R v Drummond

[2021] NSWDC 510

District Court

New South Wales

• Amendment notes

Medium Neutral Citation:	R v Drummond [2021] NSWDC 510
Hearing dates:	16 September 2021
Date of orders:	16 September 2021
Decision date:	16 September 2021
Jurisdiction:	Criminal
Before:	Sutherland SC DCJ
Decision:	At [18]-[19]
Catchwords:	CRIME — Appeal and review — Sentence severity appeal from Local Court to District Court
Cases Cited:	The Queen v Mauger [2012] NSWCCA 51
Category:	Principal judgment
Parties:	Regina Nicholas Drummond
Representation:	Counsel: P Boulten SC Solicitors: Solicitor for Public Prosecutions Hugo Law Group
File Number(s):	2021/00093888

Judgment

1. This is an appeal by Nicholas Drummond following his conviction before a magistrate sitting at Hornsby Local Court on 21 July past. The circumstances giving rise to his appearance in that Court, not unknown to Hornsby Local Court, started at the Greengate Hotel.

2. I do not see the necessity of going into all of the detail of the background, other than to acknowledge that the situation in which the appellant went out with his mates and had, if I may speak in the colloquial, a skinful, had arisen against the background of a particularly unhappy and unfortunate 2020. The matters that had influenced him at that stage were, in no necessary order of priority, the breakup of a relationship with his girlfriend, surgery undertaken by his father, the death of a family dog, and a dropping out of the course that he was undertaking at university. Indeed, as senior counsel Mr Boulten, who appears on his behalf has pointed out, he had undertaken counselling or therapy, perchance organised by his concerned parents as a consequence of the problems that he was facing and dealing with both emotionally and in life generally through the course of last year.

3. The lockdown that had occurred in Sydney earlier in 2020 had of course been lifted by December and it was against that background that he found himself at The Greengate Hotel at Killara, which is certainly not unknown to have people of his age in an intoxicated state. In due course he made a lewd and completely inappropriate remark to a young lady, who he did not know, but whose dress, by virtue of what is attributed to him, might have been perceived by a 20 year-old former student from Knox to be provocative.

4. Having made the remark and walked past her, he was at the bar when the young lady approached him and in effect demanded that he say sorry for what he had said. He told her in inimitable fashion to “fuck off”.

5. In due course nothing further unfolded at the Greengate. He was there until closing time, which was around midnight, before he and his mates, no doubt intent on continuing drinking, went to a set of premises in Chatswood, which has a longer licence and a later closing time.

6. At the Orchard Hotel it transpired, and I accept his evidence in response to some questions by myself this morning, that completely coincidentally the young lady and her accompanying girlfriend…