STATE OF TASMANIA v JESSE DAVID DENWER 11 DECEMBER 2024
COMMENTS ON PASSING SENTENCE MARTIN AJ
Mr Denwer, you pleaded guilty in the Magistrates Court to aggravated assault which is count 1 on complaint 7178/2024 and you were committed to this Court for sentence. You have requested that I deal with a number of matters and I made the appropriate order, and they are counts 2 to 6 on complaint 7178/2024, and a count of using a stolen motor vehicle on complaint 7173/2024. You pleaded guilty to all these mattes through your counsel.
All of the offences were committed on 8 July 2024. Count 2 was drive to avoid apprehension, count 3 – drive without a licence; count 4 – displaying false plates; count 5 – unlawful possession of the plates; and count 6 – possession of methylamphetamine. You are convicted of all offences. Secondly, I disqualify you from holding or obtaining a driver’s licence for a period of five years from the date of your release from custody under the sentences I am imposing this morning.
On 6 June 2024, a white Ford courier utility was stolen from a property at Mountain River. On 8 July 2024, shortly after 11.00am, you were driving that stolen vehicle on Claremont Link Road in the direction of Allunga Road. You had a passenger. A police officer was driving in the opposite direction in a police vehicle. He performed a u-turn and activated the emergency lights and sirens in an attempt to intercept you because you had outstanding warrants. You continued along Claremont Link Road, overtaking a car and then travelling on the wrong side of the road into oncoming traffic. You returned to the correct side of the road in Allunga Road and came to a stop. The police officer stopped his vehicle behind your vehicle. As he came to a stop, you deliberately reversed the stolen vehicle into the front of the police vehicle. I have seen a video, taken from a distance through a mobile telephone, which plainly shows that you reversed back at significant speed. Your action caused significant damage to the police vehicle and left it inoperable. You fled the scene down Allunga Road.
As a result of your reversing into the police vehicle, the police officer suffered soreness to his neck and back. In reversing into the police officer, you committed the offence of aggravated assault.
At the time of your driving, you were displaying particular plates which were stolen plates effectively, and you were unlicensed. The stolen vehicle was found by police at about 7.00pm that night where you had abandoned it in Chigwell. Your fingerprints were located on the inside of the driver’s door, as well as two snap lock bags containing methylamphetamine, that is 9.49 grams, which is the offence to which you have pleaded guilty of possessing methylamphetamine.
On 9 July 2024, police attended at your residence but you fled through a rear bedroom window. You were arrested the following day and when interviewed by police, initially you denied the allegations. Eventually, you accepted the allegations and said you behaved in the way you did because you did not want to be taken away from your family. You said you were not thinking when you rammed the police vehicle, and you spoke about how much you had “fucked up”, saying that you were under the influence of drugs at the time but not alcohol. You spoke about your addiction, using one gram of methylamphetamine a day.
You told police you were remorseful for your actions and claimed that you had bought the stolen vehicle from someone, paying half a gram of methylamphetamine for it. You knew that you were not allowed to drive because you had not had a licence for some time, and claimed that you were worried about injuring the police officer. You said you did it to immobilise the police. You actively avoided police because you knew there were outstanding warrants.
Your personal circumstances and your history of drug abuse are set out in a helpful drug treatment assessment report of 9 December 2024. The report also canvasses your history under the Drug Treatment Order of 21 December 2020. Efforts to achieve a degree of rehabilitation were unsuccessful, and it must be said that your future prospects do not look good.
Your record of prior offending includes many driving offences, and that includes dangerous driving in 2018 of evading police, plus offences of dishonesty, violence, and repeated breaches of court orders. So, the type of offending you engaged in on this occasion is very familiar to you.
The material before me establishes that you are now 25 and you were subjected to, what is generally called, an extremely dysfunctional childhood. It is unnecessary for me to repeat the details. You were using alcohol and cannabis by the time you were 13, and you began using methylamphetamine, that is ICE, intravenously when you were aged 19. You have been addicted ever since, despite a brief period of success under the Drug Treatment Order in late 2020, and as I have said, I have a very helpful report outlining both your personal history and the history under the Drug Treatment Order, which was unsuccessful. Counsel have put to me that you have matured and you are anxious to play a positive role in the life of your young child, but the prospects do not look good on the material before me. The future, Mr Denwer, is entirely up to you, no one can actually do it for you.
It is my intention to impose a total of two years’ imprisonment, which will commence on 12 March 2025. I am going to make some orders
In respect of counts 1, 3, 4, 5 and 6 on complaint 7178/2024, and in respect of complaint 7173/2024, one count, I will impose a single sentence of imprisonment for 18 months. On count 2 on complaint 7178/2024, that is driving to avoid apprehension, I will impose a sentence of imprisonment for six months. The sentence of six months I intend to commence on 12 March 2025. I will also order, to ensure legality, that the six months be served cumulatively upon the first 12 months of the sentence you are now serving. To put it another way, the order is that six months be served concurrently with the balance of the existing sentence as at 12 March 2025. I am not fixing a non-parole period in respect of the sentence of six months. The sentence of 18 months is to be served cumulatively upon the sentence of six months, that should make it commence on 12 September 2025. I fix a non-parole period in respect of that sentence of six months, which should commence on 12 September 2025, meaning that you will be eligible for parole on 12 March 2026.
The licence suspension is attached to count 2 and it operates from the date of release from prison under my sentences.
*NOTE: Shortly after these orders were made, his Honour reconvened the Court and varied the orders by making 12 December 2024 the commencement date of the 6 months’ imprisonment in lieu of 12 March 2025, and by ordering that the defendant not be eligible for parole in respect of the sentence of 18 months until he had served nine months of that sentence. (As result, the date of parole eligibility remained 12 March 2026.)