STATE OF TASMANIA v MP 26 NOVEMBER 2019
COMMENTS ON PASSING SENTENCE PEARCE J
MP, you plead guilty to being an accessory after the fact to two crimes, an aggravated armed robbery and an unlawful act intended to cause bodily harm. The principal crimes were committed by four men at a unit in Waverley overnight between 9 and 10 January 2018 against the complainant, a male then aged 47. You are now 19 but this happened about two weeks after your 17th birthday. The men were respectively aged 25, 24, 23 and 18. One of them lived in that unit. You knew all of them. The youngest was a person with whom you had been in a relationship. You went with him to the unit on that night. While you were there you learned of a plan, first thought of by two of the men a couple of days earlier, to lure the complainant to the unit to rob him of money and drugs. Although the defendant found out about the plan, you were not a party to making it.
At about 11pm, one of the men sent a text to the complainant inviting him to the unit. He arrived not long afterwards with a large amount of crystalline methylamphetamine and several thousand dollars in cash. When he entered the unit you were in the bathroom. While you were still in there, the complainant was set upon by the four men and subjected to a prolonged, vicious and brutal beating. He was punched to the face, head and body. When he fell to the floor he was repeatedly struck with punches, elbows and a wooden chair leg. Electrical tape was wound around his neck and face. As he lay on the ground, severely injured, one of the men kicked his face rendering him unconscious. From the bathroom you could hear the sounds of the blows and the victim’s loud screams and groans. As the beating continued you witnessed some of it through the open door. You saw the men taking it in turns to hit the complainant. When you returned to the lounge room there was blood everywhere, including on the walls and carpet.
After the violence stopped, the assailants loaded the unconscious complainant into the back of a utility parked outside. You saw and understood that he was severely injured. You later told the police you thought he was dead. One of the men drove him away. One of the others gathered up the drugs and money and gave some of the cash to the remaining two. When the driver returned, he and that man, left with the drugs and the rest of the cash. You remained with your boyfriend and one other. It is then that the conduct for which you are criminally responsible commenced.
The floor and walls in the kitchen and living room of the unit were covered in blood. You used hot water, sponges, towels and bleach to clean up as best you could. You then left in a taxi, with the other two men. You took with you a plastic bag containing the things you had used to clean, as well as some other blood stained items including shoes, a roll of electrical tape, and the chair leg which had been the weapon. They were put in a rubbish bin. By your plea to these crimes you admit that your purpose in cleaning the unit and removing those items was in order to enable the perpetrators of the robbery and the violence to escape punishment for their crimes.
As events occurred, the steps you took did not result in concealment of the crimes for very long. No-one has avoided charges and no evidence is lost. At about 12.30 am, the complainant was found lying by the side of the road, severely injured, after having regained consciousness and crawled from the back of the utility he had been taken away in. That led the police on a path of inquiry which quickly resulted in identification of the four principals and you and discovery of the evidence items at your boyfriend’s mother’s home. You were arrested two days after the attack on 12 January 2018. The others were all arrested on that day or in the two or three days following. You were first interviewed as a witness. You disclaimed any knowledge of what had taken place. When the police found contradictory evidence on your mobile phone you were interviewed again on the same day, this time under caution. You made extensive admissions, including about your role in cleaning the blood from the walls and carpet in the unit and removing the evidence, although you lied about not knowing two of the men.
The complainant suffered grievous and life threatening injuries to his head and torso. He was kept in an induced coma for five weeks. He spent a further five weeks in hospital before being discharged. The impact on him remains profound. His life has been permanently affected. It is a serious matter to act to assist those guilty of such grave crimes to escape punishment. However you are not to be sentenced for having caused the complainant’s injuries or having planned or committed the robbery. Your criminality is limited to the acts aimed at preventing discovery and investigation of those crimes. The extent of that criminality is to be assessed in light of your age and circumstances at the time. I accept the difficulty of someone your age resisting the implied pressure or expectation that you would help arising from the situation in which you found yourself, your relationship with one of the men, your acquaintance with the rest, the seriousness of the conduct you had just witnessed and your knowledge of the type of violence the men were capable of. Your loyalty to them was of course misplaced. Further, the weight to be attributed to such factors is balanced with the absence of any suggestion of an express threat or pressure to enlist your assistance, your admission of having accepted $150 of the money stolen, the fact that you spent the rest of that night in the company of some of those persons and maintained contact with the others prior to your arrest, and your preparedness to lie to the police until it became apparent to your that your involvement was known.
You come from a responsible family and were educated to grade 10. Until you became involved with the man who was her boyfriend at the time you did not offend and you were industrious and hardworking. You worked in food services and you were an apprentice florist. You had not been in any serious trouble. However he introduced you to progressively harder drugs and your life quickly went downhill. You committed summary offences almost entirely arising from your use of drugs and were the subject of community conferences, fines and periods of good behaviour. You fell pregnant and the termination you decided on is still troubling for you. You spent a short time in custody following your arrest. You went into detention for a further period between 31 January and 20 March 2018. Then, as a result of a non-appearance in court and other offending you have been in custody since 9 November 2019. All of those periods in custody, in total just over two months, will be taken into account in calculating the commencement of the sentence. You plan on your release to attempt to restore your life. However, you are not yet out of trouble and a sentence which includes a strong disincentive to you committing further offences is required. You still present a risk of re-offending. You have a continuing serious drug problem. You say you no longer associate with the others involved in this crime, but it will be up to you to disassociate yourself from anyone who is a bad influence. I intend to impose a sentence of imprisonment but suspend the balance of it. You must clearly understand that if you offend again it is inevitable you will go back to prison. You are entitled to mitigation from your plea of guilty. You were initially charged with attempted murder and pleaded guilty soon after the indictment with the amended much less serious charges was presented. Given that you are now an adult it is convenient to deal with you under the Sentencing Act. However it is to be remembered that you were a youth at the time of offending. The principles which apply to sentencing young offenders apply to you and carry considerable weight. Youth is a factor which generally attracts lenience. In my view this is a case in which the possibility of your reform and rehabilitation is the dominant sentencing factor. A period of supervision is appropriate.
MP, you are convicted on both counts. I impose one sentence. You are sentenced to imprisonment for five months from 15 September 2019, the balance of which is suspended for 12 months from today. If you commit any offence punishable by imprisonment while that order is in force, the suspended part of the sentence must be activated unless that is unjust. In addition, I make a community corrections order for a period of 18 months from today. The core conditions of that order will be specified in the order you will be given and include that you present to Community Corrections within one clear day, that you not commit an offence punishable by imprisonment, that you report to and comply with the directions of a probation officer, and that you must not leave Tasmania without permission and that you must notify of any change of address. I impose special conditions that you must, during the operational period of the order attend educational and other programs as directed by a probation officer, submit to the supervision of a probation officer as required by the probation officer; undergo assessment and treatment for drug dependency, including but not limited to the EQUIPS Addiction Program, as directed by a probation officer, submit to testing for drug use as directed by a probation officer; undergo assessment and treatment for alcohol dependency as directed by a probation officer and submit to medical, psychological or psychiatric assessment or treatment as directed by a probation officer. If you breach any of those conditions you may be brought back to court and re-sentenced.