Director of Public Prosecutions v Tzitzaris
[2023] VCC 1404
•8 August 2023
| IN THE COUNTY COURT OF VICTORIA | Revised Not Restricted Suitable for Publication |
AT LATROBE VALLEY
CRIMINAL DIVISION
CR 22-00179
| DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS |
| v |
| BILL TZITZARIS |
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JUDGE: | HIS HONOUR JUDGE SMALLWOOD | |
WHERE HELD: | Latrobe Valley | |
DATE OF HEARING: | ||
DATE OF SENTENCE: | 8 August 2023 | |
CASE MAY BE CITED AS: | DPP v Tzitzaris | |
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION: | [2023] VCC 1404 | |
REASONS FOR SENTENCE
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Catchwords:
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APPEARANCES: | Counsel | Solicitors |
| For the Director of Public Prosecutions | Mr F. Cameron | OPP |
| For the Accused | Mr J. Miller |
HIS HONOUR:
1
Bill Tzitzaris, you have pleaded guilty to two charges of trafficking in a drug of dependence, one charge of aggravated burglary, one charge of theft, one charge of of prohibited person in possession of a firearm and one charge of prohibited person in possession of an imitation of a firearm. Those crimes carry maximum penalties of 15 years, 25 years,
10 years, 10 years, and 10 years respectively.
2 You are now 47 years of age. You have pleaded guilty on some of the matters very early and in respect to the others to a settled indictment and must get the full benefit of that. Having read the material in regard to your background, I suspect there is not a lot of victim empathy involved in all this and remorse is probably fairly scant but, in these circumstances, having pleaded guilty, I do give you the benefit of it.
3 You also get the utilitarian benefit of that plea of guilty and I take into account that you have now already done some 682 days on remand for these matters and a lot of that remand has been during the times of Covid which I understand includes lockdown and obviously was a difficult period of time in which to undergo a prison sentence. You also get the benefit of Worboyes in the sense of encouraging pleas of guilty at this time and also, as I understand it, occasionally the gaols still, in fact, do lockdowns depending upon which gaol you happen to be in.
4 You have a very long criminal history. It is a little bit misleading in that the vast bulk of it appears to be for driving offences. On my calculations, you have been gaoled for driving without a licence and driving while disqualified something like a dozen times on their own. You seem to have been locked up on about 20 or 30 occasions from what I can gather but, in any event, you do have only very few priors for drugs and the Crown accept that you are a user, not really a trafficker and even though you have aggravated burglary priors, they are now from some time ago.
5 I take into account the milieu in which all this happened. I note with some interest that the incident that is referred to was never reported until much later but the victim impact statement which I have read and will go through the summary in a moment, but clearly the man is very frightened and you cannot do this, you cannot go and break into people’s houses no matter how vigorous the response of that person might be.
6 As I say, your criminal history is disturbing, more so in the sense of what Mr Miller put to me and from sitting here for a long time and acting for people in your situation. At 47 you are really on the institutionalised trip. If you cannot get it together now, this is going to be for keeps, I suspect. I take that very much into account at 47. You still have your family support, you kids are here, your partner is here, you have not used now for, I hope you have not used for a couple of years.
7 Hopefully you can get your act together but a summary of the offence in simple terms is that the victim in the matter met you down in the Wonthaggi area and you worked for him for two or three days a week. He was retired and apparently doing up a house. At one stage, there was an incident between the two of you which he was very concerned about and which is not pled here and I obviously will not go into that. As a result of that incident, he installed CCTV cameras
8 On 4 June 2021, you attended Wonthaggi Police Station to be interviewed in relation to a cartridge of ammunition. In the foyer of the Police Station you had a conversation with a police undercover in relation to drugs and guns. That occurring in the foyer is a bit disturbing but, be that as it may, following that discussion you then dealt with undercovers providing drugs over a period of around about three months. I am told that the total amount of amphetamine alleged on Charge 1 is 26 grams, and about 480 grams of cannabis which is obviously not an overall significant amount. As already indicated, you have very few priors for drugs. They are more persistent than prolific, I think would be the correct way of describing it. Clearly each of those crimes must carry a sentence of imprisonment; the amphetamine one being more serious.
9 On 20 July 2021, Mr Donald, the complainant, went to sleep and left his doors unlocked and his lights on. At around about ten to four in the morning, two males entered that property, the first of those was a man named Winmar who received, as I understand it, inter alia, six months for this offending I am about to describe.
10 The two of you were in the house when Mr Donald was woken up, he looked at his TV monitor and saw Mr Winmar. He jumped out of bed and grabbed a tomahawk next to him. He suddenly saw Winmar charge towards him saying, ‘I have a hammer.’ Mr Donald replied, ‘I’m going to put this axe through your fucking head.’ Fortunately for Mr Winmar, it did not happen. There was pushing and shoving until the two of you then left. As I understand the situation here, Mr Donald had actually no physical contact or visual contact with you.
11 Mr Donald went out of the house still holding the tomahawk but could not see a car. He returned to his house and then found that $2,000 had been taken from the side of his bed and also stolen, a brown sock with around $200 in it. He looked at his CCTV, saw the footage of your two entering and rang police.
12 On 13 August, undercover police officers attended your residence and gave you $5,950 for the purchase of a firearm that was a sawn-off shotgun. Sawn off shotguns only have one purpose; they are for threatening or shooting people and as such, must attract a significant gaol sentence.
13 In these circumstances, the combination of amphetamines or methamphetamine and sawn-off shotguns cannot be tolerated and accordingly, there has to be a significant sentence involved.
14 You retrieved that sawn-off shotgun from some scrub near Wonthaggi and gave it to the officer. It turns out that that gun had been shortened. One barrel worked but the other did not but it was clearly operative. You were found with ammunition which, I am assuming, was for that but I have already dealt with that matter. When police then raided your house, they found a number of items consistent with trafficking. They also found an imitation hand-gun and again, for someone in your situation, that has to attract a custodial sentence.
15
I have referred to the Victim Impact Statement which has the concerns that
Mr Donald has had of two people breaking into his house in the middle of the night. He is in his sixties living alone with his dog and it is a pretty cowardly sort of offending, in my view.
16 But in any event, in the ultimate, you have pleaded guilty. You have been in custody now for a couple of years. I take into account questions of totality, also crushing. The background I am about to read out, it is clear that principles of Bugmy arise. Perhaps also some of the principles in Verdins though, in so far as more difficulty in gaol is concerned, I have a dreadful feeling that you find life easier in gaol than outside, which is what I refer to when I talk about institutionalisation.
17 Your counsel very succinctly described your background to me and I have before me the report of Mr Jackson, a neuropsychologist, in fact, well-known to me. Yours is a dreadful background. You were born in Greece, your family moved to Australia when you were very young in the early seventies. Your father was an extremely violent man. Mr Miller outlined many occasions on which he had been violent. He bashed you in front of police officers. He bashed you for any reason he could. Your mother did nothing about it. The police did nothing about it and you clearly, from a very early age, suffered from ADHD and almost certainly still do.
18 You were expelled from primary schools twice for fighting, for chasing kids with pocket knives. You were suspended from high school for, again, fighting and at that point in time you tried to leave and get work. You worked with your father again you were threatened. Your father, indeed, at one stage, threatened to kill you. At school you would get in fights, you would fight with teachers and you had the view, rightly or wrongly, that you were picked on. In any event, that’s your perception, I certainly take that into account. School was a waste of time for you, you took knives right up into high school.
19 After leaving school, you started an apprenticeship as a panel beater. You got into a punch on with other workers. You had no other significant employment really because you have been in and out of gaol all your life. You did, as I understand it, have worked as a Carnie down at Phillip Island prior to going to gaol and you say that you have got a job to go to in Cowes when you ultimately do get out of gaol.
20 So far as relationships are concerned, you have taken off from home at around about 15; hitchhiked your way to Queensland. There, you were picked up by a truck driver and ultimately sexual assaulted. After a period of time, you finally got back in touch with your mother. You were living on the streets in Queensland. Your mother convinced you to come back to Melbourne. You started living in refuges around Dandenong for a period of time. You got into a relationship between the ages of 18 and 21 and then you commenced a relationship with Emily who is here in court to support you today with your children. You started going out with her when you were around about 23. You had been using methamphetamines since about 19. You have three children who are all in court today. I accept that you have the desire at least, to be a good father to them although you state yourself that during their bringing up, you were never around; you were either in gaol or drug-affected.
21 After that relationship broke up for a period of time, you were in another relationship with a very violent drug user and DHS became involved. There were two children of that relationship and you have not seen them since.
22 You have been in and out of gaol continuously now since you were about 25. That is about 20 years. You have done courses in gaol. This time you have done the ice course and hopefully this has reached a stage where you are able to turn your life around. At 47 you can still do it. It is going to depend largely on what relationship you can maintain with the Parole Board during that period of time. I don't know whether you have ever been refused parole before or not. From reading your history, I do not think you have been before the County Court now for well over a decade so that is hopeful. It is going to make a total mess if you keep driving whilst disqualified and you are going to get four or five months off a magistrate every six months for doing that, it is not going to help matters very much but you somehow have got to keep that under control. Keep yourself clean and at least in the second half of your life, be a good parent and a good partner.
23 The offending overall has to be seen as serious, calling for the application in the normal situation of general and specific deterrence but in your situation I clearly note the principles of Bugmy play a very, very large part and it is only when people hear the actual physical descriptions of what occurs to children who end up in the situation that you are in and it starts to dawn on them that a kid brought up like that does not get over it in five minutes and that is for absolute certain.
24 Denunciation, I think any reasonable person would feel pity for you in your given situation however, there has to be punishment and it has to be an appropriate one. Rehabilitation, totally up to yourself. Risk of you re-offending if you don’t rehabilitate, almost certain.
25 However, in all those situations, bearing in mind your age, the family support you have got, you have now been clean for a couple of years; I am prepared to give you what others might see as a merciful disposition and make you eligible for parole pretty soon. As you will understand, you have reached a stage where you are not going to get sentences other than gaol and parole. Things like CCOs are way out of the equation. It really is all just going to come down to you. The brutal reality of it all Mr Tzitzaris is, you are just too old for this. You have just got to give up, all right. Turn the toes up and stop doing it.
26 Sentence is, you can stay seated, that is all right. Charge 1, 18 months. Charge 2, six months. Charge 3, six months. Charge 4, six months. Charge 5, that’s the sawn-off, 12 months. Charge 6, six months. Because I did this so quickly, gentlemen, you can check the arithmetic for me too as I do it.
27
Two months on Charge 2, six months on Charge 3, one month on Charge 3, one month on Charge 4, six months on Charge 5 and three months on
Charge 6 served cumulatively upon each other.
28 MR MILLER: Charge 3 is wholly cumulative?
29 HIS HONOUR: Charge 3 plus six.
30 MR MILLER: Charge 3, I had Charge 3 was six and then you said, six, was wholly cumulative.
31 HIS HONOUR: No, I mis-read it. Sorry, maybe I am mis-hearing it. Charge 1 is 18.
32 MR MILLER: Yes.
33 HIS HONOUR: Charge 2 is six.
34 MR MILLER: Yes.
35 HIS HONOUR: Charge 3 is 12.
36 MR MILLER: Twelve.
37 HIS HONOUR: Sorry, that is my fault. Yes, that is why I am asking you to listen to it. Two of two, six of three, one of four, six of five, three of six, cumulative upon each other and upon the sentence imposed on Charge 1 which, in my calculation gives a total effective sentence of three years. I direct that two years and three months be served before becoming eligible for parole. I am well aware in these circumstances that will take time so whether it occurs or not, there is nothing I can do about it but it is not my function.
38 Pursuant to s6AAA, I say that but for your plea of guilty, you would have been sentenced to four and-a-half years with a minimum term of three years and three months. I direct that 682 days be reckoned as having been served under this sentence. There are no other orders I need to make, gentlemen?
39 MR MILLER: No, Your Honour.
40 HIS HONOUR: Mr Tzitzaris, that is about as much as I can do for you. It is a matter for you when you get out, my friend.
41 OFFENDER: Thank you, Your Honour.
42 HIS HONOUR: You have reached an age, you have got to turn it around or you will die in gaol. You know that and we all know that.
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