[2017] VCC 1190
General information, not legal advice.
County Court of Victoria
2017-07-28
Original judgment source is linked above.
27 July of this year. It has been marked as Exhibit A and you have heard it read into the transcript.
Mr Scott Hillbridge. He had been a truck driver, but he had fallen on some pretty hard times. He had limited work capacity due to an injury that he sustained in a house fire back in 2012. He had suffered very significant burns to 70 per cent or so of his body. He had limited use of his hands and a number of other health concerns flowing from that injury. It is in a way that event which befell him which caused him to meet you because he, as a result of the injury, used prescription drugs but also illegal drugs to try and manage his pain. Hence, he spent some time in St Kilda and hence he met up with a friend of yours by the name of Shaun and then he met you.
You have been dealt with on many occasions for thefts and thefts of motor vehicles in the Magistrates' Court and there is nothing in the particular circumstances of this theft that would counter the suggestion that a magistrate would have the available sentencing powers down in that court. They can pass sentences of up to two years for an indictable offence.
It has been referred to. There is a mental health assessment report. It is a detailed report from Samara Gray. It is Exhibit 2 on the plea. Mr Thyssen has told me some brief matters in terms of your personal background as well.
You are a person who has had some real struggles in your life. I take that into account. You had some difficulties in your childhood, when you were a teenager and I have regard to those insofar as I am able to. You have also the difficulty posed by your mother. She had a very serious bout of illness and is still housed in a nursing home.
So that is when the test will come. Not now, but when you are released, but you have got to prepare for that appropriately.
Your own counsel, I think sensibly, concedes that it is sufficiently serious to warrant an immediate term of imprisonment. I agree with that submission by the way. But it was difficult for any alternative to sensibly be raised in any event given your current custodial exposure.
I have to give weight to the protection of the community. To denunciation and also to punishing you for the crime that you have committed, though I must do that justly and proportionately.
All licences held are cancelled and you are disqualified from driving for a period of six months and that is going to be effective from today's date. Now that does not really then produce any actual penalty upon you but I do not regard it as appropriate to defer the commencement of that licence order to the point when you are released. It seems to me when you are released, you will need everything going in your favour and if one of those things is the ability to get a licence, I do not know what your status is at the moment, but I do not want to impede that. So I am dealing with that order effective from today, six months.
Mr Thyssen, there is no issue in terms of that, is there?
I order pursuant to the provisions of s.464ZF(2) of the Crimes Act that you undergo a forensic procedure for the taking of a scraping from your mouth. That is what I am authorising, a mouth scraping, not a blood sample, and that is to be done in accordance with Subdivision 30A of the Crimes Act, until a sample of sufficient standard is obtained for placement on the database.
DPP
Dirbass [2017] VCC 1190