Threats, fake doctor's letter land man in prison

AFTER serious threats to a former partner, this man's dodgy bail excuse was his biggest mistake.

A man has been jailed over domestic violence threats and using a fake document. Picture: John Weekes

HE MADE serious threats to a former partner, including that he would hurt her family.

But it was a fake doctor's certificate Travis Hutchinson used when failing to meet his bail requirements that landed him with the most time behind bars.

The 21-year-old Banora Point man appeared via video link before Byron Bay Local Court on Friday for sentencing on his charges of intimidation, using a carriage service to threaten serious harm and using a false document to influence the exercise of public duty.

Magistrate Geoff Dunlevy said the intimidation and threat charges were "genuinely frightening and offensive" to the victim.

According to court documents, the pair were in a relationship for about a year until Hutchinson was incarcerated in May 2018.

Upon his release, he began terrorising the woman.

The two spoke on July 4, but later that night the woman ignored his calls, court documents said.

The following day, he sent a flurry of abuse, increasingly threatening, her way.

According to court documents, the woman was "scared the accused may carry out his threats".

Hutchinson had told her: "I will cave your head in. I am going to dead set tie you up and put you in a boot this time."

Mr Dunlevy told Hutchinson his conduct was "completely unjustified".

He said the charge relating to the use of a false doctor's letter should not be treated as "minor or trivial" as it was an offence against public justice.

Hutchison had used corrective pen to change the dates on an old doctor's letter after claiming he couldn't report on bail, because he was ill.

Mr Dunlevy said Hutchinson's early guilty pleas worked in his favour and that past traumas reduced Hutchinson's moral culpability to some extent.

For the intimidation, he was sentenced to three months' prison, backdated to his time of arrest and expiring on February 13.

Hutchinson will start a separate nine-month term on that date, with a non-parole period of three months for the fake document.

He was also being sentenced for damaging property in a police cell and breaching good behaviour bonds, for which Mr Dunlevy have him an 18-month community corrections order.