IN THE COUNTY COURT OF VICTORIA	Revised
Not Restricted
Suitable for Publication	
AT Melbourne
CRIMINAL JURISDICTION
CR-22-02382

DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS		
		
v		
		
PRASANIT SHARMA		

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JUDGE:	HIS HONOUR JUDGE MAIDMENT 	
WHERE HELD:	Melbourne	
DATE OF HEARING:	24 April & 14 June 2023	
DATE OF SENTENCE:	14 June 2023	
CASE MAY BE CITED AS:	DPP v Sharma	
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION:	[2023] VCC 1016		

REASONS FOR SENTENCE

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Subject:	Plea - sentencing
Catchwords:		Armed robbery - deal in property suspected of being proceeds of crime
Legislation Cited:	
Cases Cited:	
Sentence:		21 months' imprisonment

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APPEARANCES:
	Counsel	Solicitors	
For the Director of Public Prosecutions	Mr D. White	Office of Public Prosecutions	
			
For the Accused	Mr B. Newton	Dribbin & Brown Criminal Lawyers	

HIS HONOUR:

1	Prasanit Sharma, you have pleaded guilty to a charge of armed robbery on
12 July 2022, for which the maximum penalty is imprisonment for 25 years.  You have also pleaded guilty to a related summary offence of dealing in property, namely thousands of dollars-worth of supermarket items, suspected of being the proceeds of crime.  That offence arose as a result of items found in your motor vehicle prior to your arrest.  The maximum penalty for that offence is imprisonment for two years.
2	You have no prior convictions.
3	The prosecution tendered and relied upon a summary of prosecution opening for plea, which is Exhibit A.  They also relied upon photographs of the goods that were the subject of the related summary offence, a CCTV footage of the events in the shop the subject of the charge of armed robbery, along with screenshots from the phone with which you were in possession at the time of your arrest which reveal communications apparently concerning items similar to those the subject of the related summary offence, supporting the inference that at the time of the offending you were already engaged in a business of obtaining and selling items such as fish oil.
4	The prosecution also provided me with sentencing submissions, which are Exhibit E.
5	The circumstances of the offending can be stated quite shortly.  On 12 July 2022, you parked a black Jaguar motor vehicle in Balmoral Avenue in Springvale.  You were in company with an associate.
6	Both you and your associate walked to a nearby tobacco shop.  From there you went to the health and vitamin shop in Balmoral Avenue in Springvale, which was the subject of the armed robbery you committed a short time after that first visit to the store.
7	Around about 4 o'clock on 12 July, you entered the health and vitamin shop.  You were captured on CCTV footage inside the store.  Your face was plainly visible and you were wearing the hood of your jumper over your head.
8	Your associate waited outside the store.
9	Once inside the store, you approached a shelving unit and inspected bottles of fish oil capsules.  You had a conversation with a staff member about that product and then left the store.  Both you and your associate returned to the black Jaguar motor vehicle and left the area.
10	About half an hour later at 4.28 pm on 12 July, you and your associate returned to Buckingham Avenue in Springvale.  You were the driver of the same black Jaguar motor vehicle to which I have already referred.  You parked the vehicle in Buckingham Avenue and you retrieved a black duffle bag and an orange handled tomahawk axe from the rear of the vehicle.
11	You were dressed differently from when you made your earlier visit to the health and vitamin store - you were then wearing a black hooded jumper with the hood pulled over your head.
12	You ran along Buckingham Avenue toward the store on Balmoral Avenue.  When you reached the store, you took a red bandana from your person and tied it around your head just beneath your eyes, concealing your face from view.  
You then entered the store.
13	There were four females assisting within the store.  You were wielding the tomahawk axe to which I have already referred, and you approached the shelving where the fish oil capsule bottles were located.  You put your black duffle bag on the ground and started to fill it with bottles of fish oil capsules.
14	You had already by that time wielded your tomahawk axe in a threatening manner towards one of the female shop assistants.  You were approached by another assistant and you raised your axe in a menacing manner, as if to imply that you were about to swing the axe towards her.  She took a step backwards.  You took a step towards her and swung the axe again in the same manner, causing her to scream.  She then ran to the back of the store and asked her colleagues to call the police.
15	You continued to put bottles of fish oil capsules into your duffle bag for another 20 or more seconds.  You then left the store with 12 bottles of fish oil capsules, valued at $204.00.
16	A gentleman outside the store saw you leave and took a photograph of the Jaguar motor car.
17	Police were alerted and attended.  They located your vehicle at the Woolworths in Warragul the following day.  It was examined by police.  Inside were found the black tomahawk axe that you had used in the commission of the armed robbery, two red paisley bandanas matching the bandana that you wore in the store during the armed robbery, a black duffle bag containing 12 bottles of the fish oil from the store, an Indian passport in your name and, throughout the vehicle, a large assortment of new and unused supermarket and chemist items that are the subject of the related summary offence.
18	On Thursday 14 July, you were arrested at the Sandown Regency Hotel.  You were found to be in possession of a mobile phone which contained the screenshots to which I have already referred, suggesting that you were engaged in the business of obtaining and selling items similar to those found in the Jaguar motor vehicle, including fish oil capsules.
19	You were later questioned by police in a recorded interview.  You denied your offending conduct.
20	Your counsel provided me with plea submissions dated 12 June 2023, Indian school certificates in your name from 2009-2016 and a copy of the death certificate of your sister, who had tragically died at the age of seven when you were 11 years of age, as the result of the conduct of an aunt.
21	Diary notes located by police on 14 July 2022 suggested that you had been contemplating a course of conduct to rid yourself of heroin addiction.  
I was also provided with a CISP progress report dated 5 September 2022, an AXO report dated 26 September 2022, a CISP progress report dated 5 October 2022, a CISP exit letter dated 25 October 2022, a character reference from your mother and father dated 15 April 2023, a character reference from your long-time friend Mandeep Singh dated 23 April 2023 and a psychological report from Laura Fleming dated 6 June 2023.
22	It is plain from all of that material that you were brought up in a good family in India and that life was apparently satisfactory for you and your family until when you were aged 11, your sister, then aged seven, sustained critical injuries as a result of the conduct of an aunt, who was apparently engaged in disciplining her.
23	That cast a shadow on the whole family, and according to the report of
Ms Fleming was the foundation of a post-traumatic stress disorder which manifested itself at or about the time of your offending and prior to it.
24	That circumstance involving the tragic death of your sister did not prevent you from being a high achiever at school.  You had a relationship with a young lady in India when you were 16 and she was 15.  You held several jobs after you graduated from school and before you decided to relocate to Australia, apparently to further your education.
25	You enrolled in a Bachelor of Information Technology at Southern Cross University and you also worked in a kitchen on a casual basis.  Your now 
ex-girlfriend arrived in the Gold Coast not long after your arrival and you maintained a relationship with her until March 2021 when, on your birthday, there was a falling out and she broke up with you and the relationship terminated, leaving you in a fragile state.  You were then 20 years of age, and determined rather than remaining in the Gold Coast area to move to Melbourne, where you began studying commercial cookery.  You then commenced working as a removalist four days a week and casually at weekends in the construction industry.
26	Apparently you were introduced to drugs and began using heroin on a regular basis.  That became a habit, along with a methylamphetamine habit.
27	Ultimately, you lost your employment and it was against that background that you committed these offences.
28	Your counsel urged me to take into account your youth - you were 21 at the time of the offending and you are now 22 years of age.  That is a relevant mitigating factor which I will take into account significantly in determining an appropriate sentence.
29	You have indicated early pleas of guilty.  You have pleaded guilty and those pleas are very much to your credit.  They support the contention that you are remorseful.  There may not be much other evidence of remorse but I give you full credit for your pleas, tendered as they were during the COVID pandemic.  They have considerable utilitarian value.
30	You have also been in custody for 97 days in connection with these proceedings during a time when the restrictions upon remand prisoners are greater than they would normally be.  That has not stopped you pursuing rehabilitative opportunities within the prison system, and that too is to your credit.
31	The content of the psychological report is relied upon as supporting submissions by your counsel that all of the Verdins principles apply, albeit that Verdins principle no.6 is not particularly strongly supported.  I was urged during the course of the plea hearing as well as in the written submissions to find that there was a sufficient link between your PTSD and your offending conduct to a point where I should apply Verdins principles 1-4 inclusive.	

32	I took issue with your counsel and indicated that I was not persuaded that such a link existed.  Although I was persuaded that principle no.5, which concerns the impact of your PTSD on your capacity to cope with a term of imprisonment, was relevant and that it would make serving your time harder.
33	That is not to say that your PTSD and the symptomology associated with it is irrelevant, far from it.  It is very much part of the mix of matters to be taken into account in the instinctive synthesis in which I must engage in determining an appropriate sentence.
34	It was also suggested that there was a second mental impairment, essentially by reference to your instructions that you consumed Xanax for the first time shortly prior to the offending.  It did not seem to me that there was a sufficient basis to regard that as a mitigating circumstance or indeed to make a finding that that assertion was backed up by satisfactory evidence.
35	Whether or not you were under the influence of Xanax or other drugs at the time of the offending conduct, it is clear that you were able to drive a motor vehicle, able to inspect the items that you wanted to steal during the course of the robbery, change into clothing that enabled you to disguise your appearance, select an appropriate bandana to further the disguise, find a weapon in the form of a tomahawk axe and leave your getaway car suitably placed to evade arrest immediately after the offending conduct.  All of those seem to me to be steps where you have applied logic.  Further, you committed the offence within half an hour of your first visit to the store and clearly with the intention of identifying the items that you wished to steal during the course of the robbery.
36	The prosecution urged me to conclude that there was a degree of planning involved, that this was a pre-meditated and not a spur-of-the-moment event.  I accept those submissions and I reject the notion that there is any mitigation to be found in the fact, if it be the case, that you consumed Xanax for the first time, or at all, prior to offending on 12 July2022.
37	It was submitted on your behalf that you have good prospects of rehabilitation with treatment for mental impairments.  It may be that the notes the police found when you were arrested would suggest that you were, when you made the notes at any rate, keen to detoxify and to quit the heroin habit that you then had.  Unfortunately you have committed further offences, albeit not of same magnitude, since the offending conduct.  That rather undermines the proposition that you have good prospects of rehabilitation.
38	As I observed during the course of discussion, it seemed to me that your best prospects of rehabilitation resided with you being reunited with your parents in India and separating yourself from your contacts in Melbourne who led you into your drug dependency in the first place.
39	Another issue which was canvassed at some length was the fact that as a result of these proceedings and also because your visa had expired, you are no longer a lawful resident of Australia.  There is a strong likelihood, to say the least, of you being deported at the conclusion of your prison sentence.  That can be a mitigating factor in circumstances where it adds to the burden of your imprisonment.
40	The counsel for the prosecution, Mr White, pointed out there was really no evidence that you were actually upset about the prospect of being deported.  Rather, you had indicated that you wished to return to India voluntarily or at least not to resist the deportation.
41	However, it seems to me that it may well be more subtle in that you had come to Australia for further education and to give yourself the opportunity of obtaining permanent residency in Australia.  As a result of these proceedings and other proceedings those hopes are now remote, if not completely dashed.  So, it adds to the mix of factors which would cause you considerable disappointment in your own conduct and in your present plight.  All of those factors combine to make your time in custody the more onerous.
42	To that must be added the fact that you are not supported by family in Australia.  Your one good friend, Mandeep Singh, is apparently in India at the present time.  You are therefore not receiving visits, and although you have been in contact with your parents it seems on a regular basis, it is a different situation from a person who is supported physically by visits to the prison, all of which combine to make your period of incarceration more onerous.
43	I was urged to take into account the fact that the totality principle needs to be applied in selecting a total effective sentence between the offence of armed robbery and offence of dealing in property suspected of being the proceeds of crime, and I do that.
44	Your counsel conceded that the only appropriate sentence is an immediate term of imprisonment with the imposition of a non-parole period and one which takes into meaningful account all of the significant factors of mitigation raised on the plea.
45	I have done that with the exception of the application of the Verdins principles 1-4 for the reasons I have already indicated.  I have concluded that rather than a sentence of imprisonment with a non-parole period, given the fact that you are still a youthful offender and given the fact that there seems to me to be a demonstrated connection between your drug dependence and the offending conduct and the other matters that I have indicated that I have taken into account, that a straight sentence, that is a sentence that does not include a non-parole period, may be the appropriate way of dealing with you and giving you a greater certainty as to when your sentence may come to an end.
46	Balancing all the relevant sentencing considerations, in particular the need to denounce conduct such as that the subject of the armed robbery charge, to impose just punishment to give proper effect to both general deterrence and individual deterrence and to balance that against the need to facilitate your rehabilitation, particularly since you are a youthful offender, and to have proper regard for the principle of protecting the public, that the balance can be reached in the ways that I am about to indicate.
47	Prasanit Sharma, on the charge on the indictment of armed robbery you are convicted and sentenced to imprisonment for 20 months.
48	For the related summary offence of dealing in property suspected of being the proceeds of crime you are convicted and sentenced to imprisonment for
four months.
49	I direct that one month of the sentence imposed on the related summary offence be served cumulatively upon the sentence of 20 months on the armed robbery charges, makes a total effective sentence of 21 months’ imprisonment.
50	I declare 97 days pre-sentence detention as time to be reckoned as served on the sentences that I have imposed and deducted administratively.  And I order that those matters be noted in the records of the court.
51	In addition, on Charge 1, I order that you pay compensation in the sum of $204.00 in accordance with the draft compensation order with which I have been provided.
52	I order that there be a forfeiture order, forfeiting the items in the schedule in that order and also a disposal order in accordance with the draft with which 
I have been provided.
53	But for your pleas of guilty, I would have sentenced you to imprisonment for 
three years and six months with a non-parole period of two years and 
four months.
54	Is there any other matter I need to deal with, Counsel?
55	MR WHITE:  Nothing further.  Thank you, Your Honour.
56	HIS HONOUR:  Mr Newton?
57	MR NEWTON:  No, Your Honour.
58	HIS HONOUR:  Thank you both for your help.
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