STATE OF TASMANIA v LIAM COREY HUME 17 JUNE 2024
COMMENTS ON PASSING SENTENCE BLOW CJ
Liam Corey Hume, you have pleaded guilty to a charge of dangerous driving and also to eight charges of summary offences that I am dealing with under s 385A of the Criminal Code. All of these charges relate to an incident on 15 April this year. On that day, you were driving on the Bass Highway near Wynyard. You had travelled up from Hobart to get some personal belongings. You did not have a driver’s licence. You have never had one. You have been disqualified from driving several times in the past and apparently were not aware that your last disqualification had expired and that you were eligible to apply for a driver’s licence.
You were driving without a licence and you had a small quantity of cannabis in your possession when a police officer observed you to overtake a vehicle at a high speed and narrowly miss it. The police activated their emergency lights and sirens to try to get you to stop, but you did not stop. You panicked. You drove away. That constituted the offence of evading police.
You drove dangerously on the Bass Highway and through the streets of Somerset. There were four occasions when you were on a collision course with other vehicles. On a number of those occasions there were near misses. You travelled at excessive speeds. At one stage you did 140 Kmph where the speed limit was 100 Kmph. But at another stage you did 100 Kmph where the speed limit was 70 Kmph. You crossed over double white lines and created a danger to a number of other motorists. Luckily there were no collisions. No one was hurt. The police eventually stopped you by using road spikes. You kept going for some distance even after your tyres deflated. You ran and hid under a caravan. You were arrested, and you have been in custody ever since.
You have a terrible record, although you do not have any prior convictions for dangerous driving. You do for evading police. I have to impose a separate sentence on the charge of evading police. The other summary charges that you have pleaded guilty to are driving without a licence, possessing cannabis, two charges of speeding, one of driving without due care and attention, and one of disobeying a give way sign. You failed to give way at a junction in Somerset when you were going back onto the Bass Highway, and that was another situation where you were on a collision course with another vehicle. Finally there is an offence of crossing double white lines.
Because of your record, the only appropriate course is for me to give you two separate sentences of imprisonment – one for evading police, one for everything else.
There are things that count in your favour. You realised very soon after all of this that you should have simply stopped for the police and accepted the consequences. You were hoping to get your life in order. You had received some compensation money under the Redress Scheme. You have a partner and children, and another one on the way. You hoped to get a house, renovate it, make a new life for yourself and your family and stay out of trouble. It looks as though you came close. Importantly from my point of view, you pleaded guilty to the dangerous driving charge at a very early stage. It was April when all of this happened and now it is June. Most of the people I sentence committed their crimes a couple of years previously, not two months as in your case.
Because of those factors, I am going to impose the shortest possible non-parole periods but this dangerous driving was serious and I have got to give you substantial sentences.
I convict you on all of the charges. On count 2 on complaint 51374/2024, which is the charge of evading police, I sentence you to six months’ imprisonment with effect from 15 April 2024. You will not be eligible for parole until you have served three months’ imprisonment in respect of that sentence. On that charge I disqualify you from driving for two years from today.
On all of the other charges as a global sentence, I sentence you to 10 months’ imprisonment cumulatively with the sentence on the charge of evading police. You will not be eligible for parole until you have served five months of this sentence. On those other charges (other than the cannabis charge) I disqualify you from driving for a cumulative period of one year.
The total of the sentences that I am imposing is sixteen months’ imprisonment with effect from 15 April 2024. You will not be eligible for parole until you have served eight months in total. That means you could be out before Christmas, but you are disqualified from driving for three years from today.