BS was charged with ‘Assault occasioning actual bodily harm domestic violence related (AOABH)’, contrary to s 59 Crimes Act 1900 and Sentenced to 1 year and 16 days in prison, with a non-parole period of 9 months and 12 days. The maximum penalty for this offence is 5 years imprisonment. BS has a significant history of similar charges.

Chris Cole represented BS in relation to a Severity Appeal against his original sentence. Submissions were made to the Presiding Judge by both the Prosecutor and Defence. At the time of Appeal BS had already served just over 3 months in custody.

Ultimately, His Honour allowed the appeal, backdated the sentence further, reduced the indicative sentence and made a finding of ‘special circumstances’. Accordingly, BS was re-sentenced to a term of imprisonment of 12 months, backdated and comprising of a non-parole period of 7 months.

This is an outstanding result for BS who is now due to be released on parole in August.

R v BS

BS was charged with supplying 74 grams of Ice, whilst on bail for a previous serious drug supply offence. Whilst awaiting trial BS was sentenced to a term of imprisonment for numerous other drug supply charges that had occurred prior to this offence.

Matthew Berrell represented BS and made submissions that the term of imprisonment for his latest drug supply charge should run concurrently with the sentence he was already serving. This would avoid BS having to serve an additional lengthy term of imprisonment on top of his current sentence.

These submissions were accepted and the Court backdated BS’s sentence so that it ran concurrently with the sentences he was currently serving. The result of this was that he was able to be released on parole that same day that he was sentenced.

This was a great result for BS as he was able to return to the community immediately, rather than serve an additional number of years incarcerated.

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