Jersey Unreported Judgments

Inferior Number Sentencing - Grave and criminal assault.

[2014]JRC237A

Royal Court

(Samedi)

28 November 2014

The Attorney General

-v-

Luis Manuel Da Costa Correia

Sentencing by the Inferior Number of the Royal Court, following a guilty plea to the following charge:

Age:  38.

Plea: Guilty.

Details of Offence:

The defendant believed that the victim was supplying his younger brother with a drug called crystals.  One night, whilst out, he saw the victim and then engineered an opportunity to get him on his own, so that he could assault him, having been looking for him for a long time.  He engaged with the victim and his friends on the pretext of wanting to buy some crystals and then drove them to a hose in St Clement.  The victim went in and the defendant spent two and a half hours outside in the car, with the victim's friends, waiting for him to come out.  The returned to town and to the flat of one of the friends.  The victim went up to the flat to get something and the defendant followed him.  The defendant then punched the victim some twenty times to the face and head, causing the victim to fall to the floor and the defendant then stopped.  The defendant was not intoxicated.  Minor injuries - scratches, bruise to the loin and a broken-off back tooth which was decaying prior to the assault. 

Details of Mitigation:

Guilty plea; very cooperative at interview.  Sentencing proceeded on his version of events.  He was the main provider in his family with a dependant wife and child.  No previous convictions.  He had been a father figure to his brother who had lived with him since the age of 12.  Low risk of reoffending. 

Previous Convictions:

Treated as being of good character as there were only two minor traffic offences on his record. 

Conclusions:

No recommendation for deportation sought.

Sentence and Observations of Court:

The Crown had taken the approach of considering whether there were exceptional circumstances so as to warrant a non-custodial sentence.  The Court disagreed slightly with that approach, saying that custody was not necessarily the starting point for grave and criminal assaults in private, when the defendant was not intoxicated.  Having said that, the Court felt that the conclusions of the Crown would have been correct in the event that they had decided on a custodial sentence. 

No recommendation for deportation made.

Mrs R. C. L. Morley-Kirk, Crown Advocate.

Advocate M. P. Boothman for the Defendant.

JUDGMENT

THE DEPUTY BAILIFF:

1.        You are here to be sentenced on one charge of grave and criminal assault on the victim which comprised of some twenty punches, it appears, mostly to the head and the face, until your victim fell to the floor, when you stopped.  The injuries were fortunately minor.  The Crown accepts that the beating took place because the victim had been supplying drugs to your brother and that there was concern that maybe those drugs had been adulterated further in some way and the Court accepts the genuineness of your belief that that was so.  You have heard the description applied of the Harrison-v-AG ([2004] JLR 111) criteria which the Court looks at when deciding what the appropriate sentence should be. 

2.        The Crown say that we should consider if there are exceptional circumstances which enable us to avoid a custodial sentence.  We do not think that is quite the right approach, quite the right test.  Grave and criminal assault is an offence which covers a broad range of facts; it does not of itself call for an assumption of custody, although that is often the sentence which is imposed.  The expression of having to have exceptional circumstances to avoid a custodial sentence is one that is used in relation to grave and criminal assaults fuelled by alcohol on the streets of St Helier at night.  This was an offence committed in private and so we have approached it in a slightly different way than that which is set out by the Crown.  There are some very serious elements to this offence.  It is a serious element that the assault was cold-blooded and was planned.  It is a serious element that you took the law into your own hands and acted as a vigilante and those elements very often will lead to the court imposing a custodial sentence. 

3.        But in this case we accept that the grave and criminal assault falls at the lower end of the spectrum in the sense that it comprised only punches and it did not involve a weapon or kicks and did not involve hitting on the ground, did not involve any serious injury, and, as I have said, we accept that you had a genuine belief that your brother was at risk. 

4.        We have given careful thought as to whether it is necessary to impose a custodial sentence, we think it probably is not, and on that basis we are going to sentence you to 180 hours' Community Service Order.  The alternative to that would have been 12 months' imprisonment and we think the Crown was right in the conclusions that that would have been the appropriate sentence if we had been sending you to prison.  I must warn you that if you do not perform the community service or if you commit any other offences while that Community Service Order remains in place, then you are liable to be brought back to this Court and sentenced again for the offence of which we are sentencing you for now.  And you must be clear that you understand that.  So that is 180 hours' community service. 

Authorities

Harrison-v-AG [2004] JLR 111.

AG-v-Martin [2005] JRC 011.

De Gouveia-v-AG [2009] JLR 169.

AG-v-Thomson [2009] JRC 006.

AG-v-Baltrusaitis and Tecuceanu [2010] JRC 194.