STATE OF TASMANIA v BRADLEY JAMES JETSON 7 DECEMBER 2020
COMMENTS ON RE-SENTENCING BLOW CJ
Mr Jetson, you were sentenced by Pearce J in April of last year to six months’ imprisonment on a charge of perverting justice. Pearce J suspended that sentence, all of it. But he also made an order requiring you to perform 105 hours of community service within a period of 18 months. You only performed 18½ hours, and that leaves 86½ hours outstanding. I accept that you were shot in the leg at some stage. But that was in November 2019, and you had had since 17 April to do community service, and you had only completed 18.5 hours. That is not good enough. If people do not do their community service hours they can expect to go to prison. And that is where I am going to send you this afternoon. But not for long.
I am taking into account the circumstances of the incident that led to you coming before Pearce J. You had been driving while disqualified. The police saw the vehicle. You fled from them. You and your partner both told the police that she was driving, not you. Because of that, you were charged with perverting justice. You pleaded guilty to that, and it was for that you got the suspended sentence of six months and the 105 hours’ community service. You also pleaded guilty to driving whilst disqualified, evading police and driving a vehicle whose registration was suspended, and for those offences Pearce J fined you $1,000. His Honour obviously decided that a suspended sentence, by itself, was not a heavy enough penalty, and that is why he gave you the opportunity of doing some community service. You may have had a very good excuse after being shot, but in the seven months leading up to that period, you did not have a good excuse for only completing 18.5 hours.
I have the power to cancel the community service order and to cancel any other order that was made by Pearce J. I am going to cancel both the community service order and the suspended sentence, and I am going to impose a new suspended sentence that is only partly suspended, so that you will have to serve 15 days. You will be out by Christmas.
Under s 42AW(4)(e) of the Sentencing Act, I cancel the community correction order and the order imposing a wholly suspended sentence of imprisonment, both of which were made by Pearce J on 17 April 2019. The conviction still stands. In place of the orders that I have cancelled, I sentence you to 180 days’ imprisonment from today. I suspend 165 days of that sentence on condition that you must not commit any offence punishable by imprisonment within nine months after your release from prison.