R v Hills

[2004] QCA 205

SUPREME COURT OF QUEENSLAND

CITATION:

R v Hills [2004] QCA 205

PARTIES:

R
v
HILLS, Rodney Thomas
 (applicant)

FILE NO/S:

CA No 68 of 2004
DC No 140 of 2003

DIVISION:

Court of Appeal

PROCEEDING:

Sentence Application

ORIGINATING COURT:

District Court at Maryborough

DELIVERED ON:

18 June 2004

DELIVERED AT:

Brisbane

HEARING DATE:

31 May 2004

JUDGES:

Jerrard JA, Atkinson and Philippides JJ
Separate reasons for judgment of each member of the Court, each concurring as to the order made

ORDER:

Application for leave to appeal against sentence dismissed

CATCHWORDS:

CRIMINAL LAW – JUDGMENT AND PUNISHMENT –SENTENCE – FACTORS TO BE TAKEN INTO ACCOUNT – CRIMINAL HISTORY – where applicant sentenced to 3 years imprisonment for assault occasioning bodily harm – where applicant has extensive criminal history – whether sentence manifestly excessive

COUNSEL:

The applicant appeared on his own behalf

R G Martin for the respondent

SOLICITORS:

The applicant appeared on his own behalf

Director of Public Prosecutions (Queensland) for the respondent

1. JERRARD JA: In this application I have had the advantage of reading the reasons for judgment and order proposed by Philippides J, and I respectfully agree with what Her Honour has written.  I add the following comments.

1. Mr Hills argued his application himself and is plainly an intelligent and capable person.  It is also clear from what he said during the hearing that he still prefers to excuse his own behaviour rather than admit he has broken the law.  For example, he described his conviction for the dangerous operation of a motor vehicle, incurred on 1 August 2002, as resulting from a car sliding on a road.  The implication was that this was accidental behaviour of a vehicle rather than its dangerous operation by him.  Nevertheless, he was convicted.

1. Likewise he explained his convictions incurred on 9 May 2003 for various offences involving weapons as having happened because he possessed two shortened firearms (a rifle and shotgun).  He said his reason for having them was the very hard and dangerous nature of some of the men he had spent so many years with in a Queensland prison.  Fear of what those men might want to do to him did not explain why the weapons were shortened, nor why their identification marks had been altered.  He said that was the condition in which he had acquired the weapons; but he pleaded guilty to altering those marks.

1. That persisting willingness to excuse what he has done in the past makes it very difficult to hold that the sentence imposed on him was manifestly excessive.  It certainly was a severe sentence for his offence, which was committed by just one blow, and it involved no weapons at all.  The observation could also be made that imprisoning Mr Hills is achieving little in deterring him from the use of violence and is not achieving any of the rehabilitation which his obvious intelligence shows to be possible.  Mr Hills described having received reasonably intensive counselling in anger management for a number of months…