DPP v Sebhatu [2025] VCC 1568

1. Your victim provided a victim impact statement to the Court. The offence has affected his appetite and his sleep. He feels anxious and fearful when approached by people he does not know. He does not feel safe going outside.[2]

1. Associate Professor Cidoni provided two reports in which he outlined your personal history. You are a refugee from Ethiopia. You were born during the civil war and left school in Year 8 to become a child soldier. You spent nine years in the army and 18 months in prison for desertion. Your counsel described this significant part of your life as traumatic, chaotic and unpredictable.
2. You fled to Sudan, then Egypt and Libya, where you spent time in refugee camps before migrating to Australia.
3. Your immediate family continues to reside in Ethiopia, in a war zone.
4. You have a patchy work history and have struggled to adjust to life here. You have done some volunteer work and participated in a community vegetable garden. In 2014, you were introduced to methylamphetamine which has significantly worsened your mental and physical health and has landed you in dealings with the criminal justice system.
5. You have had a number of admissions to psychiatric hospitals. Associate Professor Anthony Cidoni confirmed a diagnosis of severe bipolar disorder, with manic and depressive features, chronic adjustment disorder, and polysubstance use disorders (cannabis and methylamphetamines). Paranoia, hallucinations, ideas of reference and delusions are all a significant part of your psychiatric presentation.[3]
6. You have struggled to remain compliant with medication. Recently, however, despite absconding from the Court-Integrated Services Program ("CISP") bail program, you attended for administration of your depot injection. This is a positive sign and if you are able to maintain compliance your quality of life will be better.

1. The Sentencing Act 1991 (Vic) provides that the only purposes for which sentences may be imposed are just punishment, deterrence (general and specific), rehabilitation, denunciation by the Court of the offending conduct and protection of the community.
2. In passing sentence, the Court must have regard to a range of matters, including current sentencing practice, the nature and gravity of the offence, the offender's culpability and degree of responsibility for the offence, the impact of the offence on any victim, the personal circumstances of any victim, the loss resulting directly from the offence, whether the offender pleaded guilty and the stage at which that occurred, the previous character of the offender, and the presence of any aggravating or mitigating factors.

1. Armed robbery is a serious offence. However, I consider this armed robbery to be at the lower end of the scale for offending of this type. It appears opportunistic, spontaneous, chaotic, and largely fuelled by your mental illness and drug abuse. It is not clear at all why you targeted this victim who was, like you, homeless and helpless.

1. I have had regard to current sentencing practice. This type of offending is very serious and ordinarily attracts significant terms of imprisonment. However, being at the lower end of the scale for offences of this type and being fuelled by mental illness, means I can impose a sentence which is far less severe than median sentences usually imposed for armed robbery.[4]

1. Associate Professor Cidoni reported on the connection between your criminality and your childhood experiences in war-torn Ethiopia, being a child soldier, then being imprisoned for desertion. I take into account what the High Court has said about childhood deprivation, that its impact does not diminish over time and that full weight ought to be given to it in the sentencing task.[5] To your credit, despite exposure to war and violence as a child, your prior convictions do not bear out a propensity for extreme violence, nor an inability to control a violent response. While you have a prior conviction for assault and use of threatening words, and a weapons charge, the majority of your offending is drug related.

1. Associate Professor Cidoni reported that you had probably ceased taking your medications and you were likely experiencing delusions at the time of the offence. In his opinion your presentation was consistent with an acute drug-related deterioration. The combination of your traumatic background in Ethiopia, your mental illness, homelessness and drug use were responsible for your offending behaviour.
2. The reference to acute drug-related deterioration clearly shows drug use is a key feature of your offending. Mr Sebhatu, I am going to say expressly to you, you must be aware that, in future, if you use drugs and commit offences, the Court will consider this a reason to increase your penalty, as you have now been made aware of the link between using drugs, your mental illness and committing crimes.
3. I accept the submissions of the Learned Prosecutor that your moral culpability is reduced on account of the profound childhood deprivation factors in Bugmy.
4. In my view, both the mental illness and the childhood deprivation factors allow for significant moderation of your moral culpability.

1. The description of the offence, your conduct towards the victim and your disoriented and confused presentation to police, all suggest a connection between your mental illness and the offence. While drug use is also implicated in the offence, it is difficult to understand whether you were aware that this would occur and whether you were able to desist from drug use, given your mental illness.
2. I consider your mental functioning at the time of commission of the offence to have been seriously compromised by your mental illness, homelessness and poor compliance with treatment. This warrants a reduction in your moral culpability.[6]

1. The Court of Appeal has consistently said that general deterrence must be a prominent feature of the sentencing consideration in offences of this type. However, given the connection between your mental illness and the offending, I consider yours is not an appropriate case for making an example for others. Therefore, general and specific deterrence have a lesser role to play in sentencing you.[7]

Impact of mental condition on the type of sentence to be imposed

1. There is cogent evidence from Associate Professor Cidoni that your severe bipolar disorder is being adversely affected by your incarceration. In particular, Associate Professor Cidoni noted that, between his two assessments of you in custody your condition had noticeably worsened, your paranoia had escalated and your anxiety and sleep-disturbance symptoms had deteriorated.[8]
2. The evidence before me overwhelmingly supports a conclusion that the combination of your psychiatric conditions has already made and will continue to make your continued detention in prison very burdensome for you. Much more so than for a prisoner in normal health.[9] The Learned Prosecutor appropriately conceded that, in your case, Limbs 5 and 6 of Verdins apply.
3. Taken as a whole, the evidence allows for substantial mitigation of your punishment on account of the proven deterioration of your condition in prison.

1. You are 42 years old and have a relatively-limited prior criminal history, which commenced in 2023, when you appeared in the Magistrates' Court charged with drug-related offences. I accept that you have otherwise been a law-abiding citizen. Looking at your prior criminal history, it is plain that there is a link between your offending and drug use.
2. This armed robbery offence was committed by you in the context of homelessness and poor compliance with psychiatric medications.
3. Associate Professor Cidoni considered your Justice Health and psychiatric admissions records. In September 2024, just one month prior to your commission of this offence, you had spent a month in a psychiatric facility. You were discharged on various psychiatric medications and had been referred to a community psychiatric team, but failed to attend. He considered the offence was committed in that context, with an acute drug-related deterioration. Mr Sebhatu, you must understand if you do not take your medication in future and you become unwell and commit offences you will not get a discount for that from the Court.
4. On assessment in prison on 14 November 2024, you were noted to be agitated, hostile and labile and treated with depot antipsychotic medications. By 17 December 2024, you were paranoid and misinterpreting prison officers.
5. While you have no defence of mental impairment available to you, Associate Professor Cidoni's report allows a link to be made between your psychiatric ill health, homelessness and drug use, all of which appear to operate in a vicious cycle of drug abuse and criminal offending.
6. I therefore accept the submissions made on your behalf that your prospects of rehabilitation are connected to your ability to maintain compliance with mental health treatment and medications, stable housing and abstinence from drugs.

1. I have considered whether to have you assessed for a community correction order ("CCO").
2. The Learned Prosecutor submitted that a CCO in combination with time served would better serve the requirements of sentence in your case, and that to release you without the support of a CCO would be problematic, as you would have no support.
3. Your counsel submitted you would be supported by the Bridge program, you are on bail for other offending, and you would be linked up with the ARC Program at the Magistrates' Court, through which you would receive case management and support.
4. Associate Professor Cidoni reported that you would find it difficult to complete a CCO. I agree. If you are to be linked up with ARC and also required to attend a CCO, this may well be beyond your abilities.
5. You were unable to meet any of the obligations of the CISP program when I released you on CISP bail on 29 July 2025. Despite the assistance with housing and other supports offered on that program, and the potential long-term benefits to you, you absconded from the program and your bail was ultimately revoked. I consider this to demonstrate your incapacity to comply with community-based dispositions. On re-assessment, the CISP program found you unsuitable.[10] I consider that, as a result of your mental illness, drug addiction and lack of insight into the causes of your offending, you are likely to be unwilling or unable to comply with the attendance requirements of a CCO.

1. Your counsel submitted that you, as a person on a refugee visa, are at risk of deportation if you receive a sentence of imprisonment of 12 months or more. The Learned Prosecutor appropriately pointed the Court to the lack of evidence about these matters. However, the Court, your counsel and the prosecutor have to some extent operated on the basis of the submissions of your counsel.
2. I take into account that this risk, that is the risk of deportation, has already made your time in prison more onerous, as you have been in custody awaiting finalisation of your matter and not knowing what sentence will ultimately be imposed. I accept the submission made on your behalf that you have been worried about the prospect of deportation back to your home country which continues to be plagued by civil unrest. Given the significant efforts you made to escape from Ethiopia, I consider deportation would present a real threat to you, as you had aspired to make Australia your home.[11]
3. I am not permitted to, nor have I tailored your sentence to avoid the possibility of deportation. I consider the sentence I am about to impose is within range for offending of the type, where you have severe childhood deprivation, severe mental illness and a deprived itinerant existence.
4. Mr Sebhatu, you may remain seated while I pronounce sentence.
5. On the single charge of armed robbery, you will be convicted and sentenced to 11 months' imprisonment.
6. I declare that you have 324 days available as pre-sentence detention.
7. But for the plea of guilty I would have imposed 15 months' imprisonment.
8. So, Mr Sebhatu, I think that leaves you a couple of weeks left and I hope that within that time you can liaise with the authorities, and with the ARC Program and the Bridge program, to try to find some accommodation for yourself on your release. I want to make it clear to you that if you do not use your psychiatric medications, and if you return to drug use, you will be back before the courts and you will receive far longer sentences, at the end of which I am sure the Minister will put you on a plane and send you back where you came from. I wish you the best of luck. If you want to stay away from drugs, you will use the services of the ARC Program and participate fully in it.
9. Thank you, gentlemen, are there any other matters?

[1] Contrary to s 75A of the Crimes Act 1958 (Vic).

[2] Victim Impact Statement dated 17 June 2025.

[3] Exhibit 1, report of Associate Professor Cidoni dated 5 April 2025 at paragraphs [32]-[35].

[4] Sentencing Advisory Council, Sentencing Snapshot 285: Sentencing Trends for Armed Robbery in the Higher Courts of Victoria 2018-19 to 2022-23, (Sentencing Advisory Council, Victoria, October 2024). In 2018-2019 and 2022-2023, 76 sentences imposed were for a period of less than one year and 105 sentences were imposed for 3 to 4 years, which was the median term.

[5] Bugmy v The Queen (2013) CLR 571 ('Bugmy') at 594-595, paragraphs [42] to [44].

[6] Limb 1 of R v Verdins (2007) 16 VR 269 ('Verdins').

[8] Exhibit 3, report of Associate Professor Cidoni dated 7 July 2025 at paragraphs [16] and [48].

[10] Court Integrated Services Program ("CISP") Confidential Suitability Report dated 21 October 2025.

[11] Matamata v The Queen [2021] VSCA 253 at paragraphs [28]-[31].