R v Tarantino (No 9)

[2019] NSWSC 1669

Supreme Court

New South Wales

Medium Neutral Citation:	R v Tarantino (No 9) [2019] NSWSC 1669
Hearing dates:	14 November 2019
Date of orders:	14 November 2019
Decision date:	14 November 2019
Jurisdiction:	Common Law - Criminal
Before:	Beech-Jones J
Decision:	The accused is sentenced to a fixed term of imprisonment of three months commencing on 20 November 2016 and expiring on 19 February 2017
Catchwords:	CRIME – summary offences – custody of knife in public place or school – SENTENCING – no question of principle
Legislation Cited:	Criminal Procedure Act 1986 Crimes (Sentencing Procedure) Act 1999 Summary Offences Act 1988
Cases Cited:	R v Tarantino (No 6) [2019] NSWSC 1174
Category:	Procedural and other rulings
Parties:	Regina (Crown) Vinzent Tarantino (Accused)
Representation:	Counsel: P Barrett (Crown) P Coady (Accused)   Solicitors: Office of the Department of Public Prosecutions (Crown) Watsons Solicitors (Accused)
File Number(s):	2016/347591

EX TEMPORE Judgment

1. Commencing in September and concluding on 6 November 2019 was the trial of Mr Tarantino on a charge of murder. The Crown’s allegation was that he had effectively kidnapped and strangled a twelve year old girl from Granville in 1998. On 6 November 2019, Mr Tarantino was found not guilty.

2. The origin of the proceedings lay in the events of 20 November 2016 when Mr Tarantino presented himself at Surry Hills Police Station for the purpose of confessing to the murder. At that time he also told police that he had a knife. He provided to them a thirty-five centimetre knife that he was carrying.

3. One aspect of his defence at trial was that the motivation for his subsequent confession on 20 November 2016 and the confessions that followed was that he feared reprisals from persons associated with bikie gangs as a result of the assistance he provided to the prosecuting authorities in relation to a shooting that occurred in 1997. The surveillance evidence of Mr Tarantino confirmed that he held those fears.

4. As a result of his production of the knife, Mr Tarantino was not only charged with murder but he was also charged with a summary offence under s 11C(1) of the Summary Offences Act1988 of having in his custody a knife in a public place without reasonable excuse. That summary charge travelled with the murder count and comes to this court via a certificate under s 166 of the Criminal Procedure Act 1986.

5. As a result of Mr Tarantino's acquittal on the murder charge, it is now necessary for that charge to be dealt with. Today, via his counsel, Mr Tarantino has proffered a plea of guilty to that charge. It goes without saying in dealing with him on that charge that I am bound to act in a manner consistent with the jury’s verdict.

6. One issue that was litigated at the trial was, as I have said, whether Mr Tarantino had any bases for a fear of reprisals or at least held a genuinely held fear in that regard. There is no doubt that the jury’s verdict must have entailed an acceptance by them that at least one of those situations pertained. Moreover, there was a significant body of psychiatric evidence demonstrating that Mr Tarantino suffered from a schizoaffective disorder, although he strenuously denied that he was mentally ill. For my part, in an interlocutory decision in R v Tarantino (No 6) [2019] NSWSC 1174, I concluded that Mr Tarantino's fears were genuinely held, albeit they were completely based on delusional beliefs as a result of his psychiatric condition. Having heard the evidence at the trial I adhere to that finding.

7. The maximum penalty for an offence under s 11C(1) is twenty penalty units or imprisonment for two years. The circumstances of this particular offence involve Mr Tarantino having produced the knife himself to the police. He only possessed the knife because of genuine, albeit delusional, fears held on his part. Against that, the possession of knives is a matter of serious concern and that is heightened by the reasonably large size of the knife in question.

8. Two aspects of Mr Tarantino's subjective case dominate the approach to sentencing. The first I have already mentioned, namely, his psychiatric condition which is the basis for his delusional fears. The second is his criminal history. This includes three particular sets of charges of relevance to this offence; namely a charge of malicious wounding in October 1993 which resulted in a custodial term, a series of charges of maliciously inflicting grievous bodily harm using offensive weapon, possession of a prohibited weapon and assaulting police with a knife for which he was dealt with in 2007 and received a substantial custodial sentence, and some offences dealt with at the same time which were committed in September 2006 and which involved a contravention of an Apprehended Violence Order and the use of an offensive weapon.

9. The sentencing of offenders who suffer from a psychiatric condition presents difficulties to the court. On the one hand, persons in those circumstances are not considered suitable candidates for considerations of general deterrence or at least lesser consideration to that factor is warranted. On the other hand, concerns about specific deterrence, ie, the recurrence of the offending, may also loom large. That is very much the circumstance in this case.

10. What needs to be understood from this time onwards by Mr Tarantino is that possession of weapons in public places, even if it is only undertaken because he has some particular fear, is not only a criminal act but one which in his case will carry an inevitable likelihood of a custodial sentence.

11. It was submitted on his behalf that he should receive the benefit of an order under s 10 of the Crimes (Sentencing Procedure) Act 1999 (the “Sentencing Procedure Act”). In light of his criminal history I do not consider that this course is open. To the contrary, having regard to his criminal history and the concerns about specific deterrence I consider that no sentence other than a custodial sentence is appropriate. That said, of course it must be that that custodial sentence must commence at the time he was arrested and expire well before today.

12. In my view, a sentence of a term of imprisonment of three months is appropriate. Consistent with s 5(2) of the Sentencing Procedure Act, I indicate that the reasons for deciding that no penalty other than imprisonment is appropriate have already been enunciated. Further, the reason for deciding not to make an order allowing him to participate in an intervention program is because he has already served the custodial period that I will impose.

13. Accordingly, Mr Tarantino, you are convicted. You are sentenced to a fixed term of imprisonment of three months commencing on 20 November 2016 and expiring on 19 February 2017.

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Decision last updated: 02 December 2019