STATE OF TASMANIA v LANE MICHAEL DWYER 3 JULY 2020
COMMENTS ON PASSING SENTENCE PEARCE J
Lane Dwyer, you plead guilty to aggravated burglary, stealing a firearm, unlawful trafficking in firearms and two counts of stealing. I also agreed to deal with your pleas of guilty to the summary charge of possessing ammunition without a licence. At about 2.35 pm on Thursday, 20 February 2020 travelled to Longford as passenger in a utility driven by Zachary Parker. Unknown to Mr Parker you were looking for things to steal. You checked the letterbox of a particular home and realised you knew the property owner from a previous work association, that he was unlikely to be home and that he owned firearms which you thought you could sell. After entering the home through the front door you checked the rooms for things of value and located a large home-made gun safe. You summoned Mr Parker to help you and together you ripped the gun safe from the wall, dragged it out of the house and loaded it onto his utility. The safe contained fourteen firearms worth almost $9,000 and a large amount of ammunition of various calibre to the value of about $2,000. There was one .22 semi-automatic pistol. The rest were either rifles or shotguns. One of the rifles was an air rifle. You also stole a mountain bike worth almost $6,000, a jacket and an iPhone. You drove the utility to a place about 20 kilometres away where you dumped the safe and some of the ammunition in a paddock after removing the guns and the rest of the ammunition. You left the bike and one of the shotguns at a home in Hadspen with the joint intention that they be for Mr Parker. You then drove to Mr Parker’s home in Prospect where you transferred the rest of the guns to another vehicle which you drove to the home in Newnham where you were living.
You were identified from CCTV installed in the property you burgled. The next day, 21 February, the police executed a search warrant at the Newnham property. Both you and Mr Parker were there. You had $1,380 in cash. One shotgun, the air rifle and some ammunition were in the garage. Four rifles were still in the car.
Mr Parker directed to the police to the dumped gun safe and ammunition, and to the place in Hadspen from where a shotgun and the mountain bike were found. Another gun was later returned through your parents at your instigation. In all, ten of the firearms have been recovered. However, four have not been recovered: a Smith and Wesson .22 semi-automatic pistol, a BSA bolt action 243 rifle, a Bruno .270 rifle and a Lanber 12 gauge shotgun.
When interviewed by the police and admitted what you had done. You admitted that you were the principal offender and that the cash you had was the proceeds of sale of some of the guns. You told the police that you did not know how many guns you sold, and you gave no details of the sales or how they were organised. You maintain that you have no memory of those things. You trafficked in the firearms by selling them and by conveying them from one place to another.
You are almost 33. You have loving and supportive parents. You have two daughters aged 9 and 12 from a relationship which ended about five years ago. You held stable employment as a concreter. Until 2019 your offending was limited to three drink driving convictions, the most recent of which resulted in a one month suspended sentence. However your life, since then, has been affected by abuse of methylamphetamine. You commenced a relationship with a female who introduced you to the drug. You had not used it before and you quickly became heavily addicted. For a while you could afford to buy it, but it led to the loss of your employment and you turned to crime to fund your habit. Between October 2019 and your arrest, you committed numerous offences of dishonesty including, on my count, 16 counts of stealing, 10 counts of burglary, 4 of aggravated burglary, 4 of motor vehicle stealing and 8 of computer-related fraud. On 12 May 2020 you were sentenced for those offences by a magistrate to imprisonment for 12 months from 21 February 2020, six months of which was suspended for two years. The one month suspended sentence was activated to be served cumulatively. The aggravated burglary at Longford for which I am to sentence you was the last, and the most serious, of that series of crimes. Your offending was brought to a halt by your arrest and you have been in custody since then. The convictions ordered on 12 May are not a prior conviction for sentencing purposes but are relevant to totality. It is an aggravating factor that you committed these crimes while on bail and while subject to the suspended sentence.
I was asked to consider a drug treatment order. A drug treatment order gives priority to rehabilitation over other sentencing aims. It is in your favour that you admitted your crimes and pleaded guilty at an early stage. Your plea of guilty has facilitated justice although you have not given up any chance of acquittal. There is an obvious connection between your offending and abuse of drugs. There is no present opportunity to participate in any rehabilitation programs, and prison is unlikely to address your addiction apart from reducing the opportunity to take drugs. You have already spent some time in prison which has resulted in a period of enforced abstinence. You will be subject to a suspended sentence on your release, so some incentive to not re-offend is already in place.
However, I have decided that such an order would not be appropriate. Your abuse of drugs is not so long standing it is beyond your own capacity, with appropriate support, to address it, and you have already demonstrated the capacity to abstain. Stealing firearms and trafficking in firearms are serious crimes. Although the opportunity to steal these firearms arose by chance you readily took that chance. Trafficking in firearms is the most serious in the hierarchy of offences provided for in the Firearms Act. The Parliament and the community recognise the strong link between stolen firearms and crimes involving violence and dishonesty. Stolen firearms are taken beyond the control of the regulatory authorities and almost inevitably end up in the hands of criminals. Although some of the firearms you took were recovered, four were not, including a semi-automatic pistol. Those who are contemplating stealing firearms or selling stolen firearms must appreciate the likelihood of strong punishment. For those reasons, punishment and general deterrence are the principal sentencing factors and, in my view, are not adequately addressed in this case by a drug treatment order. A sentence of imprisonment is required. I will take into account the total sentence when combined with the sentence to which you are already subject. To allow for the desirability of your rehabilitation I will suspend part of the sentence and impose a condition requiring supervision.
Lane Dwyer, you are convicted on each count on the indictment, and on count 2 on complaint 30876/2020. I assess, in accordance with the Crime (Confiscation of Profits) Act 1993, s 22, the value of the benefits derived by you from the commission of the offence in the sum of $1,380 and order that you pay to the State a pecuniary penalty equal to that sum within 28 days of your release. I make a compensation order in favour of the owner of the stolen items whose name will be specified on the formal order, and adjourn the further terms of that order to a date to be fixed. You are sentenced to imprisonment for 15 months cumulative to the sentence you are currently serving. I suspend six months of that sentence for two years from your release. It is a condition of that order that you do not commit another offence punishable by imprisonment while it is in force. If you breach that condition then a court must order that you serve the suspended part of that term unless it is unjust. I impose a further condition that, for 18 months following your release, you are to be subject to the supervision of a probation officer. The conditions which the law imposes on that order include that you must report to a probation officer at 111-113 Cameron Street, Launceston within two working days of your release, and you must comply with the reasonable and lawful directions of a probation officer or a supervisor. I impose special conditions that, if you are directed to do so by a probation officer, you must attend educational, rehabilitation and other programs, undergo assessment and treatment for alcohol or drug dependency, submit to testing for alcohol or drug use and submit to medical, psychological or psychiatric assessment or treatment. If you breach any of those conditions you may be brought back to court and re-sentenced.
The result of that order, once the sentences you are already serving are taken into account, is a total term of imprisonment of two years and four months from 21 February 2020, with 12 months of that term suspended for periods which apply to each sentence. Subject to grant of remissions, you will therefore be required to serve a total of one year and four months. Thereafter you will be subject to suspended sentences totalling one year conditional on not re-offending and compliance with supervision in the community for 18 months following your release.