COVID and therefore you are entitled to a more than usual discount for the entry of that plea.
68 I am satisfied that you do have remorse for your actions and I do take into account you are still a relatively young man.
69 Having regard however both to the punitive and mitigatory factors involved in this case I therefore sentence you as follows. One, the charge of home invasion you are sentenced to two and a half years imprisonment. On the charge of recklessly causing serious injury you are sentenced to four years imprisonment. I order that 18 months of the sentence imposed on Charge 1 be served cumulatively to the sentence imposed on Charge 2, giving a total effective sentence of five years and six months.
70 I order that you serve three years and six months before becoming eligible for parole.
71 What was the PSD again please?
72 MR ELLWOOD: Five sixty-one, Your Honour.
73 HER HONOUR: I declare that 561 days of this sentence have been served by way of pre-sentence detention.
74 Pursuant to s6AAA, I declare that had you not pleaded guilty I would have sentenced you to seven years and ordered that you serve a minimum term of four and a half years.
75 Thank you. Anything else that I need to attend to?
76 MR ELLWOOD: No, Your Honour.
77 HER HONOUR: Actually, sorry pursuant to s6AAA, I declare that had you not pleaded guilty I would sentence you to seven years and ordered a minimum term of five years.
78 MR JACKSON: Just to make sure the PSD was 561 because that would then include today.
79 HER HONOUR: That's fine. We'll make it 561. I'll order that that is what it is.
80 MR JACKSON: Including today.
81 HER HONOUR: Yes.
82 MR JACKSON: Five sixty-one without today. All right.
83 HER HONOUR: Apparently, I am not meant to include today.
84 MR JACKSON: No.
85 MR ELLWOOD: No.
86 HER HONOUR: I always used to and I got pulled up for it. So, the old defence days still hang on. I thank counsel very much for their assistance in this plea and we will stand down to midday. Thank you very much.
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