STATE OF TASMANIA v LIAM THOMAS RANSLEY 21 MAY 2020
COMMENTS ON PASSING SENTENCE PEARCE J
Liam Ransley, you plead guilty to aggravated assault. At about 7.00 pm on Tuesday 22 October 2019 the complainant, a 19 year old male, was in the area in central Launceston commonly known as the Birchalls car park, talking to friends. You were a passenger in a car which drove past. At the instigation of one of the others in the vehicle, the driver drove into the car park and pulled up near the group. You left the car wearing a black balaclava. The complainant was warned to leave and tried to drive away, but you walked to within a metre of the driver’s window of his car and pointed a 9 mm handgun at his face. Another male left the car you arrived in and started punching the passenger window of the complainant’s car. The complainant put the car in reverse and drove away. The police were notified. You were identified by others present. You were arrested on 6 November 2019 but claimed to the police to have no memory of events because you were on a “drug bender”. It was your friend, not you, who felt antagonism to someone in the victim’s group, and you now say you involved yourself as a result of a belief that the victim may pose some threat. That of course was unwarranted and irrational.
You are aged 21. Your record of offending commenced in 2017 when you were in your mid-teens. On 22 June 2017 you were sentenced by a magistrate to imprisonment for ten months for dishonesty, bail, driving and drug offences. Most of the term was suspended. You committed further dishonesty offences. On 21 March 2018 you were sentenced to imprisonment for four months, but the suspended term was re-suspended. On 31 May 2018 you were sentenced to imprisonment for 17 months from 29 April 2018 for stealing and aggravated robbery. On that occasion you, with other young men, stood over a man with threats of serious violence before robbing him of goods and cash. You were released on parole on 14 January 2019 but almost immediately began to commit offences again. On 2 May 2019 you were imprisoned for a month. On 13 August 2019, Porter AJ made a drug treatment order, with a custodial part of two years’ imprisonment, for an attempted aggravated robbery committed on 13 February 2019. You soon breached that order by committing further serious offences of dishonesty in October and November 2019. The drug treatment order was cancelled and the two year custodial part was activated from 6 November 2019 with eligibility for parole after half of that term. On 28 January 2020 a magistrate sentenced you for the new offences, as well as for breaches of the suspended sentences imposed in 2017. The end result was a cumulative term of imprisonment of 6 months, resulting in a total term of 2½ years from 6 November 2019. You will not be eligible to apply for parole until 4 February 2021. If you are required to serve the full sentence, without parole or remission, you will not be released until 5 May 2022. The fact that you are already serving those sentences is relevant to the total effect of the sentences you will face, including the one I am about to impose.
You had an extremely difficult upbringing. You were placed in foster care when you were 3. Your foster mother was a positive influence, but she died when you were 12 or 13. Fairly soon afterwards you removed yourself from care. Since then you have lived a largely itinerant life. You fell into bad company. Your education was badly affected. You have never been employed. You used cannabis from age 13. You have used methylamphetamine from age 16, and large periods of your life have involved heavy daily use of that drug. You use methylamphetamine as the only way you know of dealing with stress or turmoil in your life. Porter AJ accepted the link between crime and your addiction on the basis that you committed crime to purchase drugs. His Honour made the drug treatment order despite CMD holding significant concerns as to your capacity and willingness to comply with the stringent conditions of a drug treatment order. Events have now demonstrated that compliance did not last long. According to your counsel, things became worse for you when you lost your accommodation, and you returned to what you knew.
It is in your favour that you have pleaded guilty. Your counsel submits that you have some insight into your offending and the reasons for it, but that did not stop you acting as you did. I have not been told that the victim suffered any adverse psychological effect, but it was no doubt a very frightening experience for him. A civilised society cannot tolerate the unauthorised and lawless use of handguns to threaten others. This crime, like the crimes of dishonesty for which you were sentenced by a magistrate in January this year, was committed only two months after the drug treatment order was imposed. Unfortunately you quickly reverted to the same disregard for the law you have demonstrated over the last few years. You failed to take advantage of the lenience which the courts have repeatedly extended to you in an attempt to help you get your life on track. Little lenience can be offered to a person who brandishes a handgun while under the influence of methylamphetamine, such short time after a drug treatment order is made.
Liam Ransley, you are convicted. You are sentenced to a term of imprisonment of 12 months. I order that you not be eligible for parole until you have served eight months of that sentence. To allow for totality I order that four months of the sentence be served concurrently with the sentences you are currently serving or liable to serve, and eight months of the sentence is to be served cumulatively. The effect of that sentence is that you will be required to serve at least an additional four months before becoming eligible to apply for parole.