Director of Public Prosecutions v Wright
[2023] VCC 1009
•16 June 2023
| IN THE COUNTY COURT OF VICTORIA | Revised Not Restricted Suitable for Publication |
AT MELBOURNE
CRIMINAL JURISDICTION
CR 23-00343
| DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS |
| v |
| MARLEY WRIGHT |
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JUDGE: | HER HONOUR JUDGE CARLIN |
WHERE HELD: | Melbourne |
DATE OF HEARING: | 7 June 2023 |
DATE OF SENTENCE: | 16 June 2023 |
CASE MAY BE CITED AS: | DPP v Wright |
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION: | [2023] VCC 1009 |
REASONS FOR SENTENCE
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Subject: CRIMINAL LAW
Catchwords: Causing injury recklessly – contravention of order intending to cause harm or fear for safety – aggravated burglary – causing serious injury recklessly – 26 year old Aboriginal male – childhood trauma and disadvantage – substance use – poor mental health – persecutory delusions – sentence
Legislation Cited: Sentencing Act 1991 (Vic)
Sentence: Total effective sentence of five years and four months with a non-parole period of three years and three months.
Section 6AAA: Total effective sentence of eight years and six months with a non-parole period of six years and three months.
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APPEARANCES: | Counsel | Solicitors |
| For the Director of Public Prosecutions | Ms V. Worrell (plea) Ms S. Chapman (sentence) | Office of Public Prosecutions |
For the Accused | Ms R. Champion | Ms A. Watters |
HER HONOUR:
Introduction
1Marley Wright, the events giving rise to this sentence occurred on two days in November last year just after you had been released from prison. Although you had been provided emergency accommodation, you turned up at your mother’s house in breach of a family violence intervention order and stayed the night. The next day, under the influence of methylamphetamine and wrongly believing they had both called you a paedophile, you violently attacked your brother and your cousin, the latter in his own home. You incidentally assaulted your mother and your cousin’s partner during those attacks.
2Your conduct was appalling, dangerous and extremely frightening to people who loved you and were completely innocent victims.
3On 7 June 2023 you pleaded guilty before me to four indictable offences and three related summary offences.
4Charge 1 was a charge of causing injury recklessly to your brother, Dixon Patten, and is subject to a maximum term of imprisonment of five years. Charge 2 was a charge of contravention of a family violence intervention order intending to cause harm or fear for safety, and was subject to a maximum term of imprisonment of five years and/or 600 penalty units.
5Charge 3 was a charge of aggravated burglary and was subject to a maximum term of imprisonment of 25 years. Charge 4 was a charge of causing serious injury recklessly to your cousin, Matthew Merlino, and was subject to a maximum term of imprisonment of 15 years.
6Summary Charge 1 was a charge of contravene family violence intervention order and was subject to a maximum term of two years and/or 240 penalty units. Summary Charge 11 was a charge of unlawful assault of your mother, and was subject to a maximum term of imprisonment of three months and/or 15 penalty units.
7Summary Charge 12 was a charge of possess a controlled weapon without excuse, being a knife, and was subject to a maximum term of imprisonment of one year and/or 120 penalty units.
8Today you have pleaded guilty to one additional related summary offence, summary Charge 22, which is a charge of assaulting Brenda Garoni with a weapon. That is subject to a maximum term of imprisonment of two years.
9A plea on your behalf was conducted before me on 7 June 2023 and it now falls to me to sentence you for your conduct.
10Your counsel, Ms Champion, conceded, as she must, that a term of imprisonment involving a head sentence and non-parole period was appropriate, but she submitted that I should impose a shorter than usual non-parole period, given your particular circumstances.
11The prosecutor, Ms Worrell, did not argue against that course.
12In arriving at an appropriate sentence, I am required by law to have regard to a variety of factors which I will outline in these sentencing remarks.[1] Some tend towards leniency, and some point the other way. No one factor automatically prevails over any other. Rather, I must have regard to them all and give each the weight it deserves to arrive at a just sentence.
[1] Section 5(2) of the Sentencing Act 1991.
Circumstances of the Offending[2]
[2] Summary based on the agreed facts set out in the Summary of Prosecution Opening and marked as Exhibit A.
13First, I must set out the circumstances of your offending in more detail.
14On 15 November 2022 you were released from prison after serving a sentence for a large consolidation of offences, including contravening family violence intervention orders. You spent that night in emergency accommodation which had been arranged for you.
15The next day you attended the home of your mother, 65 year old, Carol Wright. She told you that you could not be there because of the intervention order she had obtained against you. That order was obtained on 30 May 2022, and it was a full non-contact order requiring you not to go or remain within 200 metres of your mother's home or within 5 metres of her person. Your mother offered to take you anywhere you wanted to go and agreed to drop you off at the Centrelink office in Preston.
16That night you returned to your mother's home, saying that you had nowhere to go, and asking if you could stay the night. You did in fact have emergency accommodation for that night, but you chose not to use it.
17Your mother was uneasy about your request but agreed to it because she knew that your older brother, Dixon Patten, was due to arrive at her home later that night.
18Dixon was attending a course in Melbourne the next day. He arrived at your mother's place around 8 pm on 16 November 2023. He was surprised to see you as he knew you should not be there.[3]
[3] Statement of Dixon PATTEN, p.70.
19The next morning at around 9:15 am Dixon went into his mother's bedroom to speak to her about what arrangements could be made in relation to you. You followed him into your mother’s bedroom and found cans of alcohol that she had put there from the previous weekend. Your mother caught you taking those cans and told you that you should not be drinking alcohol and should leave. You ignored your mother and took the cans back into the loungeroom. Your brother followed you and sat down on the couch to talk to you.
20He asked you if you were okay. You told him, ‘you know what you’re doing’, to which he replied, ‘No I don’t, please don’t be aggressive to me', and effectively just asked you to talk to him. You said to him, ‘You are all doing it to me’, and stood up, standing over him as he was still seated. You told him, ‘I know you called me a paedophile, you, Merle and Jessica’.
21Dixon denied this and asked you where you were getting that information from. You said to him, ‘I know you have said that I touched [your niece]’, and he again denied having said that. You became aggressive and started to shape up to him. Dixon then stood up so that you were no longer standing over him.
22At this point your mother walked into the room and asked what was going on. Your brother told your mother what you had said, and she stood between the two of you, yelling at both of you to leave the house.
23As you and your brother were leaving you threw a punch at him. Your mother tried to separate the two of you, but you pushed her out of the way. That pushing her out of the way constitutes the summary assault of her.
24You punched your brother in the right upper chest with a closed right fist whilst he was holding his mobile phone. Your mother again tried to intervene, and you threw your mobile phone at your brother, which missed him but hit a wall near the door and smashed.
25Your brother walked out onto the veranda to get away and told your mother that he was going to call the police. You threatened him saying, ‘do that and I’ll end you, you know what’s coming for you’. Dixon asked you what you meant and you said, ‘I’ll get our other cousins DT and Shannon to fuck you up’.
26You walked back inside the house saying, ‘I will keep coming back and doing this again if you call the cops’. Your brother screamed at you that you needed to stop because your mother had a heart appointment and what you were doing was stressing her out. He said this several times and also asked you to leave multiple times, but you refused to do so.
27Your brother then walked back outside and proceeded to call the police. At this point you fly-kicked him in the face, causing his phone to fall out of his hands and him to feel immediate pain in his lip. There was a lot of blood. You then repeatedly punched him with clenched fists to his face and chest, connecting at least five times whilst he put his arms up to try to protect himself.
28Dixon and your mother pleaded with you to stop and managed to momentarily hold you on the ground, but you got back up and removed a fillet knife out of your pocket. The knife was about 10-15 cm long.
29Your brother was worried you would use the knife, so he grabbed you and pinned you by the throat. Your mother tried to grab the knife from you, and the three of you ended up wrestling onto a table. Your mother managed to remove the knife from you and your brother then let you go.
30Your brother pleaded again with you to stop, saying he needed to attend an award ceremony the next night and needed to catch up with his grandmother. You momentarily calmed down and said to him, ‘I didn’t want to do this, you made me do this’.
31This incident lasted a total of about 8 minutes.
32The police returned your brother's call, but he handed the phone to his mother so that he could drive to the Austin Hospital for treatment of his injuries. When you realised that your mother was speaking with police, you ran away. That was at about 9:38 in the morning. Police attended the scene later on.
33Your brother received medical treatment for the following injuries
a.Cut lip requiring stitches.
b.Swollen and bruised jaw.
c.Bruising to his chest.
34At around 2:50 in the afternoon of that same day, you arrived at an address in Reservoir where your cousin, Matthew Merlino, and his partner, Brenda Garoni, were present in a bungalow at the rear of the property. They saw you walking up the driveway to the property on CCTV, remove a knife from around the waist of your pants and continue walking towards the side gate.
35Believing that you intended to harm them, your cousin armed himself with a baseball bat to protect himself and Garoni. You walked through the side gate and up to the rear of the bungalow, opened the door and went inside the bungalow.
36Garoni placed herself between you and Merlino, believing you would not use the knife against her. You grabbed her around the waist and began swinging the knife behind her and towards Merlino. You said ‘get out of the way Brenda, just let me do it’, and, ‘If he wants to call me a paedophile then I’ll get the job done’. You reached around her and stabbed at Merlino. Garoni felt Merlino leaning on her for support and then falling backwards, pulling her and you to the ground with him. The three of you then got back up and Garoni screamed at you to get out. You responded, ‘Brenda, sis, just move, I’m here to end it, let me get it done’.
37At this stage two people who were in the main house at that premises, heard the commotion and ran over to the bungalow. The male, Garoni’s father, grabbed hold of your wrist to stop you from stabbing Merlino further. You screamed at him to let him go.
38Garoni thought you wanted to leave, so asked her father, to let you go, which he did. You walked back over to the side gate and calmly walked down the driveway before running off up the street. You were still holding the knife and had taken the baseball bat that your cousin had been holding.
39You were seen running down the street covered in blood, with the knife and baseball bat in your hand. An ambulance was called and police attended the property around five minutes later. The whole incident lasted around five minutes.
40You had stabbed Merlino around eight times. Garoni described him as struggling to breathe and said that ‘his whole intestine was hanging out of his right side like a basketball’.
41Merlino was transported to hospital where he was treated for multiple stab wounds including:
a.5-6 cm laceration to forehead;
b.10 cm laceration to his back, 10 cm laceration to right leg and 3 cm laceration to lower right leg;
c.Lacerations to the lower chest and abdomen;
d.Laceration to lower abdomen with bowels viewable; and
e.Lacerations to hands which required a thumb skin graft.
42He underwent two surgeries and remained in hospital for 7 days.
43During the assault Garoni suffered cuts to her clothing and bruising and soreness to her face and cheek.
44You ran to your aunt's home in Reservoir, and told her, ‘I’ve fucked up’. Police arrived at around 3:43 pm and found you hiding behind a door in one of the rear bedrooms at your aunt's place and arrested you. You were taken to Reservoir Police Station and gave a no comment interview. You were charged and remanded in custody and have been in custody ever since.
Your Personal Circumstances
45Turning now to your personal circumstances. These were outlined in defence written and oral submissions, a chronology provided by defence counsel, a Forensicare Mental Health Community Corrections Screening Program Assessment Summary, and a report of Forensic Psychologist, Pamela Matthews, dated 25 May 2023. The Forensicare Assessment Summary was prepared by a Senior Social Worker, Amy Meiklejohn, for the matter for which you were in custody immediately prior to this offending. She assessed you via video-link to prison on 8 August 2022. Ms Matthews assessed you on 19 April 2023 for this matter.
46You are a 26 year old Aboriginal man, being born in February 1997. You were 25 at the time of the offending.
47Your parents separated when you were two years old. Due to what you report as your parents’ alcoholism, violence towards you and each other, and your fathers’ heroin use, you were placed in the care of the then Department of Health and Human Services. There were multiple attempts to have you placed in the care of either parent, but you were always removed. Your childhood was marred by transience, including periods of living with each parent, living with your Aunt, being in foster care or residential state care or secure welfare.
48You report experiencing physical abuse from both of your parents and from older children in foster care and secure welfare. While in residential state care you were the victim of sexual abuse from staff and other children. This abuse stopped when you were 10 years old.
49You began using illicit substances when you were 8 or 9 years old, starting with cannabis and alcohol but progressing to other substances, including methylamphetamine, benzodiazepines and heroin. By the time you were 15 you were using methylamphetamine daily and this continued whenever you were not incarcerated. You have had two overdoses.
50According to Ms Matthews your drug court assessment in September 2022 suggested that you were using 4 grams of cannabis daily, an amount of amphetamine daily, six non-prescribed sedatives daily, and 6 ml of GHB daily. Further, you indicated that you were only abstinent in custody.
51You attended many schools before ultimately leaving school in year 7 and not returning. You have little to no employment experience. You are on a disability support pension for your mental health.
52Both your parents are Indigenous. Your mother, Carol, lives in Melbourne and is one of the stolen generations. Your father, Johnnie, died of cancer in 2020 when you were aged 23. You were in custody in solitary confinement at the time of his death and did not attend his funeral. You are still grieving his death.
53It is difficult to be precise, but you have several half-siblings. In 2019 when you were aged 22, you found your sister, Lisa, after she had suicided by hanging. Following this, you isolated yourself and your drug use significantly increased. You told Ms Champion that at this time your paranoia increased, and you started hearing voices.
54You have one child, aged six. You have not had contact with your son for three years. His mother left when you resumed your drug use following Lisa’s death. You want to have contact with your son but do not know how to go about it.
55At the time of the offending you were in a relationship, but you ended it afterwards as you found your situation overwhelming.
56You told Ms Matthews that you first experienced psychosis at age 18 or 19 and your family at the time told you to get off drugs. Since 2017 you have had four public inpatient psychiatric unit admissions, the most recent being in February 2022. Since 2019 you have had four instances of involuntary assessment or treatment under the Mental Health Act. You reported to Ms Meiklejohn previous experiences with self-harm, with your most recent suicide attempt being in 2021.
57Ms Meiklejohn noted that between 2018 and 2022 you were diagnosed at different times with different conditions, including Acute Stress Reaction, Adjustment Disorder, Depression, Mental and Behavioural Disorder in the form of psychosis due to Cannabis/Methamphetamine use and Foetal Alcohol Syndrome.
58Ms Matthews noted that you presented with paranoid delusions and auditory hallucinations relating to the belief that you had been microchipped. She said you were on Seroquel and Avanza in custody and wondered whether you mistook your depo injections for the insertion of a microchip.
59She described your presentation as Borderline, which I take to be Borderline Personality Disorder, a condition characterised by pervasive instability in personal relationships, self-image, and emotions, and marked impulsivity, self‑harm, and inappropriate and intense anger. She noted that you appear to experience anxiety and depression and are disinhibited. I will return to her diagnosis and opinion shortly.
Objective Gravity of Your Offending and Moral Culpability
60The objective gravity of the offending and the moral culpability of the offender are crucial factors in determining any sentence. While the offences of aggravated burglary and recklessly cause serious injury are the most serious of your crimes, all your offences are serious.
61Your attack on your brother was vicious, protracted and completely unprovoked. You should not even have been at your mother’s house, let alone have been there after taking ice and behaving in such an appalling way. Dixon was only trying to help you and you turned upon him repeatedly punching him, making threats, and kicking him to the face. You did not care that your mother was watching and were so intent on getting at your brother that when she intervened you pushed her away without regard for her safety. You were not deterred by your mother and brother’s pleas to stop, but rather produced a knife and then wrestled your mother and brother for it. The terrifying incident only came to an end when you realised your mother was calling the police.
62Your attack on your cousin was even worse. It was not only vicious, protracted and completely unprovoked, it was also premeditated and much more dangerous because of your use of a knife. Further, the attack occurred in your cousin’s own home where he and his female partner were entitled to feel safe. It also resulted in much more serious injuries. Again, you had little to no regard to the safety of your cousin's female partner.
63The reason you did all this was your wholly mistaken belief that your brother and your cousin had been saying you were a paedophile. You told Ms Matthews that whilst they did not say it to you directly, you knew about it because you had been microchipped, apparently by a doctor. Given you maintained this belief when you saw Ms Matthews, and at that time had been drug free for 6 months, she believes your diagnosis is schizophrenia rather than drug induced psychosis. She also believed, and I quote, 'There is a strong likelihood Mr Martin Wright's combined personality features, particularly associated with his family, and symptoms of schizophrenia, were causative of his offending'.
64As I said to Ms Champion, I am not prepared to accept a diagnosis of schizophrenia from Ms Matthews, who is a psychologist, not a psychiatrist and who has had limited opportunity to assess you and review pertinent records. For the same reasons, to the extent Ms Matthews purported to diagnose you with borderline personality disorder, I have reservations about that. Further, appreciating that Ms Matthews contemplated the possibility that you had consumed illicit drugs and/or not taken your prescribed medication prior to your offending, the fact remains that her opinion as to the causes of your offending was given without the knowledge of those matters.
65That said, I do accept that you currently suffer from persecutory delusions which are independent of substance use and that you likely did so at the time of your offending. I also accept that your delusions and paranoia played a role in your conduct on that day and that your moral culpability is somewhat lessened because of that. However, the mitigatory effect of your poor mental health is itself lessened by the fact you took illicit drugs prior to your offending. You were 25 years old at the time of these offences, with a lengthy criminal history. You must have known that taking ice would likely lead to problematic behaviour on your part, and yet you did it anyway. Further, you did it almost immediately upon your release from prison and notwithstanding your knowledge of a family violence intervention order against you. You should have been on your best behaviour and not done anything to jeopardise your situation, let alone the safety of anyone else.
66It also must be said that even if your brother and cousin had been saying the things you believed they had, that would in no way have justified your conduct, which would still have been appalling.
67There is another matter apart from your mental health which reduces your moral culpability and that is your history of childhood trauma and disadvantage. This was something not within your control and I accept that its effects are enduring. Further, your early exposure to drugs, abuse and neglect likely contributed to your own foray into illicit drugs as a child with all that flowed from that, including, quite possibly, your mental health issues. You are clearly not to be judged as harshly as a person who did what you did without those childhood experiences and background.
Impact of Your Offending
68I am required to take into account the impact of your offending on your victims and their personal circumstances.[4]
[4] Section 5(2)(daa), (da) and (db).
69I did not receive any victim impact statements from your mother or your brother, but it is clear from the circumstances of the offending that your conduct on that night would have been frightening and extremely upsetting for them.
70I did receive a victim impact statement from your cousin, Matthew Merlino, and another one from his partner, Brenda Garoni. Both of those victim impact statements talked about the lasting effects of your crimes on them. They both spoke about the disruption to their lives, their fear about leaving the house, and their emotions of anger and fear and frustration. They spoke about the strain on their relationships and their fear for the safety of everyone, especially for their children, who they said witnessed your assault.
71They spoke about the physical scars on Merlino and the fact that they are a constant reminder of that terrible incident. They also spoke about the physical effects on the mobility of Merlino because of the injuries you caused him, and the loss of general enjoyment of life that they have experienced.
72They also spoke about their loss of the sense of security that they had in their home because of this assault, and the disruption to family relationships. It is clear that the events of that afternoon have had lasting effects on your cousin and his partner.
Current Sentencing Practices
73To promote consistency of approach in sentencing, particularly the application of relevant principles, I am required to have regard to current sentencing practices which may be gleaned from statistics or sentences imposed in other cases or both. I was not referred to any comparable cases by either counsel, however I have had regard to the latest available Sentencing Advisory Council Snapshots, being December 2021, for your indictable offences whilst recognising the limitations involved in such an exercise.
74Ultimately my duty is to impose a just and appropriate sentence on you in the unique circumstances of this case.
Plea of Guilty, Co-Operation and Remorse
75You are entitled to a significant discount in your sentence for the fact you pleaded guilty and did so at a very early stage, that being at a committal case conference on 8 March 2023. In so doing you facilitated the course of justice and took legal responsibility for your crimes. You also spared your victims the ordeal of coming to court to give evidence, which in this case would have been a difficult thing to do. Moreover, it is still the case that pleas of guilty entered at this time, whether you call it during or after the pandemic, are to be given extra weight and sentences should reflect this.[5]
[5] For example Worboyes v The Queen [2021] VSCA 169 at [39].
Your Character and Risk of Reoffending
76I turn to your character and risk of reoffending. Unfortunately, your criminal history suggests that your prospects of rehabilitation are not good. It is a history consistent with your longstanding drug use and unstable background. It commenced when you were 16 years old in the Children's Court.
77You have come before the courts for a range of offences from shop thefts and other types of dishonesty, including robberies, armed robberies and burglaries, to property damage, weapons offences and crimes of violence. You have priors for aggravated burglary and also attempted aggravated burglary.
78There are numerous breaches of court orders, including bail, corrections orders and intervention orders, some of which at least involved your mother.
79You have been given a range of penalties, many of which have attempted to assist in your rehabilitation. You have received a number of terms of imprisonment and also corrections orders. You have been given many chances by the courts, but nothing has deterred you and nothing has rehabilitated you up until this point.
80Ms Matthews’ opinion of your prospects of rehabilitation is, 'Mr Martin Wright's risk of reoffending in a similar manner is high and will continue to be high without mental health supervision and support'. I note that she does not mention your need to continue abstinence from drugs, but obviously that is an important issue.
81I accept you should be given mental health supervision and support. However, I repeat the courts have tried to do this previously, seemingly to no avail. You are still relatively young, with a lot of life ahead of you. I do not regard you as a lost cause and I do intend to fix a relatively low non-parole period to try and promote your rehabilitation, but if you are to have a future you must control the things that you can control. The major thing you can control is your illicit drug use. If you do not stop it your life will be wasted.
The Burden of Imprisonment
82In determining the appropriate sentence, I must consider how a term of imprisonment would be likely to impact you. Ms Matthews described you as coping reasonably well in prison and Ms Champion specifically disavowed any reliance on Verdins limbs 5 and 6. Nevertheless, I take into account two factors in mitigation. First, that being Indigenous, you have a higher risk of self-harm or harm in prison than non-Indigenous inmates. Secondly, you are being sentenced during the COVID–19 pandemic or its aftermath. Although the restrictions imposed in prisons to prevent the spread of the virus have now largely been removed, I accept that you are being imprisoned in a time of uncertainty and that those restrictions may well be reimposed with the consequence that prison would once again be more onerous.
Purposes of Sentencing
83Turning to the purposes of sentencing, I am obliged not to impose a more severe sentence than is necessary to achieve the sentencing purposes of just punishment, deterrence, rehabilitation, denunciation, and protection of the community. A custodial sentence must only be imposed as a last resort and then must be the absolute minimum required.
84Further, when there are multiple charges, such as here, the total effective sentence must not offend the principle of totality, meaning you must not be punished any more than is proportionate and appropriate to your overall criminality.
85General deterrence and denunciation are paramount sentencing considerations in crimes of violence, especially when they occur against family members, in contravention of intervention orders and in other people’s homes. In your case specific deterrence and community protection are also important considerations given your lengthy criminal history and risk of reoffending. I accept that the principles of general and specific deterrence should be moderated given your history of disadvantage and mental ill health, but they still remain important. I also accept that the best way of ensuring community protection is by your rehabilitation, and the best way of achieving that is to give you a relatively long period of supervision in the community upon your release from custody, in other words a relatively short non-parole period.
Sentence
86Mr Wright, just stand up please. Weighing up the competing considerations as best I can, you are convicted on each charge and sentenced to terms of imprisonment as follows.
87On Charge 1, causing injury recklessly to your brother, Dixon Patten, by repeatedly punching him to his face and chest, and kicking him to his face, 11 months.
88On Charge 2, contravention of a family violence intervention order, intending to cause harm or fear for safety, comprising you assaulting your brother in the presence of your mother, she being the protected person under the order, five months.
89On the charge of aggravated burglary comprising you entering the bungalow in which your cousin, Matthew Merlino, was living, intending to assault him and armed with a knife, three years and two months' imprisonment, that is 38 months.
90On Charge 4, causing serious injury recklessly to your cousin, by repeatedly stabbing him, four years and six months, that is 54 months. This is the base sentence.
91On summary Charge 1, contravening a family violence intervention order by attending your mother's house on 16 November 2022, two months.
92On summary Charge 11, the unlawful assault of your mother by pushing her out of the way during your assault on your brother, one month.
93On summary Charge 12, possessing a controlled weapon without excuse, being the knife that you produced at your mother's house, three months.
94On summary Charge 22, assault with a weapon, comprising you placing Brenda Garoni in fear of being struck with a knife, one month.
95I direct that four months of the sentence on Charge 1, one month of the sentence on Charge 2, two months of the sentence on Charge 3, one month of the sentence on summary Charge 1, two weeks of the sentence on summary Charge 11, one month of the sentence on summary Charge 12, and two weeks of the sentence on summary Charge 22 be cumulative with each other, and on the sentence imposed on Charge 4.
96That makes a total effective sentence of five years and four months, or
64 months. In respect of that sentence, I set a non-parole period of three years and three months or 39 months.97I declare that you have served a total of 211 days pre-sentence detention, not including today, in respect of that sentence, and order that this declaration be entered in the records of the court, and that the period be deducted administratively.
Section 6AAA
98If you had not pleaded guilty to these charges, and been found guilty by a jury, I would have sentenced you to a total effective sentence of imprisonment of eight years and six months, with a non-parole period of six years and three months.
Ancillary Orders
99The prosecution have made an application for a disposal order which was not opposed by the defence, and I will make that order.
100Mr Wright, you understand that sentence?
101OFFENDER: Yes.
102HER HONOUR: It is not up to me as to whether you will be released at the end of your non-parole period, it is up to the Adult Parole Board. They will assess you and that is the earliest time at which you can be released, that is three years and three months. In respect of that you have already served 211 days, not counting today.
103Just have a seat there for the moment, Mr Wright. Are there any other matters that I need to address? Thank you. In case you wish to speak to Mr Wright I will not direct that he be removed right now, I will leave the Bench.
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