STATE OF TASMANIA v BRADLEY FRANK RICHARDS ESTCOURT J
COMMENTS ON PASSING SENTENCE 10 MARCH 2021
The defendant was found guilty by a jury on an indictment alleging an assault on Jessica Bruanna Dean on 7 December 2018 by pulling her from the driver’s seat of a motor vehicle through the passenger side door and onto the tarmac at the side of the road and there punching and or kicking her repeatedly to the head an upper body, and biting her to the hand and or forehead.
I am satisfied to the requisite standard that the defendant committed each of the particularised acts of seizing her left arm, forcibly pulling her from the driver’s seat of the motor vehicle through the front passenger side door and onto the tarmac at the side of the road and hitting or scratching her. There was no evidence, however, as to kicking her repeatedly to the head and no evidence as to the biting of the hand or forehead. I can therefore make no finding about those particulars of the assault.
The defendant is 25 years old, he was only 22 at the time of this offending. He has no children and resides on the north-west coast of Tasmania. He is now in a new relationship and he and the complainant have no cause to be in contact with each other. He is currently in good health, unemployed and looking for work in any field.
The defendant was also sentenced to three community service orders from 22 March 2019 to 13 July 2020. He failed to comply with those orders and was re-sentenced to a period in custody. He was assessed as a result, in part, as not suitable for further community correction orders.
The defendant has been assessed as not suitable for a home detention order as well. He remains a frequent user of cannabis which would render him unable to comply with standard conditions. He must abstain from such substances during the period of home detention.
There are further concerns on the part of Community Corrections relating to his ability to comply with the stringent conditions of a home detention order given his previous poor record of compliance with court orders. The defendant has prior convictions for common assault in 2015 and for assaulting a police officer in 2018. Any Criminal Code assault is a serious crime, more so when it is comprised of multiple acts of violence on a female. Fortunately in this case the acts of force were limited as I have found, and the complainant suffered only transient injuries. I have not been provided with a victim impact statement.
The defendant is convicted and is sentenced to 12 months’ imprisonment which sentence I wholly suspend on condition that he commit no other offence punishable by imprisonment for a period of 3 years.