[2024] VCC 668
General information, not legal advice.
County Court of Victoria
2024-05-13
Original judgment source is linked above.
Sentence: Mr Rose: Total effective sentence: 2 years imprisonment, 12-month non-parole period, 50 days pre-sentence detention, reckoned as served. 6AAA disposition 3 years imprisonment.
Ms Lagerwey: 70 days imprisonment (time already served), 2-year Community Corrections Order. 6AAA disposition 1 year 9 months imprisonment.
20 March 2024 (Exhibit 11). 6. Ms Lagerwey, in addition to the matters developed in oral argument, your counsel relied on: * defence submissions for plea dated 9 February 2024 (Exhibit 6); * psychological report prepared by Carla Lechner dated 1 February 2023 (Exhibit 7); * bundle of references (Exhibits 8 and 9); * bundle of medical documents (Exhibit 10). 7. I have also very helpfully been provided with cases by each of your counsel, which assist me to understand the propositions and principles of law that I must apply in the determination of appropriate sentences in each of your cases. I have had regard to all exhibited documents, as well as to the matters developed in the several days of oral argument.
Ms Patmore's sister Kerrie, and Sky Lee Hills, who was in a relationship with
Mr Hayes' brother, were celebrating New Year's Eve at Ms Patmore and Mr Hayes' address. 4. Mr Rose, you left your premises at around lunchtime, telling your father that you were going to a party; you, Ms Lagerwey, remained at home. 5. Early in the hours of 1 January 2021, you, Ms Lagerwey, contacted your former partner in Norlane, and then between 12.40 am and 1.30 am, you knocked on the front door of the victims' residence. Kerrie Patmore answered the door, and found you, Ms Lagerwey, very intoxicated. Ms Lagerwey, you asked Kerrie Patmore if a taxi had arrived for you, and Ms Patmore told you that it had come earlier but had left, and she offered you a lift to Norlane. 6. She drove you, Ms Lagerwey, to an address in Finch Street, Norlane, and I understand that Ms Hills was also present and was seated in the back seat of the vehicle. The journey to Norlane may have involved an intention in you,
Ms Lagerwey, to visit to use drugs. 7. Ms Patmore dropped you, Ms Lagerwey, off in front of the house in Finch Street,
Norlane, and you, Ms Lagerwey, went inside, leaving your handbag inside the vehicle; you told the two of them to wait for you; however, they threw your bag onto the nature strip and drove back towards the address in Corio.
19 February 2021, after 50 days on remand; and Ms Lagerwey, bail was granted on 11 March 2021, after you spent 70 days on remand. The matter proceeded through committal hearing in the Magistrates' Court, with civilian and police witnesses cross-examined; and you were each committed on a plea of not guilty on 17 August 2022. 2. The matter proceeded through a list of directions hearings and a case assessment hearing in this court, and resolved on 1 May 2023 with you each arraigned on the proceeding charges. This is a plea of guilty from each of you at a mid-point in proceedings, however, well prior to the court taking the opportunity to list the matter for trial, and that has saved the court and the community the time and expense of a trial, and it has avoided the need for civilian and police witnesses to incur the time and often the stress of needing to give evidence in court before a jury. Furthermore, your pleas of guilty were entered at a point where the unfortunate effects of the COVID-19 pandemic continued to linger upon the listing of trials, and there was accordingly significant utilitarian benefit in your pleas, which I take into account in significant mitigation of sentence. I also find that each of those pleas are accompanied by remorse, which I also take into account. 3. I note and take into account, also in mitigation of sentence, that a period well in excess of three years has passed between the date of commission of your offences and the date of imposition of a sentence, and the matters have been hanging over each of your heads during that considerable period of time. In other words, I accept and take into account in mitigation of sentence, as each of your counsel has submitted, that delay is a very significant matter in sentencing.
Year 11. 7. At the age of 14 you started drinking alcohol, frequently to excess, often leading to blackout. You started using cannabis at the age of 15. 8. After you left school, you commenced an apprenticeship as a baker, and you qualified as a baker in your later teenage years. At this time your cannabis use escalated to daily use, used in part to help you sleep and calm you down. 9. You have reported to Luke Armstrong, consultant psychologist, that you have struggled to regulate extremes in your moods, which would often lead to occasions where you would punch holes in walls or doors. Within a context of frequent alcohol binges, you consider yourself more prone to physical altercations when affected by alcohol. 10. After you qualified as a baker, you then commenced a carpentry apprenticeship, where you remained for three months, and then you quit the apprenticeship in the aftermath of the breakdown of a long-term relationship at around the age of 22. At this point, you report losing all motivation to work, and your lifestyle escalated to polysubstance abuse, including the use of speed, cocaine and ecstasy, which escalated to daily use. You did not work for 12 months. 11. You then attempted to return to work by engaging in roofing full-time, which lasted 12 months, but coincided with continued daily polydrug use. You then entered bricklaying, but experienced a significant leg injury, which led to you being unable to walk for a month, and then you became addicted to Benzodiazepine within this context. The injury occurred in early 2020, and for the rest of the year in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic you were unemployed. 12. This is the backdrop to and chronology leading to your offending on 1 January 2021. 13. After you spent 50 days on remand, you were bailed to your nan's house, and whilst you described her as 'very strict', you continued to drink to excess, up to 20 standard drinks every alternate day. More recently, you have reported to
Mr Armstrong that you decreased drinking, to 10 standard drinks approximately once per month. 14. You have a limited prior criminal history, comprising only a single court appearance in the Brisbane Magistrates' Court in November 2015, where upon a finding of guilt for unlawful possession, you were released on a good behaviour bond. I have the benefit of a significant number of character references tendered on your behalf, with a significant number of authors called upon to supplement their reference. Your work colleagues and friends describe you as a fantastic employee, a person who is willing to lend a helping hand, a person who has infectious optimism, a person who continues to grow in maturity, a polite and respectful young man, a team player, a caring and loving family member, and a person who is maturing from setbacks in early life and adolescence, who is demonstrating a growing understanding of his worth and his capacity to contribute to society. 15. You have engaged positively with the support services offered in the CISP component of your onerous bail, and you have demonstrated insight and understanding that your problematic alcohol and drug consumption emphasised negative character traits, that, it has been submitted, do not sit comfortably with what I find to be your inherent and overall good character. 16. Mr Armstrong undertook a psychological assessment of you and supplemented the report to which I have referred with oral evidence. He administered relevant empirical testing as part of his analysis. He diagnoses you as suffering features of a borderline personality disorder, including an extreme sense of abandonment; and compartmentalised emotions periodically leading to explosions and problems with inappropriate intense anger or difficulty controlling anger, and affective instability due to marked reactivity of mood. In his view, you developed a stimulant and probable anxiolytic use disorder from around 21 years of age, as well as a cannabis use disorder at an earlier time, and he considers you an alcoholic. 17. As a result of the history of neglect and abuse that you have described, in
Mr Armstrong's view, you have come to view yourself as the protector of your mother from a young age, which he terms parentification. He considers that you have a distorted mother-son attachment, and have a fundamental urge to protect your mother in circumstances as you perceive them at a time. 18. I will indicate that I understand and accept Mr Armstrong's diagnosis of you as experiencing borderline personality disorder, with the additional psychological setback of parentification, having regard to the poverty, neglect, and exposure to the milieu of drug use, and domestic violence as you were. In my view, your traumatic background mitigates the sentence which would otherwise be appropriate. Consistent with the reasoning of the High Court in Bugmy v The Queen,[1] the effects of a traumatic childhood do not diminish over time and they are to be given full weight in the determination of appropriate sentences in every case. 19. Furthermore, I consider that the offending occurred when you were still a young person, aged 24, with a mostly limited criminal history, which I also take into account in mitigation of sentence, and at a point in your life where you felt rudderless by reason of your lack of connection to employment, and your associated descent into polysubstance abuse and alcohol abuse. 20. Mr Armstrong, in my view valiantly, endeavoured to connect his observations of your parentified state with the circumstances of alleged offending. At this point, his analysis of the circumstances as presented to him, and my analysis of the facts as I find them on the state of the evidence, necessarily differ somewhat. 21. I accept, as you told Mr Armstrong, that on the relevant evening, you had consumed alcohol to gross excess (a litre of spirits as you told him), and had consumed cannabis with Benzodiazepines also as you told him. I understand that you were told by your mother in effect that she had lost her handbag, perhaps as a result of the victims' actions, as this is what she had told police she believed, and that she required your assistance in some way, which I can infer from the statement she made to the victims before she left their house, i.e. that she was to summon you and return. 22. Here, Mr Armstrong appeared to consider that notwithstanding the nearly two and a half years that had then passed between this event and his attendance upon you, and notwithstanding your consumption of alcohol and drugs to excess on that occasion, that you had a clear recollection of your mother informing you on the relevant evening that 'she had approached the victims to retrieve her handbag, however, had been verbally threatened and pushed to the ground'. On the other hand I am unable to infer from the evidence that has been presented to me one way or another what your mother told you, including whether she complained, potentially falsely or truly, that she had been pushed to the ground, and it is utterly unclear whether she sought your assistance in respect of retrieving the handbag, or in engaging in violent action or threats as retribution, or some combination of the two. This makes it more difficult for me to evaluate Mr Armstrong's diagnosis of parentification as mitigating your offending, i.e. that you wished to act in purported defence of your mother, or, potentially of aggravating the offending, in that you wished to act in retribution for the difficulties that your mother had experienced. 23. In other words, the label of parentification I consider as I understand the evidence to be context for your offending, rather than perhaps mitigating as was again perhaps urged upon me by your counsel, or indeed as aggravating, should I see this as motivation for what might otherwise be observed to be vigilantism, the latter which I intend to put to one side. 24. You have told Mr Armstrong that you felt an overriding compulsion to protect your mother, in my view this was accompanied by some sense of compulsion perhaps to avenge your mother. 25. Ultimately, however, you have shown yourself in the considerable period of time following to be a person who is not immediately vulnerable to recurrence, which I attribute to your onerous bail conditions, your increasing maturity and stability as evidenced by the positive references I have received on your behalf, your significant reduction in alcohol consumption (though I am still very concerned about your admitted frequent consumption of alcohol to excess, knowing as you do that it causes emotional volatility in you), and your evidenced participation in rehabilitation from your entrenched drug addiction. 26. Mr Armstrong has noted that you take responsibility for your actions, and, as I have said, I consider that your plea is evidenced by remorse and some insight. 27. Ms Lagerwey, you were 48 years of age at the time of your offending, and you are now 51. You are the older of two children born to your parents; your parents separated when you were in your early twenties, and until this time you had been close to your father, but the closeness of that relationship ended when your father remarried. 28. You remain close to your mother, and I had the benefit of receiving evidence in this matter from your mother, who has provided both you and your son with support. Your co-accused Mr Rose is the younger of your two children, and you also have a daughter who is a year older than him. 29. You attended St Peter's Primary School in Epping from Prep to Grade 6, but you had difficulty concentrating and paying attention, and Ms Lechner, clinical psychologist, who has assessed you and who has provided me with a report in this matter considers your symptoms and behaviours from this period to be consistent with an undiagnosed and untreated ADHD condition that has persisted into adulthood. 30. You attended Whittlesea Technical College until the completion of Year 9. 31. You report a very enjoyable and stable family life, and you were devastated to learn of your father's affair which ended the marriage, and indeed, your contact with him given your stepmother's reluctance to allow that relationship to continue. 32. After you left school, you worked at Kmart at Northland for about five years, and then at the Preston Market, and then after moving to Cairns at the age of about 19, you worked in a chicken bar, as a cleaner, and on a prawn trawler with the children's father. Your children were born 12 months apart, and you returned to Melbourne for family support at the age of about 24. 33. You have had three significant romantic relationships, but described them all as violent to Ms Lechner. You experienced domestic abuse, both physical and psychological in nature. You have moved home frequently and estimate that you have lived in 33 houses. You have worked primarily in cleaning positions since moving to Geelong approximately 15 years ago, as I described in summarising
Mr Rose's personal circumstances. 34. Ms Lechner reports that you have used illicit substances, including cannabis, LSD, cocaine, amphetamines, and ice, generally infrequently, and you told her that you had a Valium and Serepax addiction in your twenties. You told Ms Lechner that you mainly drink on weekends, but not to excess. You reported that you were intoxicated at the time of the present offences. 35. I have been told of two prior court appearances, including an appearance at the Magistrates' Court in March 2003, for possess cannabis, and possess unregistered Category A longarm, in respect of each of which you were placed on a bond without conviction; and a charge of theft in March 2013, which led to another non-conviction bond. At the time of your offending, you were largely of good character, and this offence represents a dramatic departure from a generally law-abiding life. 36. Ms Lechner administered empirical testing, and concluded that you presented with symptoms of a likely adult ADHD condition, in addition to symptoms of an adjustment disorder with mixed depression and anxiety, reactive to workplace bullying, and this court hearing. 37. You told Ms Lechner that on the evening of your offending, you had consumed 'too much alcohol,' which you estimated to be 'half a bottle of spirits.' As you told police, you were concerned that the two women who had given you a lift on the evening had stolen your handbag, and you told Ms Lechner that had you not been intoxicated you would have handled the matter differently. 38. I understand that you found your time on remand extremely challenging, at least in part based on the circumstances of isolation on account of the COVID-19 restrictions that were in place at the time due to the pandemic; and you also considered that the behaviour of other prisoners overwhelmed you and left you with ongoing experiences of anxiety, and potential terror at the prospect of being returned into custody as a result of the sentence that I am obliged to impose on you. 39. Once you were bailed, your anxiety escalated, and you now struggle to go shopping and do chores in the community due to the increase in that anxiety since your time on remand. Your mother is of considerable emotional support to you, and in return you are her carer. 40. I am prepared to accept Ms Lechner's observations of your difficulty coping whilst on remand, and the deterioration in your mental health that resulted after your release. I consider that your time on remand weighed heavily upon you, and I am prepared to infer that imprisonment will weigh more heavily upon you than it would on a person without your personal circumstances, including your psychological presentation.[2] I take this into account in mitigation of sentence, and as urged upon me, I have reflected carefully on whether there is another available sentence that satisfies all relevant purposes of sentencing aside from returning you to custody in respect of this offence.
Objective gravity of your offending; moral culpability
to significant acts of violence in your formative years, and you were lured into acting in the unnecessary and disproportionate way in which you did as a result. At the time of your offending, you were both very intoxicated, which you each now recognise and know causes you to react in illogical, disproportionate, and violent ways. This is especially so for you, Mr Rose, as it diminishes your capacity to make sensible decisions as to your psychological desire to protect your mother from emotional discomfort.
Current sentencing practices; purposes of sentencing; sentencing submissions
[2] Verdins, Buckley and Vo [2007] VSCA 95; [2007] 16 VR 240
[3] Azzopardi, Baltatzis and Gabriel v The Queen [2011] VSCA 372; (2011) 35 VR 43, [34]-[40].
DPP
Rose & Anor [2024] VCC 668
(2013) 249 CLR 571
(2014) 44 VR 486
(2011) 35 VR 43