STATE OF TASMANIA v DANIEL JOHN ARCHER 24 OCTOBER 2019
COMMENTS ON PASSING SENTENCE ESTCOURT J
The defendant, Dale John Archer, aged 45, has pleaded guilty to one count of aggravated burglary and one count of assault.
In or about 2017 the defendant and Ms B commenced a relationship. At the time, she lived with her two young children. During the relationship the defendant would often stay at Ms B’s home. The children had met Mr Archer and called him Danny.
On 22 April 2019 the relationship broke down and an interim family violence order was made and served protecting Ms B. That interim family violence order prohibited contact between the defendant and Ms B and included a non-contact order.
Despite the existence of the interim family violence order the defendant and Ms B maintained contact. This included the defendant staying at her home. It appears that both believed Ms B was at the time pregnant with the defendant’s child.
On 5 May 2019 Ms B arranged to meet her ex-husband’s cousin, the complainant in this matter, at a bar. The pair had consumed alcohol and returned to Ms B’s home at around 9pm where they continued drinking. Ms B’s two children were at home.
Sometime after 9pm, the defendant attended the house and became agitated that the complainant was entertaining another man.
At around 9.30 he rang a taxi, was collected and taken to his father’s home. An hour later he again called the taxi to take him back to Ms B’s residence. When they reached the residence the defendant told the taxi driver to park a distance from the home, got out and went to the home. The taxi waited for him.
The defendant was armed with an axe handle and entered the home, intending to assault the complainant. He entered the house via the front door. At the time the complainant was lying asleep on Ms B’s bed. Ms B was beside him.
Ms B’s son, aged 9, was awake in his room when the defendant arrived. He watched from his doorway as the defendant went to his mother’s bedroom with what he described as “a metal object”.
The defendant woke the complainant by striking him to the head with what felt like, according to the complainant, a log of wood. The complainant raised his left arm and left leg in an attempt to protect his head and was struck to each of those areas. He recalls being repeatedly hit to the arm and the leg.
Ms B’s son watched the defendant hitting the complainant whilst yelling and shouting. Her son was so frightened that he ran out of the room and subsequently called his father, telling him that he was frightened. He went into his sister’s room to sleep.
As the defendant struck the complainant he called Ms B a cheating slut. He was in the house for about 5 minutes. As he left he spoke to Ms B’s son. He then returned to the taxi and was taken back to his father’s residence.
The complainant sustained an injury to his head, left arm and left leg. He could not walk as his left leg was particularly painful and his head and leg were bleeding.
Ms B took the complainant to the Mersey Community Hospital. He presented with a 5cm open wound on the back of his head and was unable to weight bear on the leg. There was a 3cm laceration on the outer side of his left elbow. There was bruising over the left shin with an area of injured but intact skin below the knee.
An x-ray of the left knee revealed a fracture of the upper end of the tibia without extension into the knee joint. The open wounds to the left elbow and scalp were cleaned and closed with sutures and staples (on the scalp). After discussion with the medical practitioners at the hospital, he was placed under the care an orthopaedic surgeon at the North-West General Hospital. He was treated with the intravenous antibiotics to prevent infection, but he did not require surgery, and was discharged with a plan to follow-up in the Fracture Clinic subsequently. X-rays ultimately showed that the fracture was healing as expected. However he still had his left lower limb immobilised in a cast. The cast was removed in June and he was fitted with a hinged knee brace. On 7 August he was again seen in the fracture clinic, at which time he complained of ongoing pain in the left knee and he was referred for an MRI.
At 3:50pm the following day the defendant presented himself to the Devonport police station at which time he was arrested.
I have seen a victim impact statement from Ms B – her life has changed considerably and irreversibly. She has experienced severe anxiety, has felt depressed and fearful as a result of the defendant’s crime. She has in effect had to change her life, leave her children with their father and move interstate. Her 9 year old son witnessed the assault and her 12 year old daughter was also present at the house. They have both had counselling and still to this day experience feelings of anxiety, fear and suffer with nightmares. The children have been afraid to stay in the house.
I have also seen a victim impact statement from the complainant – he suffers from nightmares of being woken up with someone hitting me on the head and then consistently hitting his body until I passes out again. He wakes up with full body sweats and cannot get back to sleep. He has not been able to sleep more than 3 hours since the attack. His leg has still not healed properly and he has pain daily and is still undergoing physiotherapy.
The defendant has one prior conviction for a Criminal Code assault in 1996, which attracted a sentence of six months’ imprisonment, wholly suspended. He is a single man. He was born on the north west coast, and he still enjoys his family’s support, as does he enjoy his employer’s support. He has a good work record since age 16, and has work available to him upon his release from prison. He has had a problem with alcohol for a number of years, and he was drinking on the afternoon of these offences.
The defendant’s offending is to be regarded as very serious, given it was born of a jealous loss of control, caused significant injury and ongoing injury to the complainant, and also Ms B, and was committed in the presence of Ms B’s young son who has also suffered as a result of the offending.
Apart from the defendant’s self-reporting of the offence and his plea of guilty, for which I make due allowance by way of discount, there is little that is mitigatory. On all of the matters before me, the defendant is convicted and sentenced to three years’ imprisonment, backdated to 17 August 2019. I order that he not be eligible for parole until he has served one half of that term.