DPP v Zanin
[2020] VCC 963
•30 June 2020
| IN THE COUNTY COURT OF VICTORIA AT MELBOURNE CRIMINAL DIVISION | Revised Not Restricted Suitable for Publication |
Case No. CR-19-02529
Indictment: K12267537
| DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS |
| v |
| DONNA ZANIN |
---
JUDGE: | HIS HONOUR JUDGE D SEXTON | |
WHERE HELD: | Melbourne | |
DATE OF HEARING: | 19 June 2020 | |
DATE OF SENTENCE: | 30 June 2020 | |
CASE MAY BE CITED AS: | DPP v Zanin | |
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION: | [2020] VCC 963 | |
REASONS FOR SENTENCE
---
Subject:CRIMINAL LAW
Catchwords:
Legislation Cited: Crimes Act 1958; Sentencing Act 1991
Cases Cited:Dyason v R [2015] 251 A Crim R 366; DPP v Venn [2017] VCC 1043; Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) v Caulfield [2019] VSCA 131; Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) v Felton [2007] 16 VR 214; Bellizia v R [2016] VSCA 21
Sentence:
---
APPEARANCES: | Counsel | Solicitors |
| For the DPP | Mr S Davison | Solicitor for the Office of Public Prosecutions |
| For the Offender | Dr M Fitzgerald | Doogue & George Criminal Lawyers |
HIS HONOUR:
Introduction
1 Donna Lee Zanin, you have pleaded guilty to an indictment containing six charges of theft contrary to s.74(1) of the Crimes Act 1958. This offence carries a maximum penalty of 10 years’ imprisonment.
2 Charge 1 involves theft by you on 21 November 2014 of the amount of $5,906.00 belonging to your then employer, Schnitz Franchising Pty Ltd.
3 Charge 2 is a rolled-up charge, referring to the theft by you from your employer between 9 January 2015 and 10 December 2015 in the amount of $122,081.63.
4 Charge 3, another rolled-up charge, involves the theft by you from your employer between 8 January 2016 and 13 December 2016 in the amount of $44,931.43.
5 Charge 4, another rolled-up charge, involves the theft by you from your employer between 27 January 2017 and 27 December 2017 in the amount of $129,032.00.
6 Charge 5, another rolled-up charge, involves the theft by you from your employer between 3 January 2018 and 24 December 2018 in the amount of $239,500.00.
7 Charge 6 involves the theft by you from your employer on 4 January 2019 of the amount of $10,000.00.
8 Schedules A, B, C & D set out the various discrete transactions which make up the rolled-up charges, Charges 2, 3, 4 and 5.
9 The total amount stolen by you over 57 individual transactions between 21 November 2014 and 4 January 2019 was $551,451.06.
Circumstances of Offending
10 The circumstances of your offending were set out in the Summary of Prosecution Opening dated 22 May 2020, Exhibit A, at your plea hearing. Through your counsel, you accepted that this document represents a proper factual basis for sentencing in relation to your offending.
11 By way of brief summary, in 2007, you were employed by Mr Andrew Dyduk as a bookkeeper for an IT company, Kinetic Digital. Your job was to process accounts, pay suppliers, collect debts and generally manage the bookkeeping of the business.
12 In 2009 Mr Dyduk started another company along with his father and brother, Schnitz Australia, which had its head office in Chapel Street, South Yarra. Schnitz is an Australian casual-dining restaurant chain specialising in schnitzel dishes. It is a franchised business with 73 stores throughout Australia.
13 In late 2009 you began contracting to Schnitz Australia to perform the same role you had been performing for Kinetic Digital. In your capacity as bookkeeper, you had access to all bank accounts for both companies. You were described by Mr Dyduk as a financial controller, who was trusted to process payroll for all staff in stores and in the head office.
14 Some years after you commenced in this capacity for both companies, you commenced offending, on 21 November 2014. From that date until 4 January 2019, you utilised your trusted position to steal from your employer, by transferring money from the company account to your own personal account. You did this through 57 individual transactions, sometimes in amounts as little as $2,000 and sometimes through transactions exceeding $20,000, between 21 November 2014 and 4 January 2019, amassing a total of $551,451.06.
15 In the middle of 2018, Schnitz Australia undertook a significant restructure, and in late 2018 a second qualified accountant was employed in the finance department, the restructure having identified a risk in the business as having only one accountant. This new role would ultimately make your role redundant. Indeed, in January 2019 you were formally made redundant from your full-time role, and you were then employed on a contract basis to migrate data from the old financial system to the new system. During this time you still had access to Schnitz’s bank accounts. You were aware, however, that your access to the systems would be progressively restricted with the transfer to the new financial system.
16 At the time of being made redundant in January 2019 your annual taxable salary was $130,000.
17 In 2019, the finance manager with Schnitz Australia, Regan Cheriton, began to have suspicions that someone was stealing money from the Schnitz ANZ bank account. You reported directly to Regan Cheriton. On 4 June 2019 Mr Cheriton reconciled an inter-company fund transfer account and identified a number of suspicious transactions. He then contacted Schnitz’s ANZ relationship manager to discuss his concerns about the suspicious transactions. Mr Cheriton was advised that the investigation could take some weeks, and so Mr Cheriton asked ANZ to escalate matters urgently.
18 Two days later, on the afternoon of 6 June 2019, you attended at the South Yarra Schnitz office to continue your contract work of migrating data from the old to the new financial system. By this time, you had almost completed the work assigned to you and your contract was coming to an end. You asked if you could assist with the reconciliation of the inter-company fund transfer account. Mr Cheriton informed you that he had already reconciled this account and was currently investigating a few transactions. Mr Cheriton did not divulge any further information to you, as he was suspicious that you were involved.
19 The next morning at 11.30 on 7 June 2019 you attended at the Richmond Police Station, identified yourself as the financial controller at Schnitz, and advised police of your offending. Later that day you were formally interviewed and made extensive admissions to your criminality.
20 You told police in that interview that you had been stealing money from your workplace for an extended period of time, and you had been waiting to get caught. You had full access to all of the bank accounts and you started pretending to do an inter-company transfer while actually transferring money to your own Commonwealth Bank account. You told police that the amount stolen would be over $500,000, and that you had spent the money mostly on extravagant holidays, expensive restaurants, alcohol and parties. You also provided a sustained and detailed narrative in relation to wanting to get caught, wanting to self-sabotage, purposely stealing an extreme amount of money, and knowing that you would probably go to jail. You provided police with your passport, detailing your extensive travel which had been funded through your criminality.
21 You also provided police with a detailed text message that you had sent to Mr Dyduk shortly before attending at the police station. In that detailed text message, you apologised for betraying Mr Dyduk’s trust. You said amongst other things:
“I’ve decided I’m ruining my life and have been enacting a plan to ruin my life for some time. I can’t deal with the pressure of living the fantasy life where I’m a perfect human, and I don’t deserve or appreciate it. ... I haven’t felt the same about having a successful life since my dad died and I made a very deliberate plan to start stealing money because it was a simple way out that I could not take back and I knew that I would be caught eventually and kept going to make it bad enough that I would lose everything and go to gaol. ...I sound insane but I will serve time in jail. I want to serve time in gaol. I’m at the police station now confessing and will plead guilty and try and make the process as quick as possible.”
22 Following the interview you also provided police, who presumably would have had no idea of your offending prior to your attendance, with your online Commonwealth Bank statements for the relevant period.
23 Subsequent immigration enquiries revealed that you had used your passport for 34 international flights between 30 December 2013 and 17 March 2019, to various locations throughout the world.
24 You were formally charged on 28 August 2019, and pleaded guilty at a committal mention on 13 December 2019. As conceded by the prosecution, your guilty plea was entered at the earliest stage of the proceedings.
25 As indicated, the overall loss to the company was an amount in excess of half a million dollars. None of this has been repaid by you. At your plea hearing I was informed that you did not have the means to do so.
26 At your plea hearing, I was advised by the prosecution that Mr Dyduk on behalf of the relevant companies had been offered the opportunity of providing a victim impact statement, but had chosen not to do so. Notwithstanding the absence of a victim impact statement in this matter, it can safely be inferred that your offending has significantly affected what essentially appears to be a family business. I note in that regard that police enquiries with Mr Dyduk on the day you attended on police indicated that a meeting with Schnitz Australia board members was then taking place, as the company was in trouble financially.[1]
[1]Statement of Detective Senior Constable Holly Ticehurst dated 1 October 2019, at paragraph 5
Nature and Gravity of your Offending, and your Level of Culpability
27 Perhaps most significantly, the gravity of your offending is accentuated by the significant breach of trust involved. You were entrusted by Mr Dyduk on behalf of the companies with considerable responsibility and autonomy, having, it seems, almost unfettered access to the company’s finances. Through your offending, you breached the trusted position given to you in a very significant manner. Through your own admission, you abused your position of trust to fund what can only be described as an extravagant lifestyle, with the proceeds being spent on multiple overseas holidays and associated extravagances. Given the number of transactions over a period which just exceeded four years, it is clear that you undertook a carefully calculated course of conduct over a significant period of time, involving repeated deliberate acts of dishonesty and, ultimately, a substantial amount of money.
28 I accept that your offending was relatively unsophisticated, in that you simply transferred money from the company account to your own account. There were no additional steps taken to conceal the thefts, such as false invoicing, payments to sham shelf companies, or the use of bank accounts in false names. However, given your respected position within the company, such intricate methods of concealing your offending were most likely not required.
29 In written submissions, your counsel conceded the various aggravating features of your offending - the significant amount of money involved, the significant period of time over which the offending continued, the persistent and repeated nature of the offending, the serious and sustained breach of your employer’s trust, and the degree of planning involved in the offending. Your counsel accepted that your offending constitutes a serious example of theft from an employer for these reasons. In my view this was a sensible concession on the part of your counsel, as in my view your offending does represent a serious and concerning example of theft from employer.
30 Again, as conceded by your counsel, you were clearly conscious of the wrongfulness of your conduct, as acknowledged by you to both your employer and to the police. Your conduct was not the result of impaired mental functioning, which would otherwise moderate your culpability, and as your counsel indicated in written submissions, your offending did not arise out of need or financial insecurity.
31 When you were interviewed by police, notwithstanding repeated queries by them in relation to your mental state, given the somewhat bizarre explanation you were then providing in relation to the offending representing an extended exercise in self-sabotage, you repeatedly excluded any aspect of impaired mental functioning which might otherwise be relevant to explain your offending. Rather, you provided an extensive narrative in relation to your deliberate attempt to engage in criminality which would lead to imprisonment as a means of resetting your life. Dr Godfredson, a forensic psychologist who assessed you and provided a report dated 18 June 2020 (Exhibit 2), referred to your explanation as “unusual”, a description which, in my view, is a significant understatement. Your counsel referred to your explanation given to police as candid and honest, if not unreliable. Your counsel conceded that your explanation both to police and to Mr Dyduk in the text message to which I have earlier referred, was problematic in relation to your moral culpability. It was conceded that this narrative of deliberate self-sabotage did not mitigate your moral culpability, and essentially represented an inadequate, but candid, explanation for your offending.
32 I must say that I am left somewhat bewildered in relation to the explanation given by you. Whilst, when you attended upon police it must have been clear to you that the detection of your criminality was imminent given the pre-existing investigations taking place within the company, you nevertheless provided a detailed account of the extent of your offending to police prior to being “found out” by your employer. Whilst your explanation was detailed and candid, as raised with your counsel at the plea hearing, the manner in which you spent the stolen money does not appear to be consistent with this explanation. Indeed, I can only conclude that you simply sustained an extravagant lifestyle through moneys stolen from your employer over an extended period of time.
33 In all the circumstances, I find that your level of moral culpability is significant for the offending.
Personal Circumstances
34 You are currently 42 years of age. Save for this offending, you have no criminal history.
35 You were born and raised in the Morwell area. You are one of three siblings to your father, who was a boilermaker, and your mother, who was a cleaner. Your parents separated when you were 13 years of age, resulting in limited contact with your father, with whom you had previously been close.
36 After your parents’ separation, you apparently took on increased household responsibilities. When you were 16, you moved in with an aunt who was not well, to provide assistance to her. Both your experiences as an adolescent, and later, caring for those in your family unit, cemented your perception that your role within the extended family was to take care of others.
37 You attained a Year-12 education at Maryvale Secondary School before spending time in Western Australia. Your uncle had earlier been murdered when you were 10, and when you were 16, his widow had a nervous breakdown. You moved to Kalgoorlie, where she lived, again fulfilling a carer’s role with her between the ages of 16 and 18.
38 You later moved to Perth, looking unsuccessfully for work, before returning to Morwell and undertaking a TAFE course in accountancy before commencing employment at the age of 21 in accounting and finance roles in Melbourne. In your twenties, you worked for a company named Marine World, starting as an accounts clerk and working your way up to the position of finance manager, working with this company for eight years. Through your work you managed to save funds, and in your mid-twenties you purchased two properties. You eventually quit your employment and travelled internationally for a period, funding your travel through selling your properties. Around this time you had your first significant emotional relationship with another woman. After that relationship ended, you returned to employment, commencing with Kinetic Digital in 2007.
39 Your offending commenced in 2014, some years after you commenced employment with Kinetic. During this early period of employment with Kinetic, you were apparently again close to your father, after enduring significant periods of distance from him. However, in 2012, he suddenly died from liver failure. You had apparently discouraged your siblings from travelling from Western Australia to visit your ailing father, in the belief that his condition was not so imminently dire. You have harboured guilt since your father’s death due to this. You have also endured significant conflict since your father’s death, you have encountered significant acrimony in your dealings with his partner and there were disputes, apparently, over the funeral, the Will and realisation of superannuation. As your counsel explained, you were unaccustomed to such interpersonal hostility.
40 You referred, in your police interview, to your difficulties coping emotionally once your father died. Your counsel explained that your father’s death in 2012, and the resulting emotional difficulties, essentially represent the background within which you commenced offending, after having worked with Kinetic for some years and not offending. Whilst not excusing your conduct, I accept that your personal difficulties, as I have described them, provide somewhat of an explanation for your out-of-character behaviour in stealing from your employer during a difficult time in your life.
Sentencing factors and principles
41 Pursuant to s.5 of the Sentencing Act 1991, I am required to take into account various factors in formulating an appropriate sentence in your case. I have already referred to the maximum penalty for the offence of theft, the nature and gravity of your offending and your level of culpability for it.
42 I am also required to take into account whether or not you pleaded guilty and, if so, the stage in proceedings at which you did so. I accept that you entered your plea of guilty in relation to these charges at the earliest opportunity. Your early plea is consistent with your frank disclosure of your criminality, firstly to your employer by text message, and then when attending on police and confessing to your crimes. At a time when the police would have been completely ignorant as to your offending, you voluntarily disclosed the nature and scale of your offending to them. Whilst, by this time, you must surely have been aware of your imminent detection, I am satisfied that you have been particularly forthcoming with the authorities in relation to the admissions that you have made. Your confession and disclosures to police, coupled with the provision by you of the documentary evidence in relation to your offending, avoided the need for what might otherwise have been a lengthy police investigation. Your admissions clearly drastically abbreviated any such investigation. You essentially provided all information to the police with which to convict you. I am satisfied that your cooperation, disclosures and admissions to police were motivated by a willingness to facilitate the course of justice. I am satisfied, furthermore, that the circumstances in which you made your disclosures to police, coupled with your early plea of guilty, are reflective of remorse on your part. You are therefore deserving of a significant sentencing discount, not only for the utilitarian benefit of your plea of guilty, but also on the basis that it is reflective, in my view, of remorse for your offending.
43 Your counsel further submitted that your actions in paying rent in relation to an investment property connected to Mr Dyduk, in which you may have had an interest, as well as paying additional expenses, such as body corporate fees, represents a goodwill gesture on your part to Mr Dyduk. Your counsel submitted that you had a potential interest in the property, and your payment of expenses in the circumstances as described by your counsel represented an abandonment of an asset that potentially has a future value, thereby representing a restitutionary gesture, which is indicative of remorse. No clear overall amount of moneys paid by you in this regard was identified by your counsel. While, in my view, there appears to be a lack of clarity in relation to this aspect, I am satisfied that you have made payments in relation to the property, which are reflective to some degree of a level of remorse for your offending.
44 I turn now to a consideration of your prospects of rehabilitation. As I have earlier stated, you are to be sentenced as a person without any prior criminal history. Having considered the bundle of references from friends and family tendered at your plea hearing (Exhibit 3), I am satisfied that you have a network of supportive relationships with friends and family members, many of whom refer to your remorse for your offending, and all of whom maintain their support of you, notwithstanding your difficult legal predicament. You also have a significant employment history and significantly, notwithstanding the nature of these charges, since January 2020 you have been employed in a book-keeping and labouring capacity with the “Zimmermann Oz”, as evidenced from the reference from Jan Knecht. Significantly, your employer is aware of your current charges.
45 I also accept that you have sought counselling for personal and emotional issues that were present at the time of your offending. According to Dr Godfredson, you first attended for treatment on 20 August 2019, and have participated in 12 sessions. According to Dr Godfredson, you were referred to him by your general practitioner, and as distinct from other clients of Dr Godfredson, you did not consult him on the advice of a lawyer, nor did you commence treatment assuming that he would prepare a treatment report, favourable or otherwise. Dr Godfredson confirmed that you sought therapy on your own volition. According to Dr Godfredson, save for the offending, you do not exhibit evidence of anti-social attitudes, greed or entitlement. You do not have a serious mental illness. Your difficulties seem to stem from seemingly self-defeating personality traits. You were, according to Dr Godfredson, particularly motivated to deal with some of the interpersonal problems in your life, including new communication strategies with your mother and two other siblings, and endeavouring to break a cycle of readily supporting others while denying your own need for support. Dr Godfredson concluded that you were committed to engaging in further self-reflection to address your relevant personality and interpersonal difficulties, including by way of participating in ongoing therapy.
46 Until the date of your plea hearing, 19 June 2020, you had been residing with Chelsea Nieper, and her husband, Michael, both of whom wrote character references on your behalf. Both individuals were also present at the commencement of your plea hearing, further evidencing the ongoing supports that you retain.
47 The prosecution accepted in this case that your prospects of rehabilitation are good. I agree. In all the circumstances, I regard your prospects of rehabilitation as indeed being good, notwithstanding the gravity of your offending.
48 Your counsel submitted that any sentence of imprisonment would be particularly onerous for you, given your absence of prior criminality, your personal history and personality style, and in particular the added difficulties of a custodial environment caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. I certainly accept that the custodial environment, at present, is a most difficult one, and will cause added hardship to you. Since April this year, significant changes have occurred in the custodial setting due to this unprecedented pandemic. Personal visits have been banned, no doubt causing increased feelings of isolation among prisoners. Many courses are no longer available in their pre-existing forms, if at all. Employment and other activities are largely unavailable. There are considerable restrictions in terms of periods allowed out of cells. Given the problematic demographic within the prison environment, there is considerable anxiety that should COVID-19 enter the custodial system, the virus could spread rapidly, with significant negative outcomes. Whilst to date, thankfully, this has not occurred, I accept that you will be subject to a degree of stress and anxiety as a result of the apprehension that you may be vulnerable to infection in a prison environment. I accept that the extra hardship caused by the pandemic justifies a further mitigatory allowance on sentence.
49 General deterrence and denunciation are primary sentencing principles in cases of this nature. The absence of a prior criminal history and a favourable assessment of an offender’s prospects of rehabilitation are not uncommon in these cases. Specific deterrence often does not feature largely in the sentencing considerations. General deterrence, however, is of particular importance. Offending of this kind is easy to commit and often difficult to detect. Offences such as these are often committed by people who hold positions of trust and who are otherwise of good character. The message needs to be sent to anyone contemplating exploiting or abusing their employment positions to dishonestly enrich themselves that if they are caught they will be punished.[2]
[2]Dyason v R [2015] 251 A Crim R 366 at paragraph [33]
50 In formulating an appropriate sentence in your case, I am also required to take into consideration, as one of the many sentencing factors, current sentencing practices. Your counsel submitted that in the circumstances of this case, a combination sentence involving a term of imprisonment of up to 12 months, followed by a Community Correction Order, would satisfy all the relevant sentencing factors and principles and represent an appropriate penalty in your case. Reliance was placed upon various decisions of this Court and the Court of Appeal involving theft from employer offending and sentences which involved either Community Correction Orders or imprisonment combined with Community Correction Orders. Authorities were referred to, both in oral argument on 19 June 2020[3] and in further written submissions dated 25 June 2020 (Exhibit 4). I have considered those authorities carefully, noting that none of the decisions involve a quantum of over half-a-million dollars, and many of the decisions relied upon were finalised when there was not a 12-month upper limit on a sentence of imprisonment that can be combined with a Community Correction Order.
[3]Bellizia v R [2016] VSCA 21; DPP v Venn [2017] VCC 1043
Sentencing Submissions
51 As I indicated, your counsel urged upon me a combination sentence involving a term of imprisonment of up to 12 months, combined with a Community Correction Order. The prosecution initially submitted that a period of imprisonment combined with a Community Correction Order appropriately reflected the seriousness of your offending. Subsequent to your plea hearing on 19 June 2020, the Court drew to the attention of the parties, the decision of Dyason[4] a decision of the Court of Appeal and the relatively recent 2019 decision of Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) v Caulfield[5] and allowed further supplementary submissions on the issue of current sentencing practices. Subsequently, the prosecution, in written supplementary submissions dated 25 June 2020 (Exhibit C), indicated that following a more detailed review of the current sentencing practices and principles, “The Crown submits that a sentence of a term of imprisonment with a non-parole period would be within range when sentencing for offending of this type”.[6]
[4]Dyason v R [2015] 251 A Crim R 366
[5]DPP v Caulfield [2019] VSCA 131
[6]Supplementary Prosecution Submissions dated 25 June 2020, at paragraph [5]
52 Caulfield[7] involved theft from an employer over a period of three years, during which time the offender stole $463,028.80 from her employer through 84 separate acts of theft within the charged period. The offender was sentenced to two years’ and six months’ imprisonment, with a non-parole period of 18 months.
[7]DPP v Caulfield [2019] VSCA 131
53 At the conclusion of the plea hearing on 19 June 2020, whilst making it clear to you that it was not to be taken as an indication as to the likely sentence, I ordered that you be assessed as to your suitability for a Community Correction Order. You have subsequently been assessed as suitable for such an order. However as I made clear to you, a favourable assessment does not automatically lead to the imposition of a Community Correction Order.
54 At your plea hearing on 19 June 2020, I raised the issue as to whether it was possible to impose an aggregate sentence of imprisonment in relation to this matter, given that all six charges on the Indictment, some of which are rolled-up charges, essentially represent a fairly continuous period of identical offending, with the charges only separated by the prosecution through calendar-year time posts, rather than due to some other distinction. At the plea hearing, both the prosecution and defence indicated that there was no impediment to the imposition of an aggregate sentence in the circumstances. Subsequent to the plea hearing, in light of the principles articulated in Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) v Felton,[8] I allowed for further written submissions on this issue. Having considered those submissions, in light of s.9(4A) of the Sentencing Act 1991, which was inserted after Feltons’ case, I am satisfied that an aggregate sentence of imprisonment is available, notwithstanding the existence of numerous rolled-up charges in this matter. Pursuant to s.9(1) of the Sentencing Act 1991, I am satisfied that the offences on the Indictment are all founded on the same facts, or form a part of a series of offences of the same or similar character, such that I may impose an aggregate sentence of imprisonment in respect of those offences in place of a separate sentence of imprisonment in respect of all or any of them.
[8]Director of Public Prosecutions v Felton [2007] 16 VR 214
Sentence to be imposed
55 Having considered all the relevant factors and principles in this case, I am of the view that a sentence of imprisonment is the only appropriate disposition in this case, particularly given the gravity of your offending and the need to impose a penalty which reflects the sentencing purposes of general deterrence, denunciation and just punishment. In my view, a term of imprisonment not exceeding 12 months, in combination with a Community Correction Order would be insufficient to reflect these matters. In my view, a sentence of imprisonment incorporating a non-parole period is the only appropriate sentence in this case. Given your positive prospects for rehabilitation and the other mitigatory aspects to which I have referred, I will impose a sentence which facilitates a significant parole component, should you be found eligible in due course.
56 I have moderated the length of the sentence, in particular, due to the hardship in custody arising out of the COVID-19 pandemic. Whilst a mitigatory allowance is warranted, in my view, the hardship caused by the COVID-19 pandemic does not justify a reduction in the length of imprisonment that would otherwise make available a combination sentence of imprisonment combined with a Community Correction Order.
57 In relation to the six charges of theft, you are convicted and sentenced to an aggregate sentence of 2 years’ and 3 months’ imprisonment. I order that you serve a period of 16 months before becoming eligible for parole. Mr Davison, the pre-sentence detention figure?
58 MR DAVISON: I have 11 days as well, Your Honour, including today.
59 HIS HONOUR: Yes. Dr Fitzgerald?
60 DR FITZGERALD: I agree with that, Your Honour.
61 HIS HONOUR: I declare that you have served a period of 11 days on this sentence, pursuant to s.18 of the Sentencing Act 1991 and this amount will be deducted from your sentence.
62 Pursuant to s.6AAA of the Sentencing Act 1991, had you not pleaded guilty, I would have imposed a sentence of 3 years’ and 6 months’ imprisonment with a non-parole period of 2 years and 4 months. Yes, thank you. Any ambiguities or issues arising from the sentence, firstly Mr Davison?
63 MR DAVISON: No, Your Honour.
64 HIS HONOUR: Dr Fitzgerald?
65 DR FITZGERALD: Nothing to raise, Your Honour.
66 HIS HONOUR: Yes, all right, thank you very much.
67 DR FITZGERALD: As Your Honour pleases.
- - -
5
3
0