R v Lawrence
[2012] VCC 1014
•23 July 2012
| IN THE COUNTY COURT OF VICTORIA | Revised Not Restricted Suitable for Publication |
AT MELBOURNE
CRIMINAL DIVISION
CR-11-01441
| DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS |
| v |
| CRAIG LAWRENCE |
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JUDGE: | HER HONOUR JUDGE HAMPEL | |
WHERE HELD: | Melbourne | |
DATE OF HEARING: | 23 July 2012 | |
DATE OF SENTENCE: | 23 July 2012 | |
CASE MAY BE CITED AS: | R v. Lawrence | |
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION: | [2019] VCC 1014 | |
REASONS FOR SENTENCE
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Catchwords: Sentence – armed robbery – knife – soft target – extensive criminal history including armed robbery priors – disadvantaged background – sexually abused while in state care – drug & alcohol abuse – prisoner institutionalised – better then expected prospects for rehabilitation – extensive one on one counselling in prison – need to allow for parole supervision
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APPEARANCES: | Counsel | Solicitors |
| For the Crown | Mr T. Roper | OPP |
| For the Accused | Mr M. White | Matthew White & Associates |
HER HONOUR:
1 Craig Lawrence, you have pleaded guilty to one charge of armed robbery. It occurred on Sunday, 7 November 2010 in the early evening, somewhere after 8 pm.
2 You were seen to park a car not far from, or just around the corner from, a fish and chip shop known as Splash in 17 Spring Road in Hyatt. You got out of the car armed with a black handled knife and walked around the corner towards the fish and chip shop.
3 Your conduct attracted the attention of somebody who was standing nearby, who kept you under observation from then on.
4 You walked into the fish and chip shop and the bystander, who had followed but was keeping out of sight, could hear screaming come from it. You had walked up to the serving counter and approached the victim, the person who was serving there, Antonius Gadorous. You held the knife about 15 centimetres away from his stomach and said, "Give me your money, quick, give me the money".
5 Mr Gadorous said, "OK", indicating that he intended to comply, but he either told you that the till was not working or had difficulty in making it operate. You said to him, "I'll give you five seconds", and started counting down. He could not open the till and so you reached across the counter, pulled the power cord out from the wall, grabbed the whole till and ran out with it.
6 You were seen then running back to your car, getting back into the driver's seat, and driving off. It was clear that there was somebody in the car with you and the passenger was seen as the car drove off, first of all looking as if she was ducking down in order to avoid being seen, and then throwing, at two separate occasions, glasses, wine glasses out of the window where they smashed on the road.
7 Two days later, on 9 November or, really, just a day and a half later, in the morning of 9 November, the till was found not far from where the armed robbery occurred at the fish and chip shop and also not far from where you were then living. The till had been opened by then and the money, it was thought to be between $200 to $300 that was inside it, was all gone. There was some blood found in the tray of the till. That was later submitted for DNA testing and was found to match your DNA.
8 There was also a fingerprint found on the bottom of the cash register, and that was found to belong to a woman by the name of Kierra Doulton-Shields. She was your girlfriend at the time. There is no other evidence connecting her with the offence apart from the finding of that fingerprint on the till and she has not been charged.
9 It was ten days after the armed robbery, or eight days after the finding of the till that you were arrested when the police pulled your car over in the same area, close to where the robbery had occurred. During the search of the car police located a large, black handled kitchen knife in the car along the right side of the driver's seat. The prosecution is not able to say that that was the knife used in the robbery.
10
When arrested you were unfit for interview. You were arrested in respect of other matters. You were originally, at the time of the arrest in November 2010, charged with the other matters that had given rise to your arrest and it was not until early January 2011 that you were charged with this armed robbery. So proceedings in respect of this formally commenced on
7 January 2011when there was a filing hearing and that charge was laid. You have not been interviewed in relation to this offence. Your counsel told me that you had no memory of the events but, indeed, you have now pleaded guilty to the charge.
11 Such offences, as this one to which you have pleaded guilty are all too common and they have features that make them very serious. There is the use of a knife, not just brandishing it but holding it close to a victim. There is the identification of a place to rob, usually described as a soft target. Here a fish and chip shop. I must say that as far as I am concerned, the use of the term soft target tends to neutralise the seriousness of the offending. A soft target - what is meant here by a soft target is small, retail premises open to the public at extended hours and used by people who are going about their day to day activities. The people who work in such places do not usually have great choices about where they work and therefore have limited options. They may not be able to find work where they are safer, but it is not part of the job description and it should not be part of the job description for somebody who gets a job in a fish and chip shop or in a 7Eleven or a service station or a convenience store, to expect that they are going to be held up by somebody maybe impaired by drugs or alcohol, maybe desperate for all sorts of reasons, but to be held up by somebody, threatened with a knife or some other weapon and have what is a relatively modest amount of money for the risk that they are exposed to, stolen from them.
12 Here the sole attendant was threatened with that knife and the circumstances in which it occurred would not only mean that the use of the knife and the being threatened with the knife was terrifying, but the uncertainty as to what was motivating the person wielding the knife, the uncertainty of not knowing whether the person was impaired by drugs or alcohol and therefore more likely to be erratic, unpredictable and dangerous, are factors that add to the seriousness of offences such as these. Here, when that sole attendant was threatened and when he was slow in compliance with your demand, maybe due to fear as a result of what you were doing to him, you added to the already frightening circumstance in which you made your demand, by the added threat of the countdown. That carries a clear implication that something bad would happen to him if he did not comply within the time limit you set.
13 It is clear, therefore, that subject to other sentencing considerations, denunciation, just punishment and general deterrence must be given significant weight. People must understand that if they go into one of these small, unprotected retail premises, threatening the attendants with knives and demanding money, that the risk will not be worth it, that when caught they will be punished and they will be sentenced to significant terms of imprisonment. People must feel safe in going about buying their fish and chips, their petrol, their cigarettes or the other things people go to unsecured, everyday activity retail premises to buy. People who work there must think that this is a safe job in the circumstances and not think that being held up might be part of the day's activities. We are lucky to live in a safe and open community here in Australia and not to have security bars and metal detectors in front of these stores that cater to our basic daily needs. But if conduct like this continues all of us will have a significant curtailment of our freedom and a significant loss of trust and a significant loss of our sense of safety in walking about our suburbs, feeling free. That is why those sentencing considerations I mentioned must be given considerable weight.
14 You have a criminal history, Mr Lawrence, that can only be described as extensive and serious. Between 1994, when you were aged 17, and 2010, when you were aged 33, you were before courts on, on my count, 27 occasions. In addition to two appearances before judges of this court, for armed robbery offences, you appeared before Magistrates' Courts on 25 occasions. The matters for which you were dealt with in the Magistrates' Court covered a broad range of criminality, predominantly dishonesty offences, but also driving offences. Also some offences of personal violence or threats to inflict personal violence, possession of firearms and other weapons charges. You have four prior convictions for possession of firearms, including one for what was then described as felon in possession, now known as being a prohibited person in possession of a firearm. That is somebody prohibited by reason of the nature of their convictions.
15 You also have some previous convictions for criminal damage, for drug use and possession, for escape and other prison type offences. You have also in the past been sentenced to dispositions including a Community Based Order, Intensive Corrections Order, suspended sentence and a Combined Custody and Treatment Order. You have been breached on most, if not all, of those, and required to serve a sentence of imprisonment as a result. In total, on my count again, you have been sentenced to imprisonment with a component to be immediately served on 19 occasions over that period.
16 So far as the armed robberies are concerned, in 1999 you were sentenced to be imprisoned for a period of two and a half years with a non-parole period of one and a half years fixed, and in 2002, for one armed robbery, you were sentenced to be imprisoned for a period of three years and a two year non-parole period was fixed. All your terms of imprisonment since the 2002 armed robbery conviction have been relatively short sentences. No parole periods have been set for you since your release on parole in respect if that second armed robbery appearance (your third armed robbery conviction).
17 If one looked at your history alone one would be forgiven for saying that such an appalling criminal history means your prospects for rehabilitation must be bleak, and considerations of denunciation, protection of the community and retribution must be given prominence.
18 Your personal circumstances are pitiable, and it is clear that the same community which expresses condemnation of your criminal history is the community which clearly failed you throughout your childhood. At the age of one you were removed from your mother and placed into State care. You have had no relationship with her since then. Your father, at about the same time, was imprisoned for murder and you have had no contact with him. You have, in effect, been in State custody ever since then, whether as a child in care of the department, what used to be called ward of the State when you were first taken into care, in homes or orphanages or youth detention, and since the age of 17, in prison for most of your adult life.
19 I am told your happiest memories are of the period when you were aged between five and ten when you were placed with a foster family. You were fostered to a couple and brought up as a child of their family. When you were ten they gave up fostering and you were returned to State supervised institutional care. You were placed in an orphanage where you were then sexually abused by a carer. He has recently been sentenced for his abuse of you and a number of other boys in that orphanage.
20 I have been provided with the reasons for sentence imposed on him by Her Honour Judge Cotterell in this court in 2011 and also a copy of your victim impact statement. That is a moving and insightful document. When asked to identify, under the pro forma way in which a victim impact statement form is set out, what financial loss you suffered, you said,
"I probably would have had more of a chance in the community to be a citizen and work and earn my own money. I didn't have the energy, mentally or physically, to work because of my depression and other mental health issues. I stopped going to school when I was younger because of abuse. This stopped my chances of further study or gaining a good job because I have not gone to school."
21 You said that you have tried to end your life three times because of the stress you have had in the past and the pressure of the investigation into your perpetrator. You detailed the attempts that you had made on your life and the scars that you still carry from them. You speak of the attempts you have made at self harm, trying to hurt yourself so you do not hurt others, and your fear and distrust of relationships as a result of what had happened to you.
22 You said that before you went to the boys' home, that is the orphanage, up to the age of ten you felt like a normal child. You went to school and played with other kids and that when you went to the home it felt like everything you had learnt in your foster home was a dream, stripped away from you after a time. You spoke of how vulnerable you were, how you had no family, nobody to turn to, to confide in and to say what was happening, and your sense of powerlessness because of the power that the perpetrator had over you. You spoke of your sense of shame and guilt and confusion, something so often spoken of and experienced by a child victim of sexual abuse. It takes a lot of time and a lot of assistance before people in the position that you found yourself in can understand that it was not your fault, that you bear no guilt and no responsibility.
23 You spoke of the effect on you as you got older, on how you became defensive and aggressive if people lied to you or were dishonest and how it stopped you from being able to form decent relationships, trusting relationships with people, and how you started, from the age of 14, to abuse drugs, how you thought it was a way of hiding or stopping the pain. You speak of the anger that you feel towards DHS because they placed you in the care of a boys' home where the abuse happened, and how difficult it is for you to deal with those feelings now because you have three children of your own and DHS is involved in them. You expressed your dismay at the way they ask you about their welfare when you feel they have so signally failed you. They are understandable feelings.
24 You have considerable insight into the range of emotions that you have experienced since then and as a result of it, and that is no doubt in part due to the counselling that you have received from the Centre Against Sexual Assault over a number of years whilst you have been serving various sentences, and I will refer to the significance of that shortly.
25 As you said in your victim impact statement, your formal education came to an end when you were 13 and you soon graduated from the orphanage, moving from it to other institutional care settings and then on to youth detention and then into the continuing cycle of adult gaol, short periods of release into the community and return to adult gaol.
26 You are now, as you recognise, thoroughly institutionalized. You have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, resulting from that childhood sexual abuse. You have a long, documented history of depression, something that commonly runs hand in hand with post traumatic stress disorder and something that commonly runs hand in hand with those who have been victims of child sexual abuse. You have in the past been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and you have a long history of abusing both alcohol and drugs.
27 There is no direct evidence as to your state on the night of this armed robbery, although, on the material before me, and having regard to your history, it is likely that you were under the influence of either alcohol or illicit drugs or both.
28 A little over 24 hours earlier you had presented to the Emergency Department of Monash Medical Centre, reporting that you had tried to take your own life. You had taken an overdose of Xanax, a prescription medication which you had either obtained properly on prescription and were abusing, or a prescription medication which you had obtained otherwise. It is a common drug of abuse, and had been abusing it. You reported you had taken up to 40 Xanax and you had mixed that with alcohol. This was a deliberate overdose in an attempt to end your life. The admission or discharge notes show that you reported a history of suicidal thoughts over past years and occasions where you had attempted to carry those thoughts into action, actual suicide attempts. You were treated physically for the overdose, your mental state was assessed and the hospital record shows that you were then released or discharged, the doctors not being satisfied that you met all the criteria for involuntary detention under the Mental Health Act. This is so despite the hospital noting your reporting of your suicidal thoughts at the time.
29 So there is that first factor just 24 hours before which indicates that at that stage you had drugs and alcohol in your system and you were in a fragile state where you were likely to continue to abuse them. I have already referred, when going through the summary of the offence, with the eyewitness accounts of wine glasses being thrown from the car as you drove from the scene.
30 The third factor that makes it likely that you were under the influence of alcohol or drugs at the time is your state when you were arrested ten days later, as being unfit for interview. However, that material, although pointing to the likelihood of your being under the influence of drugs and alcohol, is not sufficient to support any finding of any causal connection between drug and alcohol impairment at the time of the offending and your mental condition on your moral culpability, so as to bring the first of the Verdins principles into consideration here.
31 What I have said to date would seem to paint a very bleak picture of your past circumstances, your current circumstances and your future prospects, but there are some significant positives in your life at present. I have already referred to the fact that you had been receiving, whilst you have been in custody, counselling from the Centre Against Sexual Assault. A report from your counsellor, Mr Maxwell Clark, was provided. Mr Clark was also present in court, although he is now retired and is not currently counselling you. That in itself adds force to what he said in his report about you. Over a period of six years whilst working for the Centre Against Sexual Assault and for a period of four years after that, Mr Clark, as a private practitioner, engaged in counselling work at Loddon, counselling men who had been victims of sexual abuse. It was through that, that he came into contact with you, he thinks first in 2002, and continued counselling you for several years on a fortnightly basis whilst you were at Loddon and before you were transferred to Dhurringile Prison. Whilst at Dhurringile, after being transferred to Dhurringile you took the initiative of asking for Mr Clark to continue to provide counselling support to you, something he did. He said that it took you some time to accept that counselling could assist you in changing the way you were feeling about the past sexual abuse that you had encountered, but with counselling you were eventually able to get to a stage where you reported the matter to the police, and as a result of a police investigation the perpetrator was charged. He ultimately pleaded guilty to charges concerning four young people, one of whom was you, and was sentenced earlier last year.
32 Importantly, Mr Clark says this:
"Craig's life, as he has described it to me, has been one of constant abandonment. He lived in State care for many years as he grew into adolescence, meaning he did not complete his education. When he did return to his family of origins location it was to the working class area of Moe. He admits he got in with the wrong crowd. Much of my counselling work was to get him to understand he was not responsible for the sexual abuse he had experienced and that he had a right to have his story heard and for action to happen to try and right that wrong. Speaking with Craig at the time of this prosecution, he could admit he felt safer in prison than outside and that he owned the term about himself being institutionalised. This insight demonstrated to me the progress and development Craig has made over the years I have known him in his accepting responsibility for many of his actions and the situation he finds himself in now. I believe that Craig needs a secure, reliable and constant support in his efforts to lead a meaningful and productive life in the future. I trust that he can find someone who can be there for him in the future once he is out of prison and back in open society. I understand he has a partner who is continuing to maintain a strong support for him at this time".
33 He finishes by saying this
"I admire Craig's acceptance of his responsibilities in this case and hope that he continues to seek counselling support in the future".
34 You have been in custody since your arrest on 17 November 2010 and I understand you have been at Port Phillip for most of that time. For the last 12 months you have been engaged as a peer supporter, both a prisoner listener and a unit induction billet. I have been provided with a report from a Ms Chris Frei of G4S. I am told that she volunteered to provide that report and I note that it is most unusual for G4S itself, or for its employees, to provide reports. That too paints a different picture, or adds to the complexity, of the picture that you present.
35 Ms Frei says that you have proven a valuable and knowledgeable person in your role as a peer supporter, that you assist fellow inmates who are in desperate need of support, whether it is in the form of practical assistance, advocating on a fellow inmate's behalf or just listening to them. Significantly, as a peer supporter, one of the things that you need to do is to identify welfare needs of other inmates and refer them to the clinical services team or unit staff, and also to induct new prisoners. In order to be admitted, accepted as a peer supporter and to remain in the program, there is clearly a high level of responsible engagement with the prison authorities. That includes remaining incident and drug free. You have clearly complied with that.
36 Ms Frei concludes that you have excelled in both of your peer supporter roles, that you have assisted fellow inmates to the best of your abilities and that you encourage them to seek support through the appropriate staff. That is counselling, distress calls or programs if appropriate. She says that you are making a valuable contribution to the prison and to fellow inmates.
37 I have been sentencing people in this court for seven and a half years now and I have never seen a report from G4S. I have never seen a report from prison authorities, speaking for a prisoner at all, let alone one that says the sort of things that this has said about you. It is even more extraordinary, in my view, because you have such a long history of repeated terms of imprisonment. It paints a different picture from the one that I thought I was going to get when I first saw your criminal history and read the circumstances of the offence.
38 Quite extraordinarily, you were appointed to do the unit induction when the man who abused you was sentenced last year. You chose to accept that responsibility and not asked for him to be moved to a different unit or for you to be relieved of that responsibility and to have somebody else do it. I am told that you discharged your responsibilities without incident, and that is significant too, in terms of Ms Frei's report, and that you found it, for you, an empowering experience in being able to deal in that manner with the person who had abused you when you were young and vulnerable.
39 These three matters alone, and in combination, show that you have gained considerable insight and that you are making significant progress on the path from victim to survivor of that childhood sexual abuse. This should bode well for a better ability to cope with your underlying mental health issues and to better address the substance abuse issues which are, at least in part, integrally connected with those mental health issues.
40 In addition, I was told that you have, for the last 12 months, been receiving one on one psychological counselling. Again, and that is consistent with the reports that I have already referred to about your understanding the need for that with others, and in encouraging others to avail themselves of it if you think they need it. This counselling that you are receiving is provided through Moreland Hall and I was told also with input from Dr Lester Walton. As Mr White said, that indicates that there must be some Forensicare involvement or supervision too. It is heartening to hear of this as I am too often told that one on one psychological counselling or talking therapy is generally, unavailable for people within a prison setting. Given your long history of imprisonment and the consequent instability of your life when you are released, it seems that this, whilst you are in prison, is the best time and place for such counselling to occur.
41 Unfortunately, there is no report from Dr Walton or the counsellor, but I accept that you have engaged for the past 12 months and that you anticipate the counselling will continue to be available for you, or to you for so long as you remain at Port Phillip. I am told that you have expressed a desire to remain at Port Phillip so that that can occur and that you have some reasonable expectation that you will be able to remain at Port Phillip at least for a significant part of the remaining sentence.
42 The other factor that points to your current prospects being more hopeful than your history would otherwise suggest, is the development of a relationship with a woman who has no criminal history and no substance abuse history. She has known you for a long time and she has been in very regular contact with you whilst you have been in custody and, more recently, the two of you have formed a committed relationship to each other. A letter from her was tendered and she said in that, that she is aware of your history and that at no stage does she think that when you are released from prison that life will be perfect, but she said,
"With love, support and hard work from the both of us Craig can turn his life around. Craig is a very capable person. Whilst in prison he accesses all the services that he requires in order to help himself. Previously when Craig has been released from prison he has had no support. I believe that with the support from myself, that is attending appointments such as doctors, chemist, accessing services that he may require, together with having a plan in place if any issues may arise and the best possible way to deal with them, Craig will continue to access the appropriate services that he needs to succeed in life once he is released".
43 She has worked many years with the Reach Foundation and believes that that has given her the skills to assist you, and that the communication that you have had and the ability to have honest discussions amongst yourselves has brought about a certain calmness about you and a confidence that you may have a better future than your past has held out for you. She recognises that you are institutionalised and seems to recognise the difficulties that somebody who has been institutionalised will face in day to day life upon release. She says that when you are released that the two of you will be living together. She has lived for the last 12 years in a stable environment and she is currently studying a Diploma of Community Services Welfare Work at Swinburne. She has offered you hope. Hope of a relationship during imprisonment and upon release, something to look forward to upon release. A relationship, a home, a real life, somebody to care for you, and support in coping with life outside an institution.
44 This has the prospect of providing you with something much better to look forward to on release than it would appear you have had in the past. I consider the combination of these factors makes your prospects for rehabilitation more positive than otherwise would have been expected of somebody with your disadvantaged past and your extensive criminal history.
45 I was referred to a decision of the Court of Criminal Appeal in the Director of Public Prosecutions v. Terrick, Marks and Stewart [2009] VSCA 220, where the court, at [47], considered the question of the weight to be given to the background of hardship and deprivation on the general question of reduction of criminal responsibility and in its application to a recidivist offender. Of the eight principles they extracted, four of them are of relevance here. They are one, two, three and eight. Namely:
(1) the individual circumstances of an offender, are always relevant to sentencing;
(2) circumstances of disadvantage, deprivation or sexual violence may be explanatory, if not causative, of the offending or of the offender's alcohol or drug addiction;
(3) the relative weight to be given to circumstances of disadvantage or deprivation is a matter for the sentencing judge and will depend on:
(a) the nature and extent of the disadvantage;
(b) the nexus, if any, with the offending and;
(c) the relative importance in the particular case of sentencing considerations such as rehabilitation, deterrence, specific and general, community protection and social rehabilitation, and;
(8) where the offender has prior convictions, such considerations of specific and general deterrence and community protection become increasingly important sentencing factors, the significance of personal circumstances will correspondingly decrease.
46 Of those four principles, the first two are self explanatory. Of course I must take your personal circumstances, your individual circumstances into account when sentencing you. Second, that the circumstances of disadvantage, deprivation and sexual violence are explanatory of your general offending background and of your alcohol and drug abuse in the past. They are not, in my view, directly causative of the offending but they are an integral part of the circumstances in which you found yourself by the age of 33.
47 So far as the third is concerned, when looking at the weight to be given to those circumstances of disadvantage and deprivation, the nature and extent of the disadvantages you have suffered is, in my view, considerable. The nexus with the offending is, as I have already said when dealing with Principle 2, more of a general contextual matter than specifically directly related to the particular offence. So far as the importance of your circumstances of disadvantage and deprivation to rehabilitation, specific and general deterrence, community protection and social rehabilitation, it is clear, as I have already said, that general deterrence must carry considerable weight, both by reason of the offending itself and your previous convictions.
48 However, the principles of rehabilitation, social rehabilitation, specific deterrence and community protection, are clearly linked. Here the evidence of Mr Clark, Ms Frei and Ms Wilmot are all significant, as is the evidence of your engagement with the one on one counselling over the past 12 months and your commitment to its continuation. All of these matters indicate that your prospects for rehabilitation can properly be described as the best they've ever been. It follows that encouraging rehabilitation and social rehabilitation will pose the best prospects for deterring you specifically and for protecting the community.
49 So far as the last point, that of the added weight to be given to specific and general deterrence and community protection, because of your previous convictions, and therefore the relatively lesser weight generally to be given to your personal circumstances, it is clear that your record, including your three previous convictions for armed robbery mean that those principles of punishment, deterrence and community protection must be properly weighed in the sentence. You are not a young offender, so the principles of increased weight to encouragement of rehabilitation in a young offender are not relevant.
50 However, I consider that the unusual combination of factors that I have identified here mean that specific deterrence and community protection are best addressed in a way which not only marks the denunciation of your behaviour but also encourages these promising signs of rehabilitation, both criminal and social, that I have already identified. That, in my view, points to structuring the sentence in a way that will ensure that you have opportunities, if released upon parole, and of course, that is a matter for the Parole Board, not me, for you to continue on that path that you have been taking whilst in custody but with structured supervision and support around you whilst you are in the community.
51 You have spent one year and eight months in custody approximately, but only 339 days, just under 12 months of that, is to be counted as pre-sentence detention. It is clear that I must, as part of the intuitive synthesis, take the balance of that time into account. From the time that you were charged with this offence in January 2011 you had been held for this as well as for the other offences that led to your original arrest in November 2010. Had you been sentenced at the one time for all of the offences that led to your November arrest and then your January charging with this, totality considerations would have required a sentence to be imposed that would have reflected the overall offending over that period of a few months. Had you been dealt with at the one time there would have been some, but not total, cumulation between the sentences imposed for those offences which were dealt with summarily, and for this offence, in order to reflect the totality of your conduct over that short period of time. All offences were committed between your last release from prison and your remand in custody again, whilst on the at liberty part of a combined custody and treatment order.
52 So, in my view, the sentence that I impose must reflect not only the counting and reckoning of the time that is attributable to detention for but also the fact that had you been sentenced for everything at once there would have been some reflection in the sentence, in totality terms, of the overall offending and therefore some reflection of some of that time that has been counted and reckoned as part of the sentences imposed for the summary offences.
53 So, in my view, in these circumstances the whole time that you have spent since remand should be factored into the intuitive synthesis and reflected in a modest reduction in both the head sentence and the non-parole period.
54 Having said that, it is also clear that the reason this matter has been dealt with at a different time, a much later time than the other offences, is not just because it is a matter that is dealt with in this court, whereas the other matters are summary matters, but because you did not indicate your intention to plead guilty to this charge until a late stage. So in part, the disconnect in sentencing is due to your own conduct in not indicating your guilty plea until late. Although your sentence for this offence is to be reduced by reason of that guilty plea, both for the utilitarian benefits and for the saving of the victims of the ordeal of giving evidence, the reduction is clearly not as large as it would have been had you entered a plea of guilty at the earliest possible opportunity.
55 Taking into account all those matters that I have identified, I consider that the sentencing range submitted by the prosecution is too high. Had you not had those positive factors counting in your favour that give you a more encouraging prospect of rehabilitation than would objectively otherwise have been expected, it would have been a more realistic range.
56 Could you now please stand. Craig Lawrence, on the one charge to which you have pleaded guilty, you are convicted. You are sentenced to be imprisoned for a period of three years and six months. I direct that you serve a period of 21 months, one year and nine months, before being eligible for parole.
57 I declare that you have spent 339 days in per-sentence detention and direct that that be counted and reckoned as part of the sentence already served.
58 I declare that, pursuant to s.6AAA of the Sentencing Act that but for your plea of guilty I would have sentenced you to be imprisoned for a period of five years and I would have fixed a period of three years and six months as the time that you would have had to have served before being eligible for parole.
59 Does the sentence I pronounced reflect what I said I intended to do?
60 COUNSEL: Yes, Your Honour.
61 HER HONOUR: Declaration correct?
62 COUNSEL: Yes, Your Honour.
63 HER HONOUR: And no ancillary orders?
64 COUNSEL: No further matters.
65 HER HONOUR: Yes, thank you. Could you remove Mr Lawrence, please? Can I thank counsel for their assistance?
66 COUNSEL: Thank you, Your Honour.
67 HER HONOUR: I will hand that back to you, Mr White.
68 MR WHITE: Thank you.
69 HER HONOUR: That is the materials in relation to the Magistrates' Court sentencing.
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