STATE OF TASMANIA v DWAYNE PALMER 23 March 2023
COMMENTS ON PASSING SENTENCE GEASON J
Mr Palmer on 30 December 2021 at approximately 4 pm, you entered Channel Court Shopping Centre in Kingston. You approached a Ms Shawna Taylor, who was walking through the shopping centre. You and Ms Taylor were known to each other. You said to her, “I’ve just been stabbed. Can you help me?” Ms Taylor observed blood on the outside of your shirt and left armpit and called 000.
About 15 minutes later, police attended the shopping centre and spoke to you. This conversation was audio visually recorded. You made a number of statements as follows. First, you been walking in Kingston to catch a bus. You said a man had come up behind you and stabbed him with a kitchen knife with a black handle. You said the man was wearing black clothing, a beige-coloured cap, and a surgical mask. He could not say what colour the man’s hair colour was or the approximate age of the man. You said that you had not seen the person before.
You was taken by ambulance to the Royal Hobart Hospital. Later that evening, police attended the hospital and spoke to you. You made a number of statements which were also recorded. You said that you had been walking from a friend’s house in Kingston to the bus stop. You noticed a man was walking behind you. He came up to you and stabbed him with a kitchen knife with a black handle. You said he was wearing black clothes, a beige cap, and a surgical mask, repeating what you had told police earlier. You said the man held the knife with his left hand and appeared to be in his 20s, although it was difficult to say. You said that you could not say what colour the man’s hair was.
The following day, police visited you at home and questioned you again about the stabbing. You were initially evasive but eventually told police that the man who had stabbed you was a Mr Pacey Jordan Hall. You agreed to attend the police station to provide a statutory declaration to that effect.
Later that day, you attended the police station and you repeated to police that Mr Hall had stabbed you, giving details of the event. A statutory declaration was prepared and read to you. You were told that it was an offence to make a false or misleading statutory declaration. You signed the declaration as being true and correct.
In the statutory declaration you made a number of comments. You said once again that you were walking in Kingston to catch a bus when you noticed a person following you. You recognised that person as Mr Hall “instantly from our run-ins”; you had known Mr Hall for approximately 15 years and you had attended the same school together. You said that Mr Hall caught up with you, “got side-by-side with you”, and had punched you to the left side of your chest. You said that you felt a sharp pain to the left side of your chest, and that Mr Hall then ran away. While he was running away, you said you observed a knife in his hand. You said the knife was approximately 10 centimetres in length and had a black handle. You continued to walk in the direction you had been walking when you realised you were bleeding and that you had been stabbed. You then entered the Channel Court Shopping Centre and sought help.
On the basis of the information you provided to police in that statutory declaration Mr Hall was visited by police on 6 January 2022 at approximately 9 am. There they executed a search warrant. Mr Hall was present when police arrived, was arrested but resisted police. He was taken to the police station and submitted to an interview in relation to the stabbing and the act of resisting police.
It is the State’s case that police arrested Mr Hall on the basis of the statutory declaration made by you. Mr Hall denied stabbing you on 30 December 2021, and provided an alibi for his whereabouts on the day of the stabbing. On 6 January 2022 at approximately 11.40 am, Mr Hall who had been in custody for some two hours and 25 minutes was released.
On 21 January 2022, police attended your address and executed a search warrant. They told you that you had misled them, and you agreed to attend the police station to submit to a further interview. You were not arrested at this time.
You made the following statements to police under caution: You said that you stated that Mr Hall had stabbed you because you had thought that he might have been the person who had done this to you. You said that thought that because you had previously assaulted Mr Hall and Mr Hall may have been motivated by revenge and Mr Hall had told you on 29 December 2021 that he would be in Kingston the following day. You had lied about the circumstances of the stabbing because you were in shock after being stabbed and you felt intimidated and pressured into providing a name to police. You said that you had spent the night of 29 December 2021 at your sister’s house in Kingston. The next day, you visited your former partner’s house and a friend’s house. You said that you were stabbed on your way walking towards the bus stop. You confirmed your initial response to police that you did not recognise the person who stabbed you and you did not reckon it was Mr Hall. You said that you were on drugs at the time and that you would not frame anyone.
You had in fact spent the night of 29 December 2021 at your partner’s house in Kingston. You went to a friend’s house on 30 December 2021 where you both took drugs. You then went to another friend’s house and took more drugs and it was there that you were stabbed by a person not known to you.
You were arrested and bailed.
You are now 23 years of age and you were 21 when this offending occurred.
You were born in Hobart the second youngest of six children
You grew up in Bridgewater area and completed your formal education at Bridgewater High School and then at the Jordan River College.
You describe your home life as being a good one, that you were a good student; you played football outside your studies, you were interested in working on cars and otherwise had a happy and supportive upbringing. After finishing school, you began looking for work. After about a year of unsuccessful attempts in that regard, you found yourself at a loose end more often than not and you claim to have fallen in with a group of people who were not motivated to work or do anything else and you began using cannabis.
At that point your motivation to look for work and to be gainfully employed declined and you lost direction. You became anxious and depressed, you became withdrawn and you began using cannabis on your own. Eventually and to your credit, you gave up cannabis and started looking for work again. You took up a labouring position with a decking and fencing business but unfortunately that business closed and again you were out of work.
In January of this year, you commenced work at Reid Fruits in Huonville, where you are working in the processing shed and you hope to extend your employment there. I am told that you commute on a daily basis to that employment from Bridgewater to Huonville, and I accept that you thereby exhibit a commitment to that employment.
You are in a stable and settled relationship.
I am told by your counsel that you knew Mr Hall from high school but he was not an associate of yours nor a friend. However he had been in a relationship with your current partner, and she had told you that the relationship with him was abusive. This led to an episode in April 2021 involving an assault upon him you in circumstances where you believed your partner had been detained by Mr Hall against her will. You went to his house and were confronted by a hostile group including Mr Hall. You went there armed with a bat and it is put to me that though you acted in self-defence or the defence of Ms Clifford excessive force was used by you and you were sentenced on that basis for the assault against Mr Hall. You received a suspended term of imprisonment in relation to that offending. On the 29 December 2021, Mr Hall contacted you as I have indicated and advised that he would be in Kingston and he was attempting to arrange contact with his daughter through you.
It is not suggested that you were not stabbed on this particular day and it is also accepted that you did not initially identify anyone as the perpetrator. I accept that you felt a degree of pressure to provide an identification to police, and that in part explains your offending, but you did persist in that offending by making a statutory declaration to that affect. You subsequently accepted full responsibility for your conduct in the video recorded interview and you made full admissions to police and you were apologetic for wasting the police’s time.
I accept that you are remorseful for this offending and that remorse is further emphasised by your plea, which was entered at an early opportunity after the receipt of the police file
There has been a delay since your committal for sentence in the resolution of this matter and I accept that delay will have been stressful for you because of the uncertainty of the ultimate outcome of this offending. I am told that you have not committed any offences in the intervening period, and this is a case therefore where delay has afforded you an opportunity to demonstrate positive change.
I accept your counsel’s submission that a sentence which encourages you to continue in your rehabilitation is to be preferred to one which interrupts that progress.
Nevertheless the offending with which you have been charged is serious because it strikes at the administration of justice and in this case it resulted in Mr Hall spending sometime in custody and no doubt considerable stress when confronted with the allegation. This category of offending always attracts a harsh punishment because of its impact upon the due administration of justice.
The sentence the court imposes must deter others from engaging in similar behaviour because the consequences of it can be extremely serious for innocent people. It leads to considerable public expense investigating conduct against people like Mr Hall who had no involvement in any crime against you on that day.
Accordingly in my view a term of imprisonment is the appropriate penalty because anything less does not serve to properly denounce the seriousness of this category of behaviour, and your behaviour on this occasion.
But as I have already said I consider a sentence which encourages your continued rehabilitation is an appropriate one and will serve to deter others whilst encouraging you in the progress that you have been making. It will operate to deter you from such conduct in the future.
In all the circumstances I determine that a sentence of three months imprisonment is the appropriate sentencing order and I wholly suspend the operation of that term for a period of two years on condition that you are of good behaviour and commit no offence punishable by a term of imprisonment in that period