Sentence
10 Mr Bikic was in custody from the date of his arrest, 14 November 1998, until 10 July 2000, when I granted him bail following the discharge of the jury in respect of his case in the previous trial. The verdicts in this trial were given on 14 May 2001, and he has been back in custody since that date. Accordingly, his periods of pre-sentence custody aggregate something in excess of one year and nine months. I shall recognise this by backdating the first sentence which I pass by one year and ten months.
11 I have regard to the fact that the bail to which he was subject contained stringent conditions. In addition, during his earlier period in custody he was classified as a "high risk" prisoner, which rendered the conditions of his custody more onerous and subjected him to exceptional security when travelling to and from court during the earlier trial. That is a matter properly to be taken into account, as it was in relation to those of his co-offenders who were classified in the same way: see para 57 of my earlier remarks on sentence. There are special circumstances warranting of departure from the usual proportion between head sentence and non-parole period, for much the same reasons as there were with the co-offenders (para 59). Now, as then, the Crown prosecutor has made no submission to the contrary.
12 As I observed when sentencing the other offenders (para 58), the plan to assault the two victims whilst some of the participants were armed with loaded guns was extremely dangerous. There was a very great likelihood that death or serious injury would result. I accept that homicide occurs in a wide variety of circumstances and that there can be a degree of overlap between the criminality of offences of murder and manslaughter. Nevertheless, I cannot accede to the submission of senior counsel for Mr Bikic that his objective criminality is less than that of his co-offenders, Arben Puta, Zeljko Nitrovic and Raymond Curry. The fact that he has been found guilty of one count of murder necessarily elevates his overall criminality significantly above that of all his co-offenders.
13 For the manslaughter of Orhan Yildirim he stands for sentence on a different legal basis from his co-offenders. The various forms of manslaughter do not necessarily dictate different ranges of sentence, the range of sentencing available for that crime being "notoriously wide": R v Isaacs (1997) 41 NSWLR 374 at 381. For the same offence I sentenced Zeljko Nitrovic, Raymond Curry, Goran Mackic and Russel Oldham to imprisonment for nine years. (Arben Puta and Satuala Nanai were sentenced differently, in each case for reasons which have no application here. However, I consider that Mr Bikic's contemplation of the use of a gun to kill or to inflict grievous bodily harm renders his culpability for the manslaughter somewhat greater than that of the other four men. The jury classified that killing as manslaughter rather than murder because of the circumstances in which Mr Yildirim met his death, not because of any conduct of Mr Bikic.
14 I propose to pass a sentence on each count reflecting the criminality of the offence charged, directing that one be served partly cumulatively upon the other. This is the course which I adopted with the other offenders: see para 61 of those remarks. In this way I believe that effect will be given to the principle of totality, recognising that the two offences were components of one brief episode.
15 Ned Bikic, for the manslaughter of Orhan Yildirim you are sentenced to imprisonment for ten years, to date from 6 September 1999, with a non-parole period of seven years. For the murder of Mehmet Unsal you are sentenced to imprisonment for sixteen years, to date from 6 September 2000, with a non-parole period of eleven years.
16 Effectively, you have been sentenced to imprisonment for seventeen years, with non-parole periods aggregating twelve years, dating from 6 September 1999. You will be eligible for release on parole on 6 September, 2011.