Director of Public Prosecutions v Turkozu
[2012] VCC 1526
•4 October 2012
| IN THE COUNTY COURT OF VICTORIA | Revised Not Restricted Suitable for Publication |
AT MELBOURNE
CRIMINAL DIVISION
Case No. CR-12-01540
| DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS |
| v |
| METIN EKRIN TURKOZU |
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JUDGE: | HIS HONOUR JUDGE MAIDMENT | |
WHERE HELD: | Melbourne | |
DATE OF HEARING: | 3 & 4 October 2012 | |
DATE OF SENTENCE: | 4 October 2012 | |
CASE MAY BE CITED AS: | DPP v Turkozu | |
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION: | [2019] VCC 1526 | |
REASONS FOR SENTENCE
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Catchwords:
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APPEARANCES: | Counsel | Solicitors |
| For the Crown | Ms. D. Guesdon | |
| For the Accused | Ms E. Ramsay |
HIS HONOUR:
1 Metin Ekrin Turkozu, you can remain seated for the time being. You have pleaded guilty to an indictment containing nine charges alleging one offence of robbery, three offences of burglary, one offence of causing injury intentionally, one of reckless conduct endangering a person, one of criminal damage and two of armed robbery. You have admitted one previous court appearance, although I note that that did not result in any conviction or order by the court and that it involved offences that were nowhere near as serious as these offences and of different kinds.
2 The offences are very serious offences, as reflected in the maximum terms of imprisonment which are prescribed for offences of this kind. Armed robbery, maximum 25 years' imprisonment; robbery, 15 years' imprisonment; intentionally causing injury, ten years' imprisonment; burglary, ten years' imprisonment; and reckless conduct endangering a person, five years' imprisonment.
3
The prosecution tendered a summary of prosecution opening, which is
Exhibit B, and that was read out in open court yesterday in your presence and I do not propose to repeat the content of that document. I incorporate it into these reasons for sentence in its entirety and I note, as I indicated a few minutes ago, in your discussion with the Corrections Officer, who is the author of the pre-sentence report, that you accepted the summary of prosecution opening and its content, and your counsel has indicated that that is so.
4 The indictment, and indeed the summary of prosecution opening, reflects a spree of offending which took place in March and April of this year, which was quite disgraceful. Your part in those offences was significant and utterly deplorable. You will have had an impact on your victims which lasts well beyond any sentence that I can impose upon you. They will never forget what you have done to them and their lives are diminished as a result of your conduct. No doubt you gave little thought to that at the time of the offending. I hope that you have given some thought to that since and that you will give some thought to that in the future. I am bound to take into account the impact on the victims of these offences and bound to pass a sentence which, not only punishes you adequately for the offending, not only marks the denunciation of this court of offending of this kind and deters you from further offending, but also deters others from offending of this kind.
5 I have been given some detail of your background and it seems that your offending occurred in circumstances where you had, in essence, been kicked out of home, presumably because of your conduct within the family. At that time you had the benefit of a plumbing apprenticeship. You were unfortunate enough to lose that apprenticeship because of lack of work and became employed as a storeman. You had apparently used ice or methamphetamine on occasions prior to that, but from about December of last year your use of that drug apparently increased.
6
You had your first court appearance in the middle of February of this year and you committed the first of the series of offences on 2 March of this year. It may be that you got into bad company, and it may be that you were influenced by your co-offenders into committing these offences, but in the end the
pre-sentence report reflects a view of the Corrections Officer that your understanding and your level of intelligence and comprehension would suggest that your level of maturity is age appropriate. There is no excuse for you to be influenced into committing offences of this kind by others who were perhaps a little older than you and more experienced in criminal matters of this kind.
7
It is to your credit, though, that you co-operated with the police. You did not tell them the whole truth on the first occasion that you were interviewed, but it seems that you admitted all of the offences to which you pleaded guilty eventually. You made written statements to the police, copies of which are Exhibit 1 and Exhibit 2 respectively on the plea, in which you implicated
co-offenders. You have indicated previously that you would give evidence for the prosecution in cases brought against your co-offenders and you gave evidence on oath in this court that, not only that the content of the statements were true, but that you would give evidence in accordance with those statements if and when called upon to do so.
8 You are entitled to credit for your pleas of guilty, which indicate perhaps some degree of remorse for the offending conduct. It was pointed out by the prosecution that there had been no express remorse in relation to the effect that your conduct had on your victims. Nevertheless, I think you are entitled to credit for the plea as indicating a degree of remorse and you are certainly entitled to credit for the fact that the witnesses have not been required to give evidence and that generally you have facilitated the course of justice and saved the community a deal of money and time in prosecuting a contested trial of these matters.
9
You are also entitled to credit for your co-operation with the police and your promise to co-operate in the future in any prosecutions against your
co-offenders and you are entitled to a substantial discount in sentence in relation to both of those aspects of the matter.
10 I take into account the content of the victim impact statements, which are Exhibit E on the plea, and I take into account the content of the two DVDs, Exhibits C and D, which do you no credit. It shows aggressive, nasty behaviour on your part, which was calculated to put people in fear and no doubt did put the victims in fear. As I have already indicated, that will leave a lasting impression upon them.
11 I am bound to take into account your age, 19 years, and the courts have said time and again that rehabilitation is a very significant consideration for an offender of your age, a youthful offender, and that there is a strong public interest in promoting the rehabilitation of young offenders, particularly where they do not have an entrenched history of criminal activity and where there is a reasonable prospect of successful rehabilitation.
12 I have to say that I agree entirely with the assessment of the Corrections Officer, who is the author of the pre-sentence report, when he says in relation to whether you have reasonable prospects of rehabilitation, that he has assessed that, with some reservation, you do have reasonable prospects for rehabilitation. I have similar reservation, and that is borne partly by the fact that you persisted in this criminal conduct and behaved in a gratuitously unpleasant and offensive way to some of your victims which went way beyond the scope of encouragement from your co-offenders, albeit that they were older and had influence upon you, or may have had influence upon you.
13 I note also that the pre-sentence report suggests that you have not been entirely accepting of the serious nature of these offences and you do not seem to have fully appreciated the seriousness of offending conduct of this kind. I hope that that is a false impression. Just as the author says that your presentation indicated that you do not fully appreciate the extent that this type of offending can have on the wider community, again, I hope that that is a false impression too.
14 You must start to appreciate that this conduct is totally unacceptable and it is the duty of the court to deter, not only you, but others from committing offences of this kind. So although it is important that the courts take a longer view and a broader view of the overall interests of the community in promoting your rehabilitation, it is necessary also to punish you and to deter you from committing further offences as well as deterring others. Ordinarily I would regard offences of this kind as demanding - not just requiring, but absolutely demanding a substantial term of imprisonment in an adult prison despite your age. However, it seems to me that the fact that you have agreed to assist the prosecution of your co-offenders, coupled with your plea of guilty and your age and, although guarded, what I assess to be your reasonable prospects of rehabilitation, it tips the balance slightly in favour of a Youth Justice Centre order.
15 You have indicated that you would prefer a Youth Justice Centre order. I note that you have already spent 134 days in custody and that hopefully would have had some effect upon you. Although I also note that after you had been granted bail you gave urine samples that had been tampered with and which was a condition of your bail. As a result you were then placed in custody once again pending the outcome of these proceedings.
16 Taking all those matters into account - would you stand, please - Metin Turkozu, for each of the offences on the indictment, the nine offences, I order that you be detained in a Youth Justice Centre for three years, and I declare that 134 days of pre-sentence detention be reckoned as time served upon that sentence and is to be deducted from the period during which you should be detained.
17 I also make the order that you undergo a forensic procedure for taking of a scraping from your mouth and/or a blood sample for the sample to be placed on the DNA database. You will be required initially to provide a scraping from the mouth under supervision of an authorised member of the police force and if you provide that sample, that will be compliance with the order. If you refuse or fail to provide a scraping from the mouth when requested to do so, then the authorised member of the police force may then take a blood sample from you and may use reasonable force to enable that forensic procedure to be conducted. Do you understand that?
18 PRISONER: Yes, Your Honour.
19 HIS HONOUR: I am sure you will comply with the request to provide a scraping from the inside of your mouth.
20 Let me just add this, that you have dodged the bullet on this occasion in terms of obtaining a very substantial term of imprisonment for such a young man, and I hope that you regard this sentence as an opportunity as well as punishment for your offending conduct. All right. Are there any other orders that I need to make?
21 MS GUESDON: No, Your Honour.
22 HIS HONOUR: Yes. I think I need to declare that but for your pleas of guilty in this matter, I would have sentenced you to a total effective sentence of five years' imprisonment with a non-parole period of three years, and that I would regard as a relatively lenient sentence which would take into account your promise of future co-operation. All right. Thank you. You can take him down.
23 I will provide you with signed copies of the s.465 orders.
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