R v Dogan

[2011] NSWDC 86

District Court

New South Wales

Medium Neutral Citation:	R v DOGAN [2011] NSWDC 86
Hearing dates:	28 July 2011
Decision date:	28 July 2011
Jurisdiction:	Criminal
Before:	Berman SC DCJ
Decision:	Sentenced to imprisonment
Catchwords:	CRIMINAL LAW - Sentence - Form 1 - Possess unregistered firearms - Possess a precursor - conceal serious indictable offences
Cases Cited:	Mack v R [2009] NSWCCA 216
Category:	Sentence
Parties:	The Crown Erkan Dogan
Representation:	Mr G Turnbull - Offender Director of Public Prosecution The Law Practice
File Number(s):	2009/00078683

SENTENCE

1. HIS HONOUR: Erkan Dogan grew up in rural Queensland. His home life was unusual to the point of being disturbing. He and his siblings, at least most of them, appear to have tried to get away from home as quickly as possible. His older sister moved down to Sydney and when the offender was seventeen he followed. He lived with her for a time but soon began to escalate his drug use, not only recreationally, but also he commenced using steroids as part of his gym activities. Somehow he got into contact with a very serious criminal organisation. At the age of only twenty he committed a large number of serious offences for which he must now be sentenced.

1. The first of those offences was one of possessing more than three unregistered firearms, any one of which is a prohibited firearm. That is an offence that has a maximum penalty of twenty years imprisonment and a standard non-parole period of ten years. Although the standard non-parole period is not of direct application because of the offender's early pleas of guilty, it remains as an important guidepost to the sentence I should impose upon him. The lengthy standard non-parole period of ten years is a good indication as to the seriousness with which parliament says judges should treat offences of this kind.

1. The offender also is to be sentenced for possessing a precursor, that is a substance that can be used to manufacture drugs, in this case 6.39 litres of a substance called safrole. The maximum penalty for that offence is five years imprisonment.

1. Then there are three offences of concealing a serious indictable offence. The first is an offence of concealing the circumstance that other people possessed more than three unregistered firearms, any one of which is a prohibited firearm or pistol. The second is concealing a serious indictable offence of supplying a commercial quantity of methylamphetamine and the third is concealing a serious indictable offence, namely the possession of people known to the offender of offensive weapons, which were in fact explosive devices. It is important to understand that by his plea of guilty, the offender admits that he understood that those people possessed the explosives with intent themselves to commit indictable offences.

1. What I have described is already a large number of serious offences, but there are more. The offender asks that when I sentence him I take into account fourteen further offences on a form 1. They are attached to…