DPP v Meyers [2024] VCC 2057 (29 November 2024)

Last Updated: 18 December 2024

IN THE COUNTY COURT OF VICTORIA AT MELBOURNE CRIMINAL DIVISION

Revised Not Restricted Suitable for Publication

Case No. CR-24-00944
CR-22-00375

DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS
v
Dylan MEYERS

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JUDGE:	His Honour Judge Cahill
WHERE HELD:	Melbourne
DATE OF HEARING:	22 October 2024
DATE OF SENTENCE:	29 November 2024
CASE MAY BE CITED AS:	DPP v MEYERS
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION:	[2024] VCC 2057

REASONS FOR SENTENCE
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Subject: Armed Robbery and Contravention of CCO

Catchwords: Guilty plea – Spontaneous offending– Below mid range offending – background of disadvantage – Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Disorder – Attention Deficit / Hyperactivity Disorder – Substance Abuse

Legislation Cited:

Cases Cited: Williscroft [1975] VicRp 27; (1975) VR 292; DPP v Perry [2016] VSCA 152; (2016) 50 VR 686; DPP v Stevens [2013] VSCA 197.

Sentence: Total Effective Sentence of 15 months imprisonment and an 18 month Community Corrections Order

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APPEARANCES:	Counsel	Solicitors
For the DPP	Mr M White	Office of Public Prosecutions
For the Accused	Ms N Freijah	Emma Turnbull Lawyers

HIS HONOUR:

1. Dylan MEYERS, you have pleaded guilty to one charge of armed robbery.

Circumstances of Offending ^[1]

2. Your offending occurred on 1 September 2023 at West Wodonga.
3. Around 11 PM, you confronted JV, who was walking through an underpass, with two friends, with a hammer and demanded money from him.
4. You threatened to cave his head in with the hammer. When he said he didn’t have any money you demanded his hat. He handed to you and ran off.
5. You were with a friend. He chased JV and his friends, and you joined in. About 200 metres down the road, you stopped them and asked them how old they were.
6. JV was 16. His friends were 17. You were 22.
7. The episode was captured on street safe cameras. You were wearing a pink dress.

Arrest and interview

8. You were subject to a community correction order at the time. On 4 September 2023, when you reported for supervision, you told your case manager about the incident.
9. Police arrested your 21 September 2023.

At interview

10. You admitted you had robbed JV with a hammer.
11. You said you had no shoes of your own, because you were not long out of jail, and you had worn the pink dress as a “bet”, for a pair of runners.
12. You said you confronted JV, while somebody filmed you on the phone, in order to make a “fake robbery” video.
13. You admitted you had partly covered your face with a “crop top”. You also admitted you took JV’s hat.
14. You said you didn’t mean to rob him. You said, after you took his hat, you chased him to let him know it was a joke. You said you were “cooked” on ice at the time. In your words, what you had done was “dumb shit”.

Chronology of proceedings

15. At the end of the interview, police charged you with armed robbery and you were remanded in custody.
16. On 12 June 2024, without contesting any evidence, you entered a guilty plea to the armed robbery charge.

Objective seriousness

17. The maximum penalty for armed robbery is 25 years imprisonment.
18. It is a serious offence which is invariably a terrifying experience for the victim ^[2] and threatens the community’s sense of safety.
19. For obvious reasons, just punishment and general deterrence are important sentencing considerations. ^[3]
20. You confronted a 16-year-old boy, at night, in the dark. You obscured your face with your clothing.
21. While you did not use any force, and JV was not physically harmed, you threatened him with serious injury in order to steal his cap.
22. He told police he believed he was going to die. In a clear understatement he said, “The whole thing was pretty stressful”.
23. JV did nothing to provoke you. Your crime was random and spontaneous. It was, no doubt, terrifying, for him.
24. I accept you did not intend to harm JV. I also accept you were not motivated by any substantial financial gain. It was a “dumb” and also a potentially dangerous prank.
25. Being drug affected is no excuse.
26. While objectively serious, considering your confrontation was relatively brief and without actual violence, I assess your crime to be a below mid-range example of armed robbery.

Criminal Record

27. You have admitted a criminal record.
28. Relevantly, on 10 February 2023, in this court, and Wodonga, I sentenced you to 21 months imprisonment and an 18 month CCO for offences of robbery and recklessly cause serious injury, which involved an attack on another young boy, and theft of a motor vehicle.
29. Then, I noted:

(a) you had a history of children’s Court appearances for violence and property offences between August 2016 and June 2019;

(b) as well, on 23 February 2021 a Magistrate, at Wangaratta, sentenced you to 9 months imprisonment with an 18 month community correction order for violence and driving offences.

30. You were subject to the Magistrate’s community correction order when you committed the robbery and serious assault which brought you before me.
31. When you robbed JV, armed with a hammer, you were subject to the community correction order, which I imposed on 10 February 2023.
32. You had been released from jail only a few weeks earlier. ^[4]

Personal circumstances

33. You were born in February 2001 at Yarrawonga.
34. You are a young Yorta Yorta man.
35. Your parents both had substance abuse problems. Your mother drank heavily during your pregnancy.
36. She separated from your father when you were an infant.
37. Your upbringing was severely disrupted.^[5] You moved regularly between the households of your mother, father and grandparents.
38. You were exposed to parental substance abuse, family violence, inappropriate discipline lack of appropriate care.
39. Child protective services first intervened when you were five years old.
40. You experienced multiple childhood trauma including a serious physical assault by your father, witnessing your uncle’s death and, when your mother re-partnered, witnessing family violence against her.
41. You had strained relationships with family members apart from your uncle. His death had a marked impact on you.
42. You attended a special school program for children who were socially disadvantaged, and had mental illness and/or intellectual disability. To varying degrees, you met all criteria. You struggled to learn and your reading and writing skills are very limited.
43. In August 2016, you were placed on your first probation order. You had further, near continuous, involvement with Youth Justice, through another probation order, a youth supervision order and periods of youth detention.
44. A neuropsychologist Dr Karen Scally, assessed you at Parkville Youth Justice Centre on 17 April 2018. ^[6] She diagnosed you with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD).
45. Your full-scale intelligence quotient score of 74 put you in the borderline to low average range of intellectual functioning.
46. In her opinion, you met the criteria for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, oppositional defiant disorder and conduct disorder.
47. A psychologist, Susan Colmer, assessed you in March 2018. She agreed with Dr Scally’s assessment.
48. In 2019, another neuropsychologist, Peter Dowling, assessed you while you were detained at Malmsbury Youth Justice Centre. ^[7]
49. He noted when you were in primary school you were diagnosed with ADHD.
50. He supported Dr Scally’s diagnosis of FASD.
51. He believed, because of your FASD and/or ADHD, you do not appreciate the consequences of your offending. He believed you could change your behaviour. In his opinion it would require you to learn how to manage your disorders.
52. Another neuropsychologist, Dr Jane Lofthouse, assessed you on 27 October 2021. ^[8] You presented to her with language, memory and thinking difficulties. Your intelligence testing scores fell in the average and low average range.
53. In her opinion, you were also suffering severe anxiety and depression which required intensive treatment.
54. Another psychologist, Dr Gina Cidoni assessed you more recently. ^[9]
55. In prison, your mood is depressed and you have had episodes of self-harm. You are being treated with an antipsychotic, an antidepressant and methadone. You have completed some modules of the Atlas remand program. ^[10] You have also worked in the prison laundry and the garden. However, in May 2024, you were placed in a management unit following a violent dispute with another prisoner who punched you to the back of the head.
56. As Dr Cidoni noted, you have a long history of substance abuse. By your teens, you were using alcohol and cannabis regularly. You used methylamphetamine irregularly between the ages of 14 and 20 when your use escalated. You said you stopped taking drugs for some months after your daughter was born in July 2020.
57. You had relapsed by July 2021 when you robbed and seriously assaulted a young boy at Wodonga.
58. And you relapsed again when you robbed JV on 1 September 2023.
59. I am satisfied, your disadvantaged childhood denied you the opportunity of normal cognitive and emotional development. As well, I accept your FASD and ADHD compromise your brain’s ability to process information, regulate emotions and control impulses. I also accept your abuse of methamphetamine heightened your impulsivity and affected your ability to make proper decisions.
60. Without mental health and substance abuse treatment, your risk of reoffending is high.
61. I believe with proper interventions you can change your behaviour. However, change must come from within you. I will impose a sentence which is structured to help you make the change. ^[11]
62. Your offending was serious. It breached your community correction order.
63. Only a sentence of imprisonment is appropriate.
64. However, there are a number of factors which moderate the sentence, and influence the type of sentence, I will impose.
65. Firstly, it is to your credit, at your supervision appointment, you told your community corrections case manager about your offending.^[12] And when police interviewed you, you admitted you had robbed JV with a hammer. You are entitled to a sentencing benefit for your disclosure to your case manager and your cooperation with police. They demonstrate you are sorry for what you did.
66. Secondly, your guilty plea, which you made at an early stage, has high utilitarian value because JV and his friends have been spared the ordeal giving evidence in court proceedings. Your plea also shows you accept responsibility for your actions and are willing to facilitate the course of justice.
67. Thirdly, because of your disadvantaged background and neuropsychological disorders, which impact your ability to think clearly and rationally when confronted with a choice between with good and bad options,^[13] you are less blameworthy than someone without your background and disorders. ^[14]
68. Fourthly, I accept prison is harder for you than a person without your diagnosed conditions and the prison environment is making them worse. ^[15]
69. Fifthly, because you are still a young man, your reformation is a primary sentencing consideration. In my view, continued lengthy incarceration in an adult prison will more likely hinder, rather than progress, your rehabilitation.
70. Overall, I have decided a composite sentence of imprisonment and a community correction order, with its combined punitive and therapeutic components, can achieve sentencing objectives in your case.
71. I have had you assessed for another community correction order and you have been found suitable.
72. Promisingly, you told the assessing officer you have a pending NDIS application for housing, you want to get work for the first time in your life and you are willing to comply with an order.
73. Mr Myers, by the sentence I impose I must denounce your conduct, punish you, and deter you, and others, from committing crimes of the same or similar kind. I must also look to your rehabilitation.
74. Considering the circumstances of your offending, your personal circumstances and antecedents, and endeavouring to produce a sentence which reflects and promotes the purposes of sentencing in a manner appropriate to you, on the charge of armed robbery, you are sentenced to 15 months imprisonment and an 18 month community correction order.
75. I attach the following special conditions to the order:

(a) drug treatment and rehabilitation;

(b) mental health treatment and rehabilitation;

(c) programs to reduce reoffending;

(d) supervision; and

(e) judicial monitoring.

76. I fix your first judicial monitoring session for hearing on 29 January 2025 at 9:30 AM.
77. I declare you have served 435 days of your sentence by way of pre-sentence detention.
78. While there is some artificiality to the process, I declare, but for your plea of guilty I would have sentenced you to two years and nine months imprisonment and imposed a minimum non-parole period of one year and nine months.
79. You were remanded in custody, following your arrest for the index offending, within weeks after your release from prison on a community correction order. I cancel the order.
80. Before your arrest, you had reported for supervision and drug testing, which was negative, and consulted a doctor to obtain a mental health care plan.^[16]
81. Taking into account you served the punitive component, 21 months imprisonment of the composite sentence I imposed, together with totality considerations, I will take no further action in respect of the breach.

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^[1] The circumstances of your offending are set out in the Summary of Prosecution Opening dated 16 July 2024. (Exhibit A). They are agreed facts.

^[2] JV declined to make a victim impact statement.

^[3] Williscroft [1975] VicRp 27; (1975) VR 292, DPP v Perry [2016] VSCA 152; (2016) 50 VR 686, [155], DPP v Stevens [2013] VSCA 197, [31].

^[4] On 9 August 2023.

^[5] I will refer to and repeat your personal circumstances as I set them out in my reasons for sentence, dated 10 February 2023.

^[6] Neuropsychological report of Dr Karen Scully dated 17 January 2018 (Exhibit 5).

^[7] Neuropsychological report of Dr Peter Dowling dated 3 April 2019 (Exhibit 3).

^[8] Neuropsychological report of Ms Jane Lofthouse dated 29 October 2021 (Exhibit 4).

^[9] Psychological report of Gina Cidoni dated 17 October 2024 (Exhibit 2).

^[10] Remand program certificates (Exhibit 8).

^[11] I have carefully considered the written and oral submissions of prosecution and defence to determine the sentence I will impose. I will not repeat them here: see prosecution sentencing submissions [Exhibit B] and defence sentencing submissions [Exhibit 2].

^[12] According to the prosecution, the information you gave your case manager is sufficient information to identify you as the offender: prosecution sentencing submissions (exhibit B), [22].

^[13] Psychological report of Gina Cidoni dated 17 October 2024, [116] and [120].

^[14] Your moral culpability is reduced; the need for general and specific deterrence has also reduced.

^[15] Cidoni, [124].

^[16] Contravention of community corrections order report dated 14 June 2024.