R v Lennon

[1995] QCA 593

[1995] QCA 593

COURT OF APPEAL

MACROSSAN CJ
FITZGERALD P
PINCUS JA

CA No 416 of 1995

THE QUEEN

v.

STACEY LEE LENNON  Applicant

BRISBANE

..DATE 15/11/95

JUDGMENT

THE CHIEF JUSTICE:  This is an application for extension of time within which to appeal against conviction.  The applicant was convicted on 25 July this year on a charge of assault occasioning bodily harm whilst in company.  That charge was heard in the District Court.  The applicant's form and the other material indicates that the sentence imposed on that occasion was that she perform certain community service.  The service was not in fact performed fully.  Only three hours of it was performed.  The applicant tells us that that was due to her ill-health which supervened.

It seems that as a result of her failure to perform the community service, the applicant was dealt with on 16 October when before another District Court Judge the order imposed below for the performance of community service was revoked.  It appears that that may have been on the applicant's request for a revocation in the circumstances in which she found herself.

The second District Court Judge, in any event, ordered in effect in lieu that the applicant be released upon entering into a recognisance without sureties in an amount of $500 to be of good behaviour for a period. 

The applicant accepts that following her conviction in July, she asked her legal adviser, since she had been represented below, whether she should appeal or not.  She is not represented before this Court but she tells us she was advised that from her point of view it was not worth appealing.  Having received that advice, she did nothing by way of appealing.  She was not well and time went by.  She now does wish to appeal. 

The circumstances involved in connection with the commission of the offence were that there had been some road incident involving the applicant and other persons in her car and two other people on a motor cycle.  There was some communication between the two groups and the offence was then said to be constituted by the applicant as driver driving her car a distance down the roadway at a time when another person in her car held the complainant against the car.  A truck driver observed what was happening and he was a witness at the trial against the applicant.

The complainant and her companion, a person named Church, were witnesses against the applicant as well as the truck driver.  Evidence was called on the applicant's side.  We are told that she gave evidence at the trial and two of her passengers did also.

Now, the applicant is unrepresented before us and no doubt on that account had some difficulty in stating the substance of her argument exactly or at least stating it in conventional legal terms, but it emerged that she wished to assert that there was a conflict of evidence at the trial and she should not have been convicted by the jury.  However, it emerged from the applicant's statements that a version was given at the trial by the witnesses called by the Crown and that if the jury chose to accept that evidence or sufficient of it, there was ample basis for convicting the applicant.  A number of the conflicts to which the applicant wished to draw attention seemed to relate to peripheral matters and not essential central matters necessarily.

In all the circumstances, having in mind the passage of time and the fact that the applicant was advised when originally she came to consider whether she should appeal, it seems to me that no sufficient reason has been shown for extending time here.  As relevant to that decision, it must be noted that there was a substantial basis for her conviction below and apart from the contest on credit matters, which she wishes to assert, there was no ground identified which would have any reasonable prospects of success on appeal.  In these circumstances, I think that the application for extension of time should be refused.

THE PRESIDENT:  I agree.

PINCUS JA:  I agree.

THE CHIEF JUSTICE:  The application is refused.

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