IN THE COUNTY COURT OF VICTORIA	Revised
Not Restricted
Suitable for Publication	
AT MELBOURNE
CRIMINAL DIVISION

DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS 		
		
v		
		
Wilfred ANDREWS (a pseudonym)

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JUDGE:	HIS HONOUR JUDGE TINNEY 	
WHERE HELD:	Melbourne	
DATE OF HEARING:	9 March 2022	
DATE OF SENTENCE:	11 March 2022	
CASE MAY BE CITED AS:	DPP v Andrews (a pseudonym)	
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION:	[2022] VCC 319		

REASONS FOR SENTENCE
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Catchwords: Recklessly Causing Injury - common assault - threat to inflict serious injury - threat to kill - criminal damage – theft - attempt to pervert - summary offence of contravention of intervention order - early guilty plea - Worboyes v The Queen [2021] VSCA 169) – COVID-19 - on CCO at time - 33 years of age and extensive criminal history.  	

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APPEARANCES:
	Counsel	Solicitors	
For the Crown	Ms J Wang	Office of Public Prosecutions	
			
For the Accused	Mr I Pugh	Finn & Pugh 	

HIS HONOUR:
1	Wilfred Andrews, on Wednesday of this week you pleaded guilty to seven charges on the indictment being once charge each of recklessly causing injury, common assault, threat to inflict serious injury, threat to kill, criminal damage, theft and attempt to pervert the course of justice.  There is also a single summary offence of contravention of an intervention order to which you have pleaded guilty.  
2	You have admitted a lengthy and relevant criminal history.  You were on a community corrections order at the time of these offences.  
3	You were born in February 1989, were 32 years old at the time of the offending and are now 33 years old.  
4	The maximum penalties are correctly set out in the agreed opening and I see no need to restate them.  I have taken into account as I must, the maximum penalties.  
Facts
5	Ms Wang appeared to prosecute on the plea and relied upon a written summary of prosecution opening dated 7 February 2022.  That document was marked as Exhibit A on the plea.  Your solicitor Mr Pugh told me it was an agreed summary.  It was a lengthy summary running to some 10 pages and I see no need to set out the full sentencing facts in these my reasons.  I will sentence pursuant to that agreed material.  Of course it refers to the recorded phone calls and they are set out in full in the depositions and I have read those calls.  

6	I will provide then just the briefest of summaries so that these reasons may be understood by anyone who happens to access them.  You were in an intimate relationship with Ms Paula Silva.  You had been living in her house for 6 weeks and on the night in question you arrived at her house in an upset state.  You were behaving oddly and in a paranoid fashion.  You were acting aggressively and made some strange accusations against Ms Silva.  She tried to calm you down without success.  You were ranting and really making no sense at all.  
7	Getting louder and more aggressive, you slapped her to the face and a short time later having said to her “you’re acting scared of me”, you leaned forward and headbutted her.  The summary sets out the unfolding events. You stabbed a knife into the door frame, hence the criminal damage, and then threats to cause serious injury and also to kill.  That later threat had you fill up two syringes with a clear fluid and threaten to inject it.  So a threat being re-enforced by the acts.  That threat related to her two housemates but of course was issued to Ms Silva.  They didn’t hear it.  The threat to inflict serious injury upon Ms Silva referenced the knife that you had stuck into the door frame and what you would do with it.  
8	You took her outside the house and again made some very strange statements before taking her back to the bedroom and as she yelled out for help, you then pushed a pillow into her face and then you punched her twice through the pillow.  Her housemates intervened and she fled from the house and hid.  You were locked out but obtained entry.  Ultimately, Ms Silva and her housemate fled in the car and rang the police.  You were arrested later that day.  
9	On 22 June 2021 an interim intervention order was made and it prohibited any communications or contact.  It was served on and explained to you.  The attempt to pervert involved your ongoing efforts to have her withdraw her complaint.  These were calls made by you over two days whilst in custody and they were recorded.  It was serious conduct indeed.  Incredibly, you were asking her to suffer the consequences of criminal punishment that might be associated with her withdrawal of the complaint and this was in the endeavour to avoid your own punishment for criminal acts that you knew you had committed.  You said that you would pay her fines.  I see no point setting out in detail the terms of the various discussions.  The summary goes into some of that detail, but of course the full conversations are set out in the materials and I have read them.  
10	During one of the conversations, you were foolish enough to have mentioned that you had stolen a pair of sunglasses, hence the charge of theft.  
11	Now the interview that was conducted with the police had you  downplaying your conduct and suggesting that you had only been calming her down.  Of course you had not been.  You denied her account.  That stance is not a matter of aggravation.  It is just that you did not provide a truthful account.  Far from it actually.  
12	You have been in custody since your arrest.  
13	The summary sets out some salient features of your criminal history.  There is also a chronology of the listing of this matter before the Court.  
14	So much then for what really is only my short summary of the summary.  I will sentence pursuant to the more detailed statement which, as I say is, marked Exhibit A on the plea. There are also some photographs of the injuries sustained by Ms Silva.  They are in the depositions, and they do not need to be marked as an exhibit.
Victim Impact Statement
15	There is no victim impact statement in this case but it is as plain as day that this was a frightening incident. Ms Silva ran from the house only partly clothed.  Clearly she was scared of your behaviour.  You were not making much sense.  Happily though, she needed no medical treatment.  
In Mitigation
16	Your lawyer, Mr Pugh, conducted the plea on your behalf and relied upon a written outline dated 9 March which was marked as Exhibit 1.  
17	He relied upon two reports from a psychologist, Mr Woodward.  There were also some course certificates, a bundle of TAC materials, an email chain relating to efforts to obtain residential rehabilitation, as well as a paper from 2012 from the Australian Institute of Criminology.  
18	In this way, either in the written materials or supplemented by oral submissions,  he placed before me the details of your personal and family background, including your educational and employment history.  He made some submissions as to the relative gravity of the offending, your reasons for offending, your rehabilitative prospects, as well as the relevant sentencing principles at play in this case.  
19	Mr Pugh raised the following matters in mitigation:
•	Your early guilty plea in the midst of the global pandemic;
•	The presence of some remorse;
•	Your disadvantaged background;
•	The application of the first five principles from the well-known case of Verdins;
•	The impacts of COVID-19 upon your custodial experience.  
20	He conceded the inevitability of a prison sentence with a non-parole period.  
Prosecution
21	Ms Wang who appeared to prosecute on behalf of the Director prepared some detailed written sentencing submissions that were dated 7 March and marked as Exhibit B.  She made submissions as to matters in aggravation and mitigation here and pointed to your lack of response to many past court orders.  She dealt with the seriousness of this offending and the need to deter you.  She placed before the court some comparable cases and a table relating to those cases.  That table was marked as Exhibit C.  I also had summaries of some of your past offending marked as Exhibit D.  The prosecution challenged the application of any of the principles from the case of Verdins that you heard discussed.  They challenged the existence of any remorse in this case given what they said was a process of minimisation disclosed in the materials.  They took a far less optimist view of your future prospects, describing them as poor. 
22	The prosecution was calling for a prison term with a non-parole period.  But so much had been readily conceded as being inevitable by your own counsel.  
Background
23	I am going to turn to your personal background but I am going to that very briefly and that is because I have no reason to doubt the details of your personal and family background that has been placed before me.  There is just no point in my setting it all out for you.  
24	You are now 33 years of age.  You are the youngest of three children.  Your parents separated when you were about nine.  You had very limited schooling.  You had a handful of jobs over the years.  You last worked as a concreter about five years ago.  You have had long term issues with drugs.  You have had a number of relationships.  I have skipped over your early years in that one brief paragraph.  
25	But it is plain to me reading the materials that you have had a pretty disadvantaged early background.  The case of Bugmy though not specifically mentioned was being relied upon here.  I accept that it does have some application.  It was hardly an ideal setting and I give your background full weight.  In summary, you had some poor adult role models.  You had exposure to domestic violence, alcohol and drugs, not to mention sexual abuse at the hands of another.  You had only very limited schooling.  It is an unenviable background and the faltering trajectory of your life is perhaps not all that surprising.  So I do apply the principles from that case to my task.  There is some modest reduction in culpability.  
26	You have an extensive criminal history though and you have been sent to prison frequently enough.  You have breached very many court orders.  You were on a community corrections order at the time of this offending having only recently been released from prison onto that order when you chose to offend.  
27	There really is no point in my conducting a detailed audit of your lengthy criminal history.  There are many matters of obvious relevance within it.  You have breached many intervention orders.  You have committed a number of crimes of violence.  
28	You do not fall to be sentenced a second time for any of those past matters.  The fact is you received and served those sentences, but that criminal history assumes real importance when I consider the need to deter you and to protect the community from you.  It is of obvious relevance when I come to consider your risk of reoffence and your prospects of rehabilitation.  You just have not taken your chances.  The need for deterrence is very plain in this case.  I should say that I pay no regard at all to the outstanding matters which await a hearing later this year, I believe in October.  Your stance in relation to those matters is not yet known.  I put them aside altogether.  I turn then to consider the matters raised by your counsel.  
Guilty plea
29	The first of those matters is your early guilty plea.  Your plea was entered at the earliest stage.  
30	By pleading guilty you have taken this early responsibility for your offending.  As a result of your early plea, the time, the cost, and the effort of a committal hearing in the lower court or a trial up in this court have all been avoided.  No witnesses have been required to give evidence at all.  Ms Silva has been spared that experience and often enough, giving evidence is traumatic.  As I say, she has been spared that experience.  You have in these ways facilitated the course of justice.  
31	Your guilty plea is also worthy of extra weight for the many reasons set out in the decision of Worboyes.  There is, but you may not know, a large backlog of cases waiting for a hearing in this court.  Your case is not one of them.  So, I take these various matters into account in mitigation.  
Remorse
32	Your counsel claims there is genuine remorse.  If there is, it is hard to see.  On that issue, I have your early guilty plea.  A guilty plea is often but not always indicative of at least some remorse.  Your interview did not suggest any remorse but that was in June of last year.  Nor your efforts to avoid responsibility by pressuring Ms Silva to withdraw her complaints.  Again though, that was conduct that occurred some time ago.  
33	More troubling though are recent statements made to the psychologist where you shy away from taking full responsibility.  See page 3 of the more recent report where you deny some of the offences.  That was in an interview with a psychologist in November of last year.  Your counsel in his written submissions was speaking of the impact that Ms Silva had on the conduct the subject of Charges 1 to 6, her use of drugs herself and your misreading it was said, of “the situation” (see paragraphs [13] to [15]).  You weren’t misreading anything.  You were behaving in a paranoid fashion.  It had nothing to do with her.  
34	Nor was I impressed by the submission that you were affected by drugs at the time of the attempt to pervert.  You were not.  That conduct took place on 7th and 8 July, so a fortnight after you had been remanded.  I do not accept for one moment the suggestion that in those recorded discussions you were trying to get her to give a true account of the conduct.  You were doing no such thing.  See paragraph 60.  The fact is doing that would not even constitute the crime of attempting to pervert the course of justice.  Secondly though, the conversations were very clear.  You knew what you had done.  You knew that the charges had been appropriately laid and what you wanted to do was to avoid liability.  You were not requesting her to tell the truth.  What you wanted her to do was to retract her truthful statement.  
35	I am prepared then to infer only some very limited remorse from your early guilty plea and I do take that into account in your favour.  There is not much more on display here that I can see, nor could your counsel really take me to any.  
Rehabilitation
36	You have pleaded guilty at the earliest of stages and have some limited remorse.  I am dealing now with your prospects of rehabilitation.  You have been in custody already for a decent enough period and that has not been easy.  You have been doing some courses whilst in custody and exploring options for residential rehabilitation.  As I say, it has not been easy.  I have been told a short time ago this morning that you have done some 86 days in quarantine but you also engaged in a mental health program.  
37	Your criminal history is problematic.  You either cannot or will not learn.  You keep offending despite every effort being taken to avoid sending you to prison.  You were on a community corrections order at the time of this offending and that did not impede you from offending.  Nor having recently been in prison. That does not seem to deter you.  
38	Indeed, your attempt to pervert the course of justice occurred whilst you were in prison.  You have not taken many of the chances offered to you and of course you are not some foolish teenager.  You are 33 years of age.  You have breached multiple community corrections orders, all of which have had conditions designed to foster your rehabilitation.  You have breached so many intervention orders.  Over 10 such offences by my calculation.  A three month aggregate term for such a breach and for recklessly causing injury and a handful of other offences was one of the components of the sentence imposed in March 2021.  You were released onto a CCO in April 2021 and continued to use drugs and then to reoffend in the way before me.  
39	So you are a mature adult who, for whatever reason, chooses to offend.  Courts have not succeeded in deterring you.  You have had long term and significant issues with illegal drugs of dependence, including ice.  That casts a significant shadow over your future prospects.  So do your past failures to abide by many court orders and to be meaningfully deterred by your dealings in the criminal justice system.  
40	You are back in custody and as I say, it has not been at all easy.  No doubt the fact of apprehension, being charged, being brought before the court, being on remand to this point, will serve to deter you to a degree and so too of course the sentence which I will soon impose.  
41	You still have some family support and of course that is a plus.  Your mother joined the hearing on the last occasion and has done so again today so these are positives.  You have been doing your best in custody.  I am told that you are coming to a point of realisation that you really need to change your life.  They are just words of course.  They are easy to utter, but making the change is what is hard.  
42	Your counsel argued that you have, as he put it, quite strong prospects of rehabilitation.  I just do not agree with that submission.  I do not doubt that you would want to change.  Why would you want to keep living the sort of life you have been living? I hope you can make meaningful change, both for your sake but also for your mother’s sake.  But I have got to be realistic in the assessment that I am making.  I can really only be quite guarded here.  I accept that you have some prospects of rehabilitation.  I cannot put it any higher than that.  Those prospects are in my assessment relatively poor but there are at least some.  Of course, if you continue to use drugs you will just have no prospects of rehabilitation. None at all.  
	Verdins
43	Now let me deal with the Verdins submissions raised on your behalf.  You will recall discussion about that case.  Your counsel relied on the first five principles from that well known case.  He did not receive much, if any, support for that submission from the two reports that have been filed on your behalf from Mr Woodward.  The condition relied upon by your counsel was the borderline personality disorder.  
44	I do not believe that the expert draws any realistic link at all between this condition and your offending.  He certainly does not believe it is the driving force.  The expert was asked a specific question about Verdins and whether those principles applied and he said he thought not.  Now of course that sort of opinion does not bind me or relieve me of the need to conduct my own examination of the issues.  No more than if he came out and said that the principles in his opinion did apply.  I will be the judge of what principles apply to my sentencing task.  I am obliged to consider the materials and do not just slavishly act on that style of opinion.  In fact it really shouldn’t be offered up in that way by an expert.  
45	However, he expands on that opinion on page 9 and elsewhere in the more recent report.  His stated view is that the primary driving force for the offending was the drug use and less so your personality disorder.  He says you are capable of normal behaviour which weakens the hypothesis that the borderline personality disorder was driving the offending.  It may have had some influence, but the alcohol and drug use problems are the primary drivers here, he believes.  
46	This in a case where you were behaving in an unmistakably odd fashion on the morning in question with some level of paranoia and the suggestion from you that you had been using a lot of ice and had been awake for five nights.  Mr Woodward expresses no view at all as to any increased custodial burden represented by your borderline personality disorder.  I am not free to guess about those things.  
47	It is true that the Verdins principles have been extended to some forms of personality disorders.  The case of O’Neill which arguably said otherwise has been overruled by the more recent case of Brown.  
48	I am not to get caught up in a quest for a tag or diagnostic label, but I never was meant to pursuant to Verdins in any event.  Rather, it is the impact of the disorder that is critical in this determination.  What a court is meant to do is to engage in a rigorous and careful examination of the evidence and how such a disorder may impact upon a person to attract the various limbs of that case. How it actually affected the person at the time of the crime or at the time of sentence or both.  
49	The personality disorder discussed in the case of Brown was a very severe one.  It is true that the Court of Appeal in that case did not set any particular threshold level of severity, but it is plain enough from the evidence led in that case and from the observations of the Court of Appeal, that a personality disorder is likely to engage these Verdins principles only in a case of some severity.  
50	There is no suggestion of any great severity of your condition.  Further, there are various other factors at play which do not even enliven these principles in your case.  Namely, disinhibition brought about by drug use and also it would seem, some form of delusion or psychosis linked to your use of illegal drugs.  It is impossible to conclude to the requisite degree that your borderline personality disorder has any real connection to any of this offending.  
51	I note also that the offending captured by Charge 7, that is the attempt to pervert the course of justice, was distanced from that offending which had occurred in the early hours.  That later offending (the attempt to pervert) was rational and calculated conduct seeking to achieve the withdrawal of the charges.  It made perfect sense.  
52	I do not believe there is any meaningful or realistic link at all between the disorder and your commission of any of these crimes.  It is impossible to disentangle the effects of the drug use and the delusions or paranoia flowing from that drug use.  It seems quite clear that was the driving force here.  
53	Nor for that matter does your personality disorder, such as it is, represent a significant or profound one.  You are a very long way removed from the very sad position of Daylia Brown, where there was a most severe condition and an obviously very substantial and close causal link.  In fact, there is no basis to give any of the principles from Verdins any weight in your case.  That is not to say that I ignore your condition.  I do not.  I take it into account in a general way, just not in a Verdins fashion.  
54	The submissions from Mr Pugh also sought to draw some strength from the suggestion you were acting under a drug induced psychosis or whilst affected by drugs.  There are some cases where impaired mental functioning owing solely to self-induced intoxication would have some mitigatory value.  That is because someone acting in a psychotic state owing to drug induced psychosis and a person who was not on notice as to the likely effect of taking drugs is said to have a significantly reduced moral culpability.  
55	That seems to be the effect of two decisions of the Court of Appeal, which apply some principles from earlier Court of Appeal decisions.  See the cases of Avan as well as Marks. The fact is though you were on notice as to the effect of drugs on your mental state, having been previously warned of drug induced psychosis.  You had suffered it in the past.  That is clearly spoken of in the earlier report of Mr Woodward.  I will not treat it as an aggravating feature, but it is certainly not mitigatory.  
56	In conclusion then, the principles from Verdins are simply not engaged in this case.  Nor is it mitigatory that you were under the influence of drugs at the time of the offending the subject of Charges 1 to 6.  
COVID-19
57	I do though accept the submissions made by your counsel as to the impact of COVID-19 restrictions on your custodial experience.  
58	It is clear that the COVID-19 virus and the response to it by those who run the prisons has increased your prison burden.  Prison has been a more stressful environment in the time that you have been held there to this point.  Social distancing is not easy.  No doubt there would be a worry about catching the virus in such a setting where, unlike someone in the community, there is just no level of autonomy.  There have been some lockdowns and also some periods of quarantine in your case,  I am told this morning, some 86 days.  
59	There have been the limitations to visiting as well as no doubt limitation to the full range of courses in the period in which you have been held.  
60	As I said on the plea earlier this week, it has not been a good time to be locked up.  You have had some issues arising from a motor vehicle accident that you were involved in.  That accident was back in 2020.  But your counsel was not submitting to the court that those injuries or the sequel to them in any way increased your burden.  I can give them only very little weight in my task.  
61	As to what lies ahead on the pandemic front, it is really impossible for me to know and I am not free to guess about that.  I cannot speculate, for instance, about how long restrictions on prisoner visits will persist.  We are starting to open up in the community as we emerge from the Omicron strain.  Prisons have lagged a bit behind the community in terms of restrictions being lifted.  Presumably though, the restrictions in a prison setting will lift in the not-too-distant future.  I cannot say exactly when that will happen.  
62	I do take into account then that it seems likely that these current restrictions will continue into the future at least in the short term.  No doubt that would produce some ongoing worry and uncertainty and increased burden.  So I take into account the increased burden posed by the response to COVID-19, in the ways contemplated by Mr Pugh.  
The Offences  
63	I turn then to the offences.  Of course I must pay regard to the nature and gravity of the offences before the court.  This was undoubtedly serious offending.  Obviously though, some of the charges are more serious than others.  Monstering your female partner verbally and physically in her own home was serious enough.  Uttering serious threats and backing them up with a knife in the door frame and the pretty nasty prop being the filled syringes.  This was serious conduct.  These threats were quite explicit.  
64	You had the means to carry out the given threat.  As to the threat to kill, 
Ms Silva thought her friends might die at your hands.  You were not acting calmly or rationally and that made this threatening conduct particularly frightening.  You just could not be reasoned with.  You had the knife you referenced in relation to the threat to inflict serious injury upon her.  You had the syringes.  You were filling them up.  
65	The recklessly causing injury rolls up three separate acts, slapping, headbutting and then punching her to the face twice through the pillow.  No medical attention was required but the photograph in the depositional material shows obvious injuries.  It was an unprovoked attack upon her in her own home, though the injuries of course were of a low order.  
66	As to the attempt to pervert though, it was serious conduct.  It was quite perverse that you were prepared for her to incur criminal punishment so that you could avoid the punishment which was justifiably coming in your direction.  Yet you did and by then of course you were thinking calmy and rationally.  You were trying to save your own skin.  You were hoping to have her change her statement.  It took place over three calls.  You had plenty of time to reflect on this conduct.  
67	You were, as you knew, a perpetrator of family violence and you were seeking to have her retract her true account.  It is true you were not threatening her in the course of those calls, but you were undoubtedly bringing pressure to bear.  There were these three calls where the topic was broached, and she was describing to you her concerns about the potential impact upon her of doing what you asked.    
68	You sought to persuade her by offering to pay any fines.  All of this of course while you were prohibited from having any communication with her at all.  Yet again you have treated an intervention order as something of a joke.  Just a piece of paper.  You should not have.  They are there to protect.  Breaching them in the way that you did is a serious crime itself.  The theft is the least serious of the offences before me.  The criminal damage is likewise not particularly serious in the setting.  
Purposes
69	I have to consider a number of purposes of sentencing.  Your counsel submitted that your prospects of rehabilitation were the key to my task.  They really are not.  He was placing great store on that paper from the Australian Institute of Criminology.  This is a paper from 2012.  I have read it and it is all very interesting, but it has next to nothing to do with my actual sentencing task.  I do pay regard to your prospects of rehabilitation.  Of course I do not ignore that purpose, but as I have said, I can only be quite guarded in this case.  There are some prospects, but I do not assess those prospects at all favourably.  They are really quite poor.  I am afraid that given your age and your lack of response to many court orders and your preparedness to reoffend, you have reached a stage where other purposes of sentencing  assume greater importance in the sentencing task than rehabilitation so it is not a key.  It is a purpose and one that I give some regard to.    .  
70	I must punish you and I must do that justly and proportionately.  Punishment is an obvious and important consideration in this case.  I must also denounce your conduct.  That also is important.  This sort of violent conduct targeting an intimate partner, must be roundly denounced.  So too the calculated step taken to try to avoid the consequences of your acts as represented by the attempt to pervert charge.  
71	Community protection is also of importance given the nature of your conduct and your lack of response to many past orders.  You present, in my judgement, a sizable risk of reoffending.  
72	I must pay appropriate weight to deterrence, both general and specific.  There is the need for this court to deter you and others from this style of offending in the future.  Specific deterrence, which is the need to deter you, is of obvious importance in this case.  Time and time again you offend and/or then breach court orders.  You have offended in the past against an intimate partner.  You have not been deterred.  You have breached many intervention orders.  I will try again to deter you.  
73	General deterrence is a significant sentencing purpose in this sort of case.  That is the need to deter other offenders.  We are sick of men, it is mainly men, who think it is their right to assault or monster a female intimate partner.  We are sick of those same men who seem to think that intervention orders are merely a piece of paper, as you did when you attempted to pervert the course of justice.  
74	This court must convey the message that the courts will take seriously those who choose to commit crimes such as yours.  We, as judges, must seek to deter others from committing these sorts of offences.  I must have regard to the maximum penalties in play.  Attempting to pervert the course of justice carries a 25-year maximum term of imprisonment.  
75	I do pay regard to current sentencing practices.  That is not a single controlling factor.  I have looked at the relevant portions of the Sentencing Advisory Council online data for statistics held in relation to a number of these crimes.  
76	I have looked also at the Judicial College of Victoria Sentencing Manual for cases dealing with recklessly causing injury, threat to kill and also threat to inflict serious injury, as well as attempting to pervert the course of justice (see 4. 6.1, 8.1 and 5.4).  The section that deals with threatening conduct has both kinds of threats and of course one must be careful to look at the relevant crime as there are differing maximums.  
77	I have read the various cases submitted by the prosecution.  None is on all fours.  Each party in their written submissions went through aspects of those cases pointing to differences or similarities.  I am not going to do that.  They were not on all fours. There are many differences in conduct, age and background.  Differing matters in mitigation and aggravation.  
78	The fact is other cases  are not precedents and for that matter there is no such thing as one correct sentence.  
79	Statistics have inherent limitations and that is because I have to pass an appropriate sentence in your case.  I have taken into account all of the submissions made both by your counsel and by the prosecution.  Also, all of the material that is relied upon on your behalf.  
80	Prison is a disposition of last resort.  It is warranted here.  That is accepted.  It is plain that your conduct is deserving of a substantial enough term of imprisonment and that there can be really no question as to the availability of a community corrections order in this case.  Your counsel accepts that a non-parole period will be required here and of course, he is right in making that concession.  
Totality
81	Each party has made submissions as to totality of sentence and the extent of cumulation or concurrency required here.  I must consider whether the effect of the sentence is just and appropriate and commensurate with your overall criminality.  Totality of sentence is an important consideration here and I have taken a last look at the overall effect of my sentences.  The first six charges on the indictment are of course closely related in point of time.  
82	Indeed, the use of the pillow, that is common assault (Charge 2), was intimately connected up with the blows to the face which are rolled up into Charge 1.  The criminal damage represented by the stabbing of the knife into the door frame is connected up with the threat to inflict serious injury that was issued by you only a short time later.  The theft of sunglasses is really stuck out on its own, based as it is on the admission that you foolishly made in the Arunta call.  It has no real connection to any of the other offending.  
83	The attempt to pervert the course of justice is a serious offence in its own right.  In fact, in my view, it is the most serious offence that I am dealing with.  So strangely then, the most serious offence is the one you committed endeavouring to avoid your liability for less serious offending.  Of course, care must be taken not to punish you again for the offending which it was sought to conceal (see Baker). You were the subject of an intervention order at that time and really should not have been speaking to Ms Silva at all.  
Sentence
84	Let me then pass sentence upon you. I will have you remain seated in the circumstances.  
85	On Charge 1 which is the rolled up recklessly causing injury charge, I convict and sentence you to nine months imprisonment.  
86	On the second charge, common assault, I convict and sentence you to 14 days imprisonment.  
87	On Charge 3, threat to inflict serious injury, you are convicted and sentenced to eight months' imprisonment.  
88	On Charge 4, criminal damage, you are convicted and sentenced to seven days imprisonment.  
89	On Charge 5, threat to kill, you are convicted and sentenced to 10 months imprisonment
90	On Charge 6, theft, I convict and sentence you to three days imprisonment.  
91	On Charge 7, attempting to pervert the course of justice, you are convicted and sentenced to 22 months imprisonment.  
92	On the summary offence relating to breach of the family violence intervention order, you are convicted and sentenced to three months imprisonment.  
Cumulation 
93	The base sentence therefore is the 22 months imposed on Charge 7.  I make the following orders for cumulation:
94	I direct that:
•	Three months of the sentence imposed on Charge 1; 
•	Three months of the sentence imposed on Charge 5;
•	Two months of the sentence imposed on Charge 3; and 
•	One month of the sentence imposed on the summary offence
is be served cumulatively upon the base sentence and upon each other.  The sentences imposed on the common assault and the theft will be served wholly concurrent.  
Total Effective Sentence
95	These orders for cumulation produce a total effective sentence of 31 months or two years and seven months imprisonment.  
Non-parole period
96	Given the dimensions of that sentence, other than in a few rare settings which do not apply here, I am required by law to fix a non‑parole period.  I am not allowed to speculate as to whether you will be released on parole.  That matter will rest entirely in the hands of the Adult Parole Board.  
97	I direct that you serve a period of 18 months before becoming eligible for release on parole.  
Section 18
98	You have spent already a period of 264 days in custody by way of pre‑sentence detention and that period is declared as having already been served under this sentence.  
Section 6AAA
99	I have taken into account your guilty plea.  If you had pleaded not guilty and been found guilty of these offences by a jury, I would have sent you to prison for three years and 10 months.  I would have fixed a non-parole period of two years and nine months and that statement is to be entered into the records of the court.  Let me just see if there is anything else.  Anything else from your end, Ms Wang?
100	MS WANG:  Nothing arising, Your Honour.    
101	HIS HONOUR:  Mr Pugh, from your end, any other matters or not?
102	MR PUGH:  Yes, sorry, Your Honour, just to confirm, so the maximum is two years, seven months?
103	HIS HONOUR:  That's right.    
104	MR PUGH:  And the non-parole is 18 months?
105	HIS HONOUR:  Yes, that's, right.  I will go through the individual sentences again.  Did you make a note of those or not?
106	MR PUGH:  Look, I did, Your Honour.  I'll obviously look at the decision as well.  No, I’m happy with that.    
107	HIS HONOUR:  All right, yes.    
108	MR PUGH:  I just wanted to confirm that, that's all.  Sorry, Your Honour.    
109	HIS HONOUR:  Once the reasons come back from VGRS I will revise them and I will make them available anyway.  But no, you're right.  I mean the base sentence is the 22 months imposed on the attempt to pervert the course of justice.  I have cumulated then three months of the sentence imposed on Charge 1 which is the recklessly causing injury, three months of the sentence imposed on Charge 5 which is the three to kill, two months of the sentence imposed on Charge 3 which is the threat to inflict serious injury and one month of the sentence imposed on the summary offence.  So those orders for cumulation produce nine months by way of cumulation upon the base sentence.    
110	So it produces a total effective sentence of 31 months or two years and seven months imprisonment and I have fixed a non-parole period of 18 months.  He gets credit for the pre-sentence detention.  He has already served 264 days of the sentence.  As I said, but for his plea, if he had run this before a Jury I would have sentenced him to prison for three years 10 months and fixed a non-parole period of two years and nine months. Any other matters from either of you?
111	MR PUGH:  No, Your Honour.    
112	MS WANG:  No, Your Honour.    
113	HIS HONOUR:  All right.  Mr Pugh, are you wanting to again at least use the facilities to speak to your client briefly or not?
114	MR PUGH:  Yes, yes, Your Honour, that would be good.    
115	HIS HONOUR:  Very well.  I will leave him online - I will stand shortly and then you will be put into a virtual room with your client where you will have the ability to confer privately with him.  Mr Andrews, just remain where you are obviously and you will be in a room where you can have a discussion with Mr Pugh.    
116	ACCUSED:  Thank you, Your Honour.    
117	HIS HONOUR:  That completes the matter then.  
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