R v Mark Andrew HUGHES [2009] NSWDC 404

New South Wales District Court

CITATION: R v Mark Andrew HUGHES [2009] NSWDC 404

JUDGMENT DATE: 3 November 2009

JURISDICTION: District Court of New South Wales

JUDGMENT OF: Cogswell SC DCJ

DECISION: I impose an overall sentence of 8 years and 5 months with a non-parole period of 5 years and 5 months.

CATCHWORDS: CRIMINAL LAW - sentence - aggravated break enter and steal, break enter and steal, destroy property, - Forms 1 taken into account - serious drug addiction - plea of guilty at earliest opportunity - offences committed while on conditional liberty - evidence of genuine remorse

Crimes (Sentencing Procedure) Act 1999 s 32, s 21A, s 54B LEGISLATION CITED: Crimes Act 1900 s 112(1)(a), s 195(1)(a) Criminal Procedure Act 1986 s 166

CASES CITED: Scott [1999] NSWCCA 434

PARTIES: Regina Mark Andrew Hughes

FILE NUMBER(S): 1130/09

SOLICITORS: Mr Kiru (NSW Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions) Mr Sandilands (Legal Aid Commission)

JUDGMENT

1. Mark Andrew Hughes was seriously addicted to drugs. He has been a drug addict for all his life. For most of that time he was able to hold down a job and remain out of trouble with the law. However in 2008 his addiction to the drug known as "ice" turned his life into a very seriously wrong direction.

2. First, he was not able to maintain a job which he had held for some thirteen or fourteen years. Then his daily habit, he found, was costing him over $400.

3. In order to provide himself with the funds to support that daily habit he embarked on a rampage of crime from about the middle of September to November 2008. He broke into businesses, warehouses, workshops and private homes. He ransacked some of those places. He destroyed property in some of those places. He stole thousands of dollars worth of belongings from most of those places. In one instance, the most serious, he bailed up a householder who, unfortunately, came home when he was in the process of ransacking the house.