Greyhound trainer Tom Noble avoids jail time

THE attorney-general has failed in a bid to have a disgraced greyhound trainer at the centre of the live baiting scandal serve jail time for animal cruelty.

Greyhound trainer Tom Noble has avoided serving time in prison.

THE attorney-general has failed in a bid to have a disgraced greyhound trainer at the centre of the live baiting scandal serve jail time for animal cruelty in a landmark case.

Queensland man Tom Noble, 69, was handed a three-year, wholly suspended jail sentence last September after he pleaded guilty to 15 charges of serious animal cruelty in the Ipswich District Court.

Noble strapped animals including piglets, possums and rabbits to a lure arm at his Churchable training track in 2014 while training greyhounds.

The attorney-general appealed his suspended sentence to the State’s highest court,

but it was rejected today.

It was the first time the offence had come before the Court of Appeal.

Justice Robert Gotterson said it was “beyond question (Noble’s) conduct was inhumanly cruel and protracted”.

“For other offenders, like offending might well be punished with actual imprisonment in the sound exercise of the sentencing discretion,” he said.

“However, to proceed upon some kind of rule of thumb that such offending must always be punished by actual imprisonment could, in an individual case, contort the sentencing process and result in insufficient regard being given to other factors relevant to the individual.”

The sentencing judge had taken into account Noble’s health issues and his role as career for his seriously ill wife.