DPP v Atkinson [2025] VCC 1559

1. Police arrested you on 2 March 2024 and interviewed you. You made 'no comment' and you were remanded in custody where you have remained since.
2. You offered to plead guilty to the charges on this indictment on 24 September 2024. Your offer was not accepted then, and a contested committal proceeding during which four witnesses were cross-examined occurred.
3. After that the prosecutor then accepted your offer.
4. I find that your plea indicates an acceptance of responsibility on your part and a willingness to facilitate the course of justice. It has the benefit of avoiding a trial and all the cost and inconvenience that would entail, particularly for your victims.
5. I accept that your plea indicates remorse.
6. Consistent with that, you elected to have your matter heard in the Koori Court. In doing so you voluntarily faced an elder of your community, a community to which you have strong ties.
7. Your participation in the sentencing conversation was genuine. You listened to and accepted criticism from your elder. You listened to and accepted comments from your own family members, describing the shame you have brought on them. I accept that you engaged relatively openly in that process.

1. You were 26 at the time of the offending and you are now 27.
2. You are a Yorta Yorta and Gunakurnai man with strong ties to Shepparton, growing up here. You are the youngest of your siblings.
3. During your early years you were exposed to domestic violence and drug use at home.
4. You attended school in Shepparton until Year 10. You then briefly attended the Pavillion School in Preston. Following school you completed a certificate in bricklaying.
5. As to drug use, you began using cannabis and methyl-amphetamine at around 16. By the time you were 18 you were using meth daily and your only periods of abstinence from meth had been whilst you were in prison. More recently you began to use GHB in increasing amounts in the months prior to being remanded on these charges.
6. With your brother's assistance you were able to maintain a period of abstinence from drugs while on the drug and alcohol treatment order, but you relapsed when your relationship with your then partner ended. Notably, you appear to have remained offence-free during that period.
7. Your work history is limited, although while recently the subject of the drug and alcohol treatment order you worked in a variety of jobs including as a container unloader, traffic controller and furniture removalist.
8. You have a relevant criminal history. In 2018 you received a combination sentence for violent offences including recklessly causing injury, intentionally causing injury and assault. In 2021 you were convicted of armed robbery and were sentenced to a drug and alcohol treatment order. In 2022 you were convicted of assault with an instrument and damaging property offences, in contravention of your 2018 CCO.
9. You are currently employed as a billet worker at Ravenhall Correctional Centre. You have also completed various courses in custody relating to culture, first aid, cookery, vocational training and drug use (Exhibit 3).
10. Forensic clinical psychologist, Dr Rachael Watson, assessed you and in her report dated 5 October 2025 (Exhibit 1) she found that you meet the diagnostic criteria for ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) and stimulant use disorder relating to methamphetamines. While falling short of any clinically significant diagnoses, Dr Watson also found you have issues with managing your emotions and impulsivity.
11. She found that your ADHD has an indirect relationship with your behaviour, which, along with your substance misuse, increases your impulsivity. She also found there to be a relationship between your substance abuse disorder and your offending given that you were using methamphetamine at the time. This is unsurprising.
12. Dr Watson noted that your early childhood environment also contributed to you, in later life, using violence to solve your problems and predisposed you to a degree to be emotionally reactive and impulsive.
13. She found that there were no concerns about possible deterioration of your mental state, however, while in prison.
14. In terms of risk, she assessed you as being only a moderate risk of future violence generally. Importantly, you were assessed as being a low risk of imminent violence if you were in the community and not using drugs, although she said and I accept, that risk increases to at least moderate if you relapse into drug use. So much is consistent with your history.
15. Dr Watson also assessed your risk of serious harm, if you should relapse and further offend, and if you were to offend violently, then the risk of serious harm, she said, was high.
16. She also noted that you expressed a desire to apologise to the victims and to make reparation and that you acknowledged that your conduct required punishment.
17. Your mother and brother participated in the sentencing conversation, and you were also supported in court by other family members, including your current partner with whom you have a child. I note you also have two other children with previous partners and maintain contact with both of them.
18. For completeness, I note a report from clinical psychologist, Carla Lechner, dated 6 August 2021 was also tendered (Exhibit 2).

1. The maximum penalty for Charges 1, 4 and 5 is 10 years' imprisonment each. For Charge 2 it is 20 years, and for Charge 3 it is five.
2. The objective gravity of your offending, it has to be said, particularly in relation to Charge 1, using the firearm, and Charge 5, causing injury intentionally, is very high.
3. You offended in company, you entered somebody's home and then the tent in the backyard where the victims were living, and you took a dangerous firearm there and you used it. Your behaviour was clearly aggressive and intended to threaten your victims, if not harm them.
4. Your conduct in respect of Charge 5, shooting GE, was very lucky not to have resulted in more serious consequences. It was a matter of luck that it did not. However, while your offending could have caused far more serious harm, I will not be sentencing you for the speculative possible outcomes of your offending. Rather, I will impose sentence for what actually happened and that sentence will be proportionate.
5. Your blameworthiness for what happened in my view is high. You were the principal offender, and you acted with an intention to confront someone and then did so even though your target was not present. Your actual victims were people you did not know and with whom you had no dispute.
6. Significantly, you were serving a sentence, a drug and alcohol treatment order at the time, that was focused on your rehabilitation.
7. Your counsel, Mr Bourke, submitted that the specific application of the Bugmy principles are enlivened in this case,[1] that is to say, your moral culpability or blameworthiness for this offending should be reduced because of your background, deprived as it was and which introduced you to violence and drug use at an early age.
8. I can accept this submission, particularly as it is borne out in Dr Watson finding that your childhood environment was marred by violence and drug abuse, and conditioned you to use violence to solve your problems and to be emotionally reactive.
9. I accept that your moral culpability is somewhat reduced on that basis but nevertheless remains relatively high in light of the factors outlined above. In my view, your use of the firearm goes beyond your learned recourse to violence which is otherwise informed by your deprived upbringing.
10. Further, this was not a situation where you were faced with violence and responded impulsively. Rather, you instigated this violence completely on your own volition.
11. Your recourse to violence in this setting requires me to consider the need to protect the community from your conduct, and I have given that some weight.
12. I have also given weight to the need to deter others from serious gun violence such as this.
13. I accept the opinion of Dr Watson that your drug use is tied to your risk of offending in the future. I have given this particular consideration when determining the proportion of your sentence that you must serve before being eligible for parole.
14. Your sentence is intended to denounce your conduct and to punish you appropriately.
15. I have had regard to your criminal history, not in order to increase your sentence for what you have done in the past, but so that I can take into account how much weight I should give to prospects of rehabilitation and specific deterrence. I note your sentence in 2021 in relation to armed robbery and that that is relevant to the offences on this occasion.
16. Your offending was committed in a single, relatively short incident, and I will therefore make orders for concurrency, at least to a significant degree, in order to give effect to the principle of totality, that is, your sentence should reflect the total of what you did and no more.
17. I find your prospects for rehabilitation to be moderately good. You are still relatively young, and while you have a relevant criminal history, it is not so extensive as to suggest that you are beyond rehabilitation. Notably, you managed to refrain from offending for a significant period when you had your drug problem under control.
18. Indeed, as your counsel Mr Bourke appropriately submitted, your prospects for rehabilitation are largely tied to your ability to remain drug free.
19. Importantly, you expressed remorse for and insight into your offending. You have acknowledged that your offending would have terrified the victims and have expressed a desire to apologise to them.
20. You also acknowledge the connection between your drug abuse and your offences. I note that I have little evidence before me to suggest that you have engaged in serious treatment in relation to drug use, other than the short course, but I accept that this will likely be addressed as you approach parole.
21. I accept your counsel's submission that your participation in the sentencing conversation is important. Your voluntary and direct participation in the conversation, being confronted by an elder from a community to which you have strong ties, demonstrates that you are remorseful and you are aware of the gravity of your offending. It is consistent with your desire to reform and become a more positive member of the community.
22. The only appropriate sentence in this case is a term of imprisonment with a non-parole period. So much was conceded by your counsel, quite properly.
23. I accept your counsel's submission that in order to encourage your reform, you should be eligible for parole at an earlier stage of your sentence than your offending and criminal history might suggest.
24. I sentence you as follows:

On Charge 1, being a prohibited person using a firearm, 18 months' imprisonment.

On Charge 5, causing injury intentionally, five years.

1. As to cumulation, only three months of the sentence on Charge 1, eight months of the sentence on Charge 2, one month of the sentence on Charge 3 and three months of the sentence on Charge 4 are to be served cumulatively upon each other and upon the sentence on Charge 5.
2. This makes a total effective sentence of 6 years and 3 months.
3. I fix a non-parole period of 3 years and 6 months.
4. You have served 604 days of pre-sentence detention, and I direct that that be reckoned as a period already served under the sentence.
5. In accordance with 6AAA of the Sentencing Act, but for your guilty plea I would have imposed 8 years and 4 months and fixed a non-parole period of 5 years and 5 months.
6. I grant the unopposed application for forfeiture and disposal of the bullet fragment, and I strike out the summary offences transferred and now withdrawn.