Dickinson v R

1. [1]

   BEAZLEY P: I have had the advantage of reading in draft the reasons of Hidden AJ. I agree with his Honour’s reasons and proposed orders.

2. [2]

   GARLING J: I agree with Hidden AJ.

3. [3]

   HIDDEN AJ: The applicant, Steven Dickinson, pleaded guilty in the District Court to four counts of break, enter and steal, and asked that four further offences of break, enter and steal and one of attempted break, enter and steal be taken into account on a Form 1. The sentencing judge imposed an aggregate sentence of 7½ years with a non-parole period of 5 years, commencing on 10 November 2014. The applicant seeks leave to appeal against that sentence.

Facts

1. [4]

   The offences were committed between January and March 2014. A brief summary of them is sufficient and it is preferable to do so in chronological order, distinguishing those which were counts from those which were on the Form 1.

   1. (1)

      On 22 January 2014, the applicant broke into a home at Parramatta, gaining entry through a bedroom window. He stole a variety of items, mainly jewellery, of a total value of $5,500. [Form 1]

   2. (2)

      On 10 February 2014, the applicant broke into a home at Willoughby by forcing a study window. He stole a variety of items of significant value, totalling $11,970. [Count 1]

   3. (3)

      On 7 March 2014, the applicant broke into a home at Waverley by climbing onto a balcony and opening an unlocked door. He stole a variety of valuable items, of a total value of $5,000. [Form 1]

   4. (4)

      On 28 March 2014, the applicant gained entry to a home at Paddington by a second floor balcony. He stole a large number of items, including jewellery, of a total value of $100,500. [Count 2]

   5. (5)

      On 4 April 2014, the applicant gained entry to a home at St Ives by breaking a rear bedroom window. He stole a number of items, again mainly jewellery, of a total value of $15,000. While he was there, the owner’s mother arrived to let a pest controller in. She was startled to see the applicant in the house and asked him if he was the “pest man”. He said “umm, yeah,” then turned and ran out of the house. [Form 1]

   6. (6)

      On 14 April 2014, the applicant broke into a home at Seaforth by removing a fly screen from a ground floor window. He stole a variety of property, yet again mainly jewellery, of a total value of $35,000. The owners’ insurance covered them only for $10,000. [Count 3]

   7. (7)

      On 23 April 2014, the applicant broke into a home at Chifley via a rear window. He stole various items, including a quantity of jewellery, valued at $7,300. [Form 1]

   8. (8)

      On 28 April 2014, the applicant gained entry to a home at Revesby. He stole a variety of valuable items of an estimated total value of $50,000. [Count 4]

   9. (9)

      On 9 May 2014, the applicant attempted to break into a home at Kyeemagh with intent to steal. He was in the process of trying to gain entry by a side laundry when he was confronted by the occupant, a woman. He fled from the scene. [Form 1]

2. [5]

   All the offences were committed during the day. With the exception of the fifth and ninth offences, no-one was at the home when the offence was committed. Of the eight homes to which the applicant gained entry, most had been ransacked to a greater or lesser degree. The exceptions were the second and eighth offences. Of the nine homes the subject of the offences, the applicant’s finger prints (or in one case a palm print) were found at eight of the premises. The exception was the fifth offence, although a test of a sample of blood detected at those premises disclosed DNA matching the applicant’s.

Subjective case

1. [6]

   The applicant turned 28 during the period over which the offences were committed, and is now 30. He has a bad criminal record, primarily for offences of the same kind, and had previously been sentenced to terms of imprisonment. Moreover, at the time of these offences he was on parole for such an offence. Indeed, he had been released on parole only three days before the first of the present offences, committed on 22 January 2014.

2. [7]

   He was arrested for the present offences on 10 May 2014. His parole was revoked and, while in custody, he was dealt with in the Local Court for an outstanding offence of assaulting an officer in the execution of his duty. The sentencing judge had regard to those matters in determining the commencement date of the aggregate sentence. To this I shall return, as it is the subject of one of the grounds of appeal.

3. [8]

   The applicant’s background is to be found in a psychological report that was before the sentencing judge. His parents separated when he was young, and his mother took to the abuse of alcohol and heroin. When he was 13 years old she died of a heroin overdose, which he described to the psychologist as a crisis point in his life. He began to associate with anti-social peers, leading to drug abuse and a criminal lifestyle. He left school after year 7, but later completed year 10 while he was in juvenile detention.

4. [9]

   He was introduced to drugs by his associates following his mother’s death, and became addicted to heroin. He was also abusing Xanax tablets and benzodiazepines. Several attempts at drug rehabilitation had been unsuccessful.

5. [10]

   In a letter to the sentencing judge, and in oral evidence, he expressed remorse for his offences and a desire to take steps to remain drug free. His Honour was prepared to find that he had accepted responsibility for his actions. He enjoyed the support of his father and two older sisters.

The application

1. [11]

   The primary focus of the application is a complaint that the sentencing judge erred in his assessment of the objective gravity of the offences. Ground 1 is that in that assessment his Honour wrongly treated as relevant the fact that the applicant had a prior record for similar offences. Ground 2 is that his Honour erred in characterising each of the offences as objectively very serious.

2. [12]

   There is a third ground relating to the commencement date of the sentence, to which I shall turn later.

3. [13]

   The source of the first two grounds is the following passage from his Honour’s remarks on sentence:

4. [14]

   Ground 1 is directed to his Honour’s reference in that passage to an offender’s “prior record for similar offences.” In the guideline judgment in Ponfield at [48] (337), it was said that a court should regard the seriousness of an offence contrary to s 112(1) of the Crimes Act “as enhanced and reflect that enhanced seriousness in the quantum of sentence” where any of a number of factors set out in the paragraph was present. Eleven such factors were then set out, including that the offender “has a prior record particularly for like offences”: (iii).

5. [15]

   Ponfield was decided before the enactment of s 21A of the Crimes (Sentencing Procedure) Act, dealing with aggravating and mitigating factors on sentence, and before the examination by this Court of the relevance to sentence of a prior criminal history in R v McNaughton (2006) 66 NSWLR 566, [2006] NSWCCA 242. In that case, Spigelman CJ, delivering the leading judgment, after referring to Veen v The Queen (No 2) (1988) 164 CLR 465, Baumer v The Queen (1988) 166 CLR 51 and R v Wickham [2004] NSWCCA 193, observed at [24] and [26] (574):

6. [16]

   More recently this Court had occasion to consider Ponfield in Mapp v R (2010) 206 A Crim R 497, [2010] NSWCCA 269. In that case Simpson J (as she then was) observed at [10] (502):

7. [17]

   Counsel for the applicant, Mr Barrow, submitted that the passage from his Honour’s remarks quoted above conveys that the applicant’s record for similar offences was erroneously taken into account in assessing the objective gravity of the offences. However, I am persuaded by the submission of the Crown Prosecutor in this Court that the passage should not be read in that way. It should be noted that, whereas the relevant passage in Ponfield at [48] described the enumerated factors as enhancing the seriousness of an offence, his Honour in the quoted passage described the factors to which he referred as no more than “some guidelines for sentencing judges when it comes to considering matters such as this.” Later in his remarks, his Honour said:

8. [18]

   In my view, a fair reading of the earlier passage from his Honour’s remarks is that he was referring, by reference to Ponfield, to a number of factors bearing upon sentencing for offences of this kind. Plainly enough, consideration of the applicant’s criminal history was an important aspect in determining the appropriate sentence, but I do not understand his Honour to have been referring to that as a matter bearing upon the objective gravity of the offences. In the quoted passage his Honour went on to observe that the Court in Ponfield had also noted matters to be taken into account in mitigation. It was after that that his Honour observed, “Objectively each offence is very serious”.

9. [19]

   In my view, it is clear enough that his Honour did deal with objective gravity as a discrete issue, separately from his consideration of the applicant’s criminal history. It is to be borne in mind that his Honour delivered his remarks ex tempore after hearing submissions, and on a number of occasions this Court has said that the scrutiny of such reasons should be tempered by a degree of latitude: see, for example, Gal v R [2015] NSWCCA 242, per Beech-Jones J at [35]. I would reject this ground.

10. [20]

    Ground 2, that his Honour erred in characterising each offence as objectively “very serious”, is to an extent allied to ground 1.

11. [21]

    In the first of the passages from his remarks quoted above, his Honour described the level of planning of the applicant’s offences as “slight”. This, no doubt, is consistent with his having plainly taken no steps to ensure that his fingerprints were not left at the premises. Although property of substantial value was taken, his Honour accepted that the offences were committed to obtain drugs and that the applicant’s resort to drugs from his early teenage years “was not really a matter of personal choice”.

12. [22]

    Mr Barrow noted that a number of the aggravating factors referred in Ponfield at [48] were absent in the present case. For example, the offences were not committed at the premises of persons who were elderly, sick or disabled; there were not repeated intrusions into the same premises; there is no evidence of actual trauma suffered by any victims; and no force was used or threatened. Only one offence, the attempted break and enter the subject of Form 1, was committed when the victim was present at the premises, and all the offences were committed during the day time rather than at night, when it might have been anticipated that victims would be at home.

13. [23]

    In all the circumstances, Mr Barrow argued, the offences could not fairly be described as objectively very serious. Rather, they would fall in the mid-range of objective gravity. His Honour’s description of them as very serious, Mr Barrow submitted, conveyed that he did have regard to the applicant’s criminal history when making that assessment.

14. [24]

    It should be noted that, while describing the offences as very serious, his Honour did not attempt to place them within some notional scale of objective gravity. It must be recognised that remarks on sentence are not a clinical exercise, and that it is sometimes appropriate for a sentencing judge to use emphatic language to bring home to an offender the gravity of his or her conduct. This is particularly so with a repeat offender such as the applicant. His Honour said in his remarks that he saw him “in a sense … at the cross roads.” The tenor of his remarks as a whole was to convey to the applicant, for his benefit, the seriousness of the offences and the prospect that, if he did not pursue his rehabilitation on parole and continued to offend in this way, the only way the community might be protected is by “his removal from it for as long as possible.”

15. [25]

    In any event, it is well established that the assessment of the objective gravity of an offence is a matter very much within the province of a sentencing judge and is a finding which this Court would be slow to set aside: Mulato v R [2006] NSWCCA 282, per Spigelman CJ at [37] and Simpson J at [46]. Notwithstanding the absence of a number of the aggravating features referred to in Ponfield, these offences were serious. In the eight offences of break, enter and steal a large amount of property of considerable value was stolen. Estimates of the value range from $5,000 (the third offence – Form 1) to $100,500 (the fourth offence – Count 2). Some of the property stolen was jewellery, which was likely to attract sentimental value apart from its monetary worth. In one case (the sixth offence – count 3) the owners’ insurance fell well short of covering them for their loss. As noted, six of the houses in which property was stolen had been ransacked to a greater or lesser degree.

16. [26]

    I am not persuaded that his Honour’s description of the gravity of these offences demonstrates error. I would reject this ground also.

17. [27]

    As noted above, the applicant was arrested for these offences on 10 May 2014 but the aggregate sentence was directed to commence on 10 November 2014. This was because he was serving the balance of an earlier sentence after his arrest, his parole having been revoked, and he had been dealt with for an outstanding offence of assaulting an officer in the execution of his duty. For that offence he had been sentenced to imprisonment for 9 months with a non-parole period of 5 months, dating from 10 May 2014.

18. [28]

    In his remarks, his Honour noted that the applicant had been serving balance of parole and the sentence for assaulting an officer, but he mistakenly said that for that offence he had received a 9 month non-parole period. In determining the commencement date for the aggregate sentence of 10 November 2014, his Honour said:

19. [29]

    It is apparent that his Honour’s intention was to make the aggregate sentence partially cumulative upon what he understood to be the non-parole period for the offence of assaulting an officer. In fact the non-parole period for that offence was 5 months and it had expired by 10 October 2014, one month before the aggregate sentence commenced. Mr Barrow submitted that this Court should adjust the commencement date of the aggregate sentence. He saw this as a limited error which would not warrant the sentence being set aside in its entirety and this Court re-sentencing at its own discretion, referring to the discussion of that issue in Martin v R [2016] NSWCCA 104. However, this matter was argued before the decision of this Court in Lehn v R [2016] NSWCCA 225. In the light of that decision, the Court’s discretion to re-sentence generally is enlivened. This is not a mere arithmetical error in the calculation of the commencement date of the sentence: cf Lehn at [71]. His Honour’s misapprehension about the non-parole period for the sentence of assaulting an officer affected the exercise of his sentencing discretion.

20. [30]

    The Crown Prosecutor in this Court pointed out that the sentence as it stands is valid and that it does achieve his Honour’s aim that the applicant suffers some measure of punishment referable only to the assaulting an officer offence. Nevertheless, given that it was his Honour’s intention that the aggregate sentence be partly concurrent with the non-parole period for that offence, I am satisfied that the commencement date of the aggregate sentence should be adjusted. I would not otherwise interfere with the sentence because, in the exercise of my discretion, I consider that it is appropriate.

21. [31]

    Mr Barrow argued that the aggregate sentence should be directed to commence on a date no later than 10 October 2014, when the 5 month non-parole period expired. In my view, it would be appropriate to backdate the aggregate sentence by 2 months so as to maintain a moderate degree of concurrency with the non-parole period for assaulting an officer, while leaving most of that non-parole period referable only to that offence. I would direct that the aggregate sentence commence on 10 September 2014.

Referral to Drug Court

1. [32]

   At the time he sentenced the applicant the sentencing judge referred him to the Drug Court for assessment of his suitability for a compulsory drug treatment order. However, he was ineligible to be assessed because of the length of his outstanding head sentence which, at that time, was a little over 6 years and 9 months. Section 5A(1) of the Drug Court Act 1998 defines “eligible convicted offender” by reference to a number of criteria, one of which is that the offender’s unexpired total sentence was a period of not more than 6 years: sub paragraph (b)(ii). However, as at the date of the hearing of this application the remaining time on the applicant’s sentence was a little over 5 years and 8 months. Accordingly, he was by then an eligible convicted offender.

2. [33]

   Section 18B of the Drug Court Act deals with the referral of eligible convicted offenders to that court. Relevantly that section provides:

3. [34]

   Mr Barrow asked us to refer the applicant for assessment as the subject of a compulsory drug treatment order, whatever the outcome of the application might be. The Crown Prosecutor did not wish to be heard on the matter and, in my view, it is an appropriate course.

Orders

1. [35]

   I propose the following orders:

   1. (1)

      Leave to appeal is granted and appeal is allowed.

   2. (2)

      The aggregate sentence passed in the District Court is confirmed, but is directed to commence on 10 September 2014. Accordingly, that sentence will comprise a non-parole period of 5 years, commencing on 10 September 2014 and expiring on 9 September 2019, and a balance of term of 2½ years, commencing on 10 September 2019 and expiring on 9 March 2022.

   3. (3)

      The applicant is referred to the Drug Court for assessment as the subject of a compulsory drug treatment order.