Judge’s mistake sees NT bushfire starters James Armstrong and Thomas Sticpewich walk free

In sentencing, Justice John Burns said if not for the lower court judge’s misunderstanding of his earlier ruling, he would have sent both men to jail for starting the 16,600ha blaze.

The fire burned for 11 days causing more than $500,000 in environmental damage.

A man who started a bushfire that burnt through 16,600ha of national park causing more than $500,000 in damage only avoided jail because his co-offender already had, court documents have revealed.

James Armstrong pleaded guilty in the Supreme Court to intentionally lighting a fire during a fire danger period in the Djukbinj National Park in Marrakai in August 2022.

The court heard Armstrong and his co-offender Thomas Sticpewich lit a number of fires along the roadside “to try to flush out pigs from the undergrowth so that you could shoot them”.

Justice John Burns said the fire danger rating on the day was “very high” and the danger “must have been clear” that the fires would burn out of control.

Along with the damage to the national park, Justice Burns said the blaze also impacted the neighbouring Marakai Station, which spent almost $10,000 managing the 11-day inferno.

But in sentencing remarks published on Friday, Justice Burns said prosecutors had initially offered to accept a plea to the charge in the Local Court, which Armstrong rejected before changing his mind post-committal.

Justice John Burns said ‘you may consider yourself to be lucky, Mr Armstrong, because if you and your co-offender had been appearing in front of me today, I would have sent both of you to prison’.

Meanwhile, Sticpewich accepted the offer and was handed a six-month, fully suspended sentence in the Local Court, with reference to an earlier sentence handed down by Justice Burns.

However, Justice Burns said “the circumstances of that offence were very different” and if both men had come before him together he “would have sent both of you to prison”.

“My sentencing remarks … should not have been seen as being some form of precedent which was applicable to the circumstances in the present offence,” he said.

“Having said that, I note that there has been no prosecution appeal against inadequacy of sentence imposed on your co-offender in the Local Court.”

Justice Burns said it was “apparently accepted by the prosecution” that a fully-suspended sentence was in range and there was “nothing in the statement of facts which would justify a significant deviation in sentence”.

“If the matter had been before me with both you and your co-offender appearing for sentence on the present charge, I expect that I would have imposed a longer period of imprisonment, at least part of which had to be served by way of full-time imprisonment,” he said.

“But I feel that you would have a justifiable sense of grievance were I to impose a sentence upon you that required you to serve a period of full-time imprisonment when such a sentence was not imposed upon your co-offender and the prosecution has not sought to challenge that sentence.

“For that reason, I will, with some reluctance, adopt the same approach in relation to this offence as was adopted by the Local Court judge.”