Matt Cunningham: Outrage as NT hit-run killer, baby attacker avoid jail in shock rulings
There were two sentences delivered in the Territory this week that have baffled most Territorians, including the families of the victims involved, writes Matt Cunningham
If you listened to the east-coast activists, you could easily be forgiven for thinking the Northern Territory is a jurisdiction where judges like to lock people up and throw away the key.
Thankfully, Justice Sonia Brownhill has provided all the evidence we will ever need to counter these arguments.
There were two sentences delivered by Justice Brownhill this week that have baffled most Territorians, including the families of the victims involved.
The first was given to hit-run driver Jake Danby, who last June ran over two Aboriginal pedestrians while speeding past the Hibiscus Shopping Centre in Leanyer.
One of his victims, Mr Whitehurst, later died.
During his sentencing it was revealed Danby had sent a series of vulgar and racist text messages after the incident. They included:
“Two for one combo.”
“They were rolling all over the road like bitches when I looked in my … mirror.”
“It was pretty funny watching them roll around on the road after going over my bonnet and through my windscreen.”
“The world needs c***s like me to take a hit to teach these c***s a lifelong lesson”, and
“Maybe if I’m lucky I’ll be able to claim his Centrelink for taking out the oxygen thief.”
Justice Brownhill said the messages were “shockingly callous” but she didn’t send Danby to jail.
He was given a 12-month community corrections order with five months’ home detention.
The Director of Public Prosecutions is appealing the sentence.
The DPP is also having a look at the sentence Justice Brownhill delivered to an 18-year-old man who broke into an Alice Springs home last December in search of alcohol and used a metal fridge handle to fracture an eight-week-old baby’s skull.
There was national outrage about what happened to baby Antonia Siguenza, who had to be flown to Adelaide for treatment following her horrific ordeal.
On Tuesday Justice Brownhill sentenced the teenager, who was 17 at the time of the offending and can’t be named, to a two-year prison sentence that will include no actual jail time. Instead, the sentence will be served via an intensive community corrections order with the teenager to live at a residential rehabilitation centre and participate in a “project” for 12 hours a week.
There are many things a judge must consider in sentencing.
These include retribution, rehabilitation, deterrence, the need to show the community the conduct is condemned, and the protection of the community.
It’s difficult to see how much weight was given to some of these principles in the cases above.
What message is sent to the community when a man who runs someone over and kills him and then gloats about it to his mates, mocking the victims, escapes jail?
How is the community protected when someone who breaks into a family’s home and fractures a baby’s skull is immediately allowed back onto the streets?
Last week, following the two-year jail sentence given to a 28-year-old man who raped a 13-year-old girl, the NT Government revealed it would conduct a review of the Sentencing Act. It’s long overdue.
There are huge discrepancies in some of the sentences being delivered in the Supreme Court. In 2018, Darwin real estate agent Chris Deutrom was sentenced to five years’ prison with a two-and-a-half year non-parole period for defrauding his employer, Elders, of $237,000.
A year earlier, NT man Jessie Wilson was sentenced to four-and-a-half years in prison with a three-year minimum for bashing his ex-partner to death in a drunken rage at the Nightcliff foreshore.
We shouldn’t make light of Deutrom’s offending, but in his case the victim was a company that lost an amount of money it would barely have noticed.
In Wilson’s case the victim is a woman who is now dead.
Yet the sentences were almost identical.
In Wilson’s case he was sentenced after his murder charge was downgraded and he pleaded guilty to a charge of “engaging in conduct involving a violent act causing death”.
This charge was introduced to deal with one-punch killings outside pubs and nightclubs. Instead, it has been used in Wilson’s case and several since, to deal with people who kill supposed loved ones in domestic and family violence incidents.
When the government begins its review, this might be a good place to start.
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