Victorian judges lash ‘blunt and oppressive’ mandatory minimum sentences
A teenager who carjacked a “nang” delivery driver at knifepoint has discovered an unlikely ally after being thrown behind bars.
Victorian judges slammed the state’s “blunt and oppressive” mandatory minimum sentences in a decision about a teenage carjacker who wanted less time behind bars.
Beau Buckley had just turned 18 when he placed an order with an accomplice for $300 worth of nitrous oxide canisters, known as “nangs”, to be dropped off in the Melbourne suburb of Hillside in March 2021.
The 25-year-old delivery driver arrived in the early hours of the morning and when he asked Buckley to pay for the canisters, the teen and his friend pulled out knives.
Buckley demanded the driver hand over his keys and phone before the pair fled in the driver’s car.
Buckley was jailed for three years and six months and was ordered to serve the mandatory three-year minimum before becoming eligible for parole.
But he appealed his sentence in the Court of Appeal, where Justice Terry Forrest and Justice Chris Maxwell slammed the mandatory sentencing provisions on Thursday.
“Mandatory minimum sentences are wrong in principle,” the pair wrote in their decision.
They said it required judges to be “instruments of injustice” to inflict more severe punishment than could be justified and to imprison when it was not warranted and when it could be harmful.
“In our view, mandatory sentencing reveals a profound misunderstanding of where the community’s best interests lie, especially in the sentencing of young offenders,” they wrote.
Despite Buckley being “exceptionally immature” and vulnerable in prison, this was not considered an exception under the law because it was not a special reason that was “exceptional and rare”.
This meant Buckley had to go to an adult jail rather than be detained in a youth justice centre or ordered to serve a community corrections order.
Those options were not “soft” options but had a clear pathway to rehabilitation and the original sentencing judge was prevented from considering them, the justices wrote.
“This blunt, oppressive sentencing regime is contrary to the public interest and incompatible with modern sentencing jurisprudence,” Justices Priest and Forrest said.
However, despite slamming the jail term Buckley was handed, the justices dismissed the appeal.
“In refusing this application we have been compelled to do the applicant an injustice and the community a disservice,” they wrote.