Sentencing for nine retail robbery-related offences committed over several weeks, involving repeated late-night convenience store and gas station robberies with a knife and a mask.
The parties advanced a joint submission for a reformatory sentence, but the court applied the Anthony-Cook public interest test and rejected it as contrary to the public interest given the number of offences, the vulnerability of the clerks, the offender's violent record, and the need for denunciation and deterrence.
The court held that the offender's schizophrenia had little demonstrated causal connection to the offences and did not materially reduce culpability, particularly where the offender admitted he committed the robberies to fund drug use.
A sentence of four years' imprisonment, less enhanced credit for pre-sentence custody, was imposed together with DNA and lifetime weapons prohibition orders.
