STATE OF TASMANIA v CRAIG RONALD JONES 4 JULY 2019
COMMENTS ON PASSING SENTENCE BRETT J
Mr Jones, you have pleaded guilty to the crime of assault and the summary offences of common assault and destroying property.
You committed these offences on 7 February 2019. You and your wife were going out for dinner that day, and your 18-year-old brother-in-law had come to your house to babysit your children. You had been drinking heavily, and consumed more alcohol over dinner. I infer that you were heavily intoxicated when you returned home from dinner at about 10pm. You engaged in a meaningless argument with your brother-in-law, and then, without any logical basis, took offence at something he said, or at least you thought he said. You assaulted him by punching him in the head. You also verbally insulted and abused him. Not surprisingly, he became upset and left the house. You then decided to go to your father-in-law’s house and expressed the intention of beating him over the head with a pole. After engaging in abuse via social media against your brother-in-law and then your father-in-law, you arranged for an unnamed friend to take you to their house so that you could execute your intended plan. You did this despite your wife pleading with you not to do so. When you arrived at your father-in-law’s house, you knocked his letterbox off its stand and then damaged it, thereby committing the offence of destroying property. When your father-in-law opened the front door to you, you swung the wooden pole at him, hitting him in the head and face area. You then ran away.
Your father-in-law suffered multiple fractures of facial bones as a result of the blow. He was taken to hospital by ambulance, and kept overnight. However, it does not seem that he engaged in any lengthy treatment, and nothing is put to me about ongoing impact. I will proceed on the basis that the injuries healed without incident, although I suspect that the lack of a victim impact statement has more to do with these men being supportive of your wife.
It would seem that as soon as you struck your father-in-law, you developed some immediate insight and remorse into your conduct. In your intoxicated state, you expressed to others that you believed you had killed him and would be facing murder charges. You engaged in an interview with police the following morning, and you have pleaded guilty to these charges in the Magistrates Court at an early opportunity. Most importantly, you have identified and addressed the underlying problem, your excessive and problematic use of alcohol. You have abstained from consuming alcohol since this incident, have joined and continue to participate in Alcoholics Anonymous, and have sought additional counselling through the drug and alcohol service.
You are 31 years of age. You and your wife have three children aged 10, 6 and 5. Two of the children have serious health difficulties. You also suffer from the ongoing effects of a spinal fracture suffered in a motor vehicle accident some time ago. You are in constant pain and medicated for that pain. You accept that you have had a problem with the misuse of alcohol for many years and this is borne out by your history of prior offending. That history consists mainly of traffic offences, but some involve the misuse of alcohol. You have not been convicted in the past for offences involving violence.
It is obvious to me that you are very remorseful in respect of this conduct. It is appropriate that you have that remorse because it was appalling conduct. The attacks on your father-in-law and brother-in-law were completely unprovoked and unjustified. In respect of your father-in-law, you went to his house with a weapon and attacked him in his own home with that weapon. You struck both men in the head area. You caused injury enough, but the consequences could have been far worse. Although there is no information about ongoing victim impact, it is a reasonable comment, I think, that your conduct involved a betrayal of your relationship, not only with these men but also with your wife. None of this is excused by your intoxication. The attitude the law takes to intoxication is that if you commit criminal offences under the influence of alcohol, then you should not drink alcohol. To your credit you seem to have understood this, and I accept that you have taken significant action to deal with this problem.
The objective seriousness of your criminal conduct warrants a sentence of imprisonment. However, in view of your lack of prior convictions for offences of violence, and having regard to your appropriate response to this offending, I intend to offer you an opportunity to avoid having to actually serve the sentence I intend to impose. I will, accordingly, suspend the sentence of imprisonment, but it will be a condition of suspension that you perform some community service. If you commit another imprisonable offence within the period of suspension, or do not perform your community service, or do not perform it satisfactorily, then the Court may, and probably will, activate the sentence and require you to actually serve the imprisonment.
Accordingly, the orders I make are as follows:
1 You are convicted of the crime and the offences to which you have pleaded guilty.
2 You are sentenced to a global term of 12 months’ imprisonment. The whole of that sentence will be suspended for a period of 24 months on the following conditions:
(a) That you are not to commit another offence punishable by imprisonment during that period.
(b) That you will perform community service for a period of 182 hours. The Court notes that the sections referred to in s 24(5A) of the Sentencing Act apply to this condition. For the purpose of those provisions, the operational period of the order is 24 months.