N.B. Copyright in this transcript is the property of the Crown. If this transcript is copied without the authority of the Attorney-General of the Northern Territory, proceedings for infringement will be taken.
______
THE SUPREME COURT OF
THE NORTHERN TERRITORY
SCC 21747057
THE QUEEN
and
ALWYN WILLIAMS
(Sentence)
GRANT CJ
TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS
AT ALICE SPRINGS ON THURSDAY 12 APRIL 2018
Transcribed by:
EPI
HIS HONOUR: MrWilliam, you have pleaded guilty to causing serious harm to your cousin, BadenDawson on 22September last year. The maximum penalty for that offence is imprisonment for 14years.
This is what happened on that night.
You had been drinking and you were drunk. At about 11o’clock you went to that house on StauntonStreet. You went into the front yard and you demanded that JeremyDawson give you a lift. He said he was too drunk to drive.
You kept on humbugging him. Your cousin, Baden then told you to leave. He took you out of the yard of the house. You then started pushing and shoving each other. You punched Baden in the jaw, knocking him to the ground. Baden then went into the house, got a knife and chased you away.
About two weeks later, you turned yourself into the police station and you were arrested. Police conducted an interview with you but you made no comment. You were charged and you have been remanded in custody since 4October2017.
As you know, Baden had to go to hospital for his broken jaw. They transferred him from the TennantCreek Hospital to the hospital in Darwin. His jaw was broken in two places on the left side and on the right side. He had to have an operation to put a plate and screws into his jaw and to take out three of his teeth because of what you did to him.
If he did not have that operation, he might have got an infection in his bone and it might have been the case that his jaw would not have worked properly again for the rest of his life.
I have also received the story Baden told after you punched him. He said that his jaw was still hurting. He said he could only eat soft food for two months. He could not eat any hard food. He was having difficulty sleeping. He says that you did the wrong thing to him and he is no doubt right in saying that and you no doubt know that you did the wrong thing by him.
Unfortunately, MrWilliams, this is not the first time you have done the wrong thing. You were convicted of recklessly endangering serious harm in October2014, aggravated assault on a woman involving the use of a weapon and the infliction of harm a little bit earlier than that causing serious harm in April2009, and assaulting a member of the police force in April2007.
In addition to those matters, you have got a string of property damage offences, motor vehicle related offences, stealing offences and unlawful entry offences dating back to your youth. Although they did not involve violent offending and are not directly relevant for these purposes, they do show me that you are a man who has disregarded the law for almost the entirety of your adult life.
There are reasons for that no doubt, which I will come to shortly.
You also have four breaches of orders suspending sentence between 2006 and 2011 and two breaches of domestic violence orders in 2013 and 2017. The previous serious harm conviction you have dating back in April2009 also involved you breaking somebody’s jaw by punching them and that person involved in that offending back in 2009 was WaylonRankine who was your sister’s boyfriend, I am told here today.
Because you have got prior convictions for violent offending, this court is required to impose a minimum sentence of 12months actual imprisonment unless there were exceptional circumstances. You do not argue that there were exceptional circumstances in this case and nor can I see any basis for such an argument.
Having said that, the mandatory sentencing provisions are irrelevant to the present circumstances, as for the reasons I am going to go on and give. I am of the opinion that the appropriate sentence exceeds the mandatory minimum sentence of 12months actual imprisonment in any event.
This is a serious example of this type of offending. It was an attack on your cousin at his home. As the prosecutor says, your response was angry and disproportionate and the force of the blow was significant.
This is not a case where the fact that you were drunk makes your conduct less serious. You were voluntarily intoxicated. That is you drank of your own free will, you got drunk of your own free will and your history shows that you must have known that you can be violent when you are drunk. The only thing that operates in your favour in terms of the circumstances of this offending is that you ran away and did not continue with the assault.
The infliction of serious harm like this by drunken men happens all the time in your community. Conduct like yours must be dealt with in a manner which reflects the serious nature of the offending and its damaging effect on the well-being of your community and similar communities.
The punishment must recognise the fact that violence like yours affects the whole community by additionally putting a strain on the healthcare system and those who work in it. You have already heard me say that as a result of what you did to your cousin not only did he have to be treated at the TennantCreek Hospital but they had to fly him up to Darwin and operate on him up in Darwin.
You have also lost any entitlement to leniency. Your prior offending shows that you have a tendency to violence. Beyond your plea of guilty and your dysfunctional early life, which I will come to shortly, there are no mitigating circumstances.
I also cannot see in any objective sense that you have shown any genuine remorse. As your barrister has explained, you have shown that you are genuinely sorry for what you did to Baden. Your barrister tells me that you said, “I’m sorry for this,” when you were committed for sentence and I accept that is the case. But that does not tell me whether you were sorry for the trouble you got yourself in or whether you were genuinely sorry for what you did to Baden.
Your barrister says that I can be satisfied that you are genuinely sorry for the impact this had on Baden, because he was your cousin and you had his victim impact statement read to you immediately before you made that expression of sorrow and remorse.
You pleaded guilty at an early stage but I do not necessarily take that to show that you are truly sorry either. This expression of remorse and this plea of guilty must be seen against the fact that (a) it was an extremely strong Crown case and (b)you have a background which involves four prior convictions for violent offences.
What that plea of guilty does show me, however, is that you accept responsibility for what you did to Baden and that you are prepared to assist in the completion of the court processes for that offending.
At the time you committed this offence, you were beyond the age where you would be entitled to leniency on the account of youthful indiscretion. That is on account of the fact that you are a silly young man, because you were not a young man at this time.
Your prior criminal history also suggests to me that your prospects for rehabilitation cannot be assessed as particularly good at this time. Having said that, I accept that there are aspects of your upbringing which have a mitigating effect in the manner described by the High Court in Bugmy.
Your barrister has told me something about your life up to this point in time. You were 30years old at the time of this offence. You grew up in TennantCreek. Your parents split up when you were about 5years old. You never had any real relationship with your father. As I understand it he was a heavy drinker.
You lived with different family members while you were growing up and felt to some degree that you were unwanted and passed around. You went to school in TennantCreek. You can read and write a little bit. You were initiated through ceremony when you were 14.
At the age of 15, you started drinking and using cannabis. A lot of your early unlawful entry and stealing offences were to get money for grog and cannabis. However, there were some bright spots in your life. You did enjoy spending time at Pulkarki. While you were there, you learnt how to ride horses and to do station work with your UncleRoy and he was a positive influence on your life.
Despite your trouble with grog and cannabis you have worked from time to time. You did CDEP from the time you left school until 2009. You then worked for a period of time as a ranger with the Land Council, doing good work. You have done a construction course and you have got some other qualifications as well.
You then worked as a ranger again starting in 2014 but unfortunately, because of your inability to control yourself when you are drunk, you were sent to prison in October2014 for the aggravated assault and recklessly endangering serious harm and that employment came to an end as a result.
Your barrister tells me that when you get of prison you want to do an alcohol rehabilitation program with CAAAPU or one of those organisations and then go to live with your wife and children at CanteenCreek and may do some work building houses there.
That is a good thing but it is not going to stick unless you, while you are in prison and when you get out of prison, do something to stop yourself from drinking grog. Because when you drink grog, you tend to get in trouble on a regular basis.
General deterrence, specific deterrence and the protection of the community, punishment and denunciation are unfortunately the most important purposes in this sentencing process, having regard to your background.
There is no tariff for this type of offence. The circumstances of the offender and the offending vary widely between cases and that variance is seen in such matters as, obviously, the facts of the offending in question, the nature and timing of the guilty plea and what it indicates, the age of the offender at the time, the extent to which the offender has assisted law enforcement authorities and the nature and extent of the offender’s prior criminal history.
It is also relevant to take into account the seriousness of the resulting injuries and the impact of the offending on the victim; Baden, in this case.
I have already dealt with those considerations earlier in these remarks. So against that background, I turn now to sentence you. Can you please stand up, MrWilliams?
I find the facts proven, I find you guilty and I convict you of that offence of serious harm. It is important to show other people in the community that they cannot commit this sort of violence or they will be sentenced to gaol for a substantial period of time.
It is important to impose a sentence on you that is severe enough both to punish you for what you did wrong and to discourage you, so far as the sentencing process allows, from committing this sort of violent offence again in the future.
It is important that the sentence that I impose on you affords some protection to the community from a repetition of this sort of violent offence. You cannot go around punching people and particularly not those people close to you.
Given your history of offending, I consider that your prospects for rehabilitation are not particularly good at this stage. I hope that you can prove me wrong in that respect. To the extent that you have indicated a willingness to undertake some form of alcohol rehabilitation, you will need to prove that you are genuine about that, both to the parole authorities and to the rehabilitation providers.
I have already taken into account the fact that you have pleaded guilty in the manner I have discussed earlier in these remarks. This is a serious crime which will not be tolerated and which requires the imposition of a substantial sentence of imprisonment.
I sentence you to imprisonment for 2years and 8months, backdated to 4October2017. But for your early plea of guilty, I would have sentenced you to imprisonment for 3years and 4months.
I do not consider that an order suspending sentence would enhance your prospects of rehabilitation. You also have previous breaches of orders suspending sentence, which mean that this court can have no confidence that you would comply with the conditions of an order suspending sentence, if it made one.
However, I do believe, as your barrister submits, that a nonparoleperiod should be fixed to give you the hope of an early release if you demonstrate some level of rehabilitation and commitment to changing your ways while you are in prison.
The ParoleBoard will be in a better position to assess your progress and your rehabilitation needs after you have served the minimum time necessary for this offending.
For that reason, I fix a non-paroleperiod of 16months, backdated to 4October2017. Your progress in prison, how you behave yourself there and the terms and conditions of your early release, if any, are best assessed after the expiry of that period.
Accordingly, I make the following orders.
- The offender is convicted of the offence on the indictment dated 9April2018.
- For that offence, that offender is sentenced to imprisonment for 2years and 8months, backdated to 4October2017.
- A non-paroleperiod of 16months is fixed, also backdated to 4October2017.
Is there anything arising out of that, counsel?
MR PENMAN: No, yourHonour.
MS COLLINS: No, yourHonour.
HIS HONOUR: Thankyou for your attendance and assistance.
Please adjourn the court.
______