R v Reddrop

[2000] VSCA 101

SUPREME COURT OF VICTORIA
COURT OF APPEAL	Not Restricted

No. 122 of 1999

THE QUEEN

v.

PAUL JOSEPH REDDROP

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JUDGES:	WINNEKE, P., BATT and BUCHANAN, JJ.A.
WHERE HELD:	MELBOURNE
DATE OF HEARING:	31 May 2000
DATE OF JUDGMENT:	31 May 2000
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION:	[2000] VSCA 101

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Criminal law – Sentence – Armed robbery – Sentence of six years’ imprisonment not manifestly excessive.

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APPEARANCES:	Counsel	Solicitors
For the Crown	Mr. C.G. Hillman	P.C. Wood, Solicitor for Public Prosecutions
For the Applicant	Mr. G. Thomas	Victoria Legal Aid

WINNEKE, P.: 

1  This application involves circumstances which are all too familiar to the judiciary in this State; namely an armed robbery of a chemist shop by a man of relatively youthful age, living in depressed circumstances and looking for money to feed a heroin addiction.  The robbery was carried out with the use of an offensive weapon wielded with the intent to instil fear into an innocent, and in this case a young, shop attendant.

2  The circumstances of the offender usually, as they do here, excite sympathy in those who are called upon to administer punishment, but cannot be permitted to conceal the gravity of the crime which has been committed.  Heroin is, and has been for many years, a blight upon the community, but a craving for it, as courts have constantly said, cannot be used to avoid just punishment for armed robbery in which general and specific deterrence must play a prominent role.

3  The armed robbery for which this applicant stood for sentence in the County Court on 12 May of 1999 was committed upon a 16 year old female shop assistant on 21 December 1998 in a chemist shop in Drummond Street, Carlton at about 6 o'clock in the evening during what I assume to have been the pre Christmas "rush".   The applicant who, at the time, was addicted to heroin had taken a taxi from Maribyrnong to Carlton carrying with him a fearsome looking knife.  When he arrived at the shop he told the taxi to wait.  It is a shop to which he had been shortly before, no doubt with a view to determining its suitability as a target for his crime.

4  He grabbed the 16 year old girl by the arm and held the knife in front of her.  When she screamed he put the blade of the knife against her left wrist and demanded, "all the 50s and 20s in the till".   She was terrified and handed the applicant some $1400 in $50 notes.

5  As he fled from the shop another person tried to intercept him but was warded off by the applicant wielding the knife.  The applicant was chased to the taxi where he dropped the knife in the street before getting into it.  He directed the driver to take him to Sunshine where he gave the driver a $50 note and eventually went to the Derrimut Hotel.

6  It was not long before he was apprehended.  He had been recognised at the pharmacy.  Police had the number and description of the taxi and he was caught as he left the Derrimut Hotel.  He was taken to the police station where he denied any knowledge of or implication in the offence.

7  Police recovered approximately $1200 from the applicant, the remainder apparently having been spent on the purchase of heroin.

8  He pleaded guilty to the one count of armed robbery on 12 May of 1999.  He admitted some 20 prior convictions from seven court appearances.  These were largely for offences of dishonesty, although none showed any predisposition towards violence.  Almost all of them, however, were heroin related.

9  In the course of the plea the judge was told that the applicant came from Bendigo where he had been raised by caring adoptive parents.  Although he had tried a number of jobs after he left school, it was not long before he drifted into bad company and heroin use.  His parents were initially supportive of him, but after several years of unsuccessful attempts to wean him off the drug, they eventually gave up and told him that he was on his own.  By this time the applicant was approximately 25 years of age and had served various terms of imprisonment.  He came to Melbourne where he could not find work and simply drifted in and out of hostels.  He was still using heroin heavily, was unable to break the cycle and was living on the streets at the time when this robbery was committed.

10  Counsel who appeared for the applicant upon the plea recognised and acknowledged that there was no alternative but to impose a significant gaol term.  He asked the judge, however, to fix a substantial parole period so that the applicant could be monitored and supervised by the Parole Board.  His Honour, a very experienced sentencing judge, was resistant to that idea, saying that the resources of the Board would be of little assistance to the applicant whose past record indicated that he would only be a candidate for quickly breaching his parole and returning to custody.  His Honour ultimately imposed a sentence of six years' imprisonment and ordered the applicant to serve four and a half years before becoming eligible for parole.

11  Mr Thomas who appeared for the applicant before us submitted this morning that the sentence imposed is manifestly excessive and bespeaks error.  He contended that his Honour must have given insufficient weight to the applicant's early plea of guilty, to the relative youth of the applicant and to the circumstances which drove him to commit the crime which he did.  The circumstances demonstrated, so Mr Thomas submitted, that the crime was ill-planned and ill-conceived and more in the nature of an act of desperation than a planned job.

12  Whilst conceding that general deterrence must play an important role in the sentencing process, Mr Thomas submitted that the sentence does not properly reflect those matters of mitigation to which he referred.  In particular, he placed emphasis upon the fact that the sentence, on its face, reflects that there has not been a proper discount for the guilty plea made at the earliest opportunity.

13  Referring us to the case of Bouchard[1], he said that the drug addiction should have been given some weight in the sentencing process at least to the point of treating the offence as a "spur of the moment" one rather than a calculated one.  He contended that this offence could not, therefore, be said to be a "mid range armed robbery" for which a penalty of six years might be appropriate.  The fact that it was a chemist shop, Mr Thomas submitted, should have made no difference to the fixing of the appropriate penalty.

[1](1986) 84 A.Crim.R. 499.

14  Despite the eloquence of those arguments, I am not persuaded that the sentence imposed is manifestly excessive.  On the contrary, it seems to me to be within the range of sentences available to the sentencing judge for a crime of the nature of this one.  His Honour was correct, in my view, to regard this offence as having elements of planning about it in the sense that the applicant had obviously selected his target and had staked it out.  Although there were features about the crime which do suggest to me that it was ill-conceived and drug driven, the fact is that the applicant went to this shop with a knife and a bag at a time when it was apparent to him that there would be large amounts of cash in the till; because he demanded all the "big notes".

15  No matter how sympathetic one might be towards those who have allowed themselves to become hooked on heroin, the courts have said time and time again that crimes of violence of this sort must attract condign punishment whether or not committed for the purposes of feeding a heroin addiction.

16  This crime, I think, can be properly described as a callous crime committed against a defenceless young girl in frightening circumstances, as his Honour rightly said.  The community expects such a crime to be met with stern but just punishment in which both general and specific deterrence must play their part.  The maximum penalty for armed robbery has recently been increased to 25 years and thus reflects the seriousness in which it is viewed by the community.

17  His Honour recognised the applicant's plea of guilty, and indeed his drug addiction, in passing sentence.  He took them into account, but, as he said, drug addiction can be no excuse for the commission of the crime.  Otherwise, as he said, crimes which would violate the community's fundamental values will be allowed to go improperly punished.  There is, in my view, no basis for interfering with the sentencing discretion which his Honour exercised and I would, therefore, dismiss the application.

BATT J.A.: 

18  I agree.

BUCHANAN, J.A.: 

19  I also agree.

WINNEKE, P.: 

20  The formal order of the Court is that the application is dismissed.