CRIMINAL CASE NO. 240 OF 2012
The facts of Charges 1 and 3 are virtually identical. On each occasion, that is on 13 and 26 November 2011 respectively, the defendant entered a 7-Eleven Store, threatened the staff member with a knife and after the cash register of the store was opened, the defendant took $3,000 on the occasion of the first charged offence and $3,600 on the occasion of the third charged offence before leaving.
On the occasion of the theft the subject of the second charged offence, which occurred on 20 November 2011, the defendant was seen by a police officer, rifling the contents of a wallet in a public toilet, taking cash from it and putting the cash in his pocket. The defendant was then apprehended and the wallet was found to have belonged to another individual asleep in the toilet. That person later stated there had been $1,140 in the wallet.
The defendant was arrested and later placed on police bail for that offence. The police subsequently located and rearrested him in respect of the 7-Eleven robbery offences.
So far as those robbery offences the subject of Charges 1 and 3 are concerned, both fall within the first category of armed robbery described in Mo Kwong Sang and, for sentencing purposes, are indistinguishable.
I take a starting point of sentence in respect of each offence of 5 years’ imprisonment, bearing in mind the production by the defendant of a knife on each occasion.
I have been told the defendant committed these offences as a result of debt he had fallen into because of his drug habit, but that cannot be mitigation. The only mitigation available to the defendant is his plea of guilty to each offence. He gets full credit for that and the sentence for each robbery offence is reduced to one of 3 years 4 months’ imprisonment.
So far as the theft of the wallet and its contents are concerned, I bear in mind the quantity of cash stolen by the defendant and for the second charged offence take a starting point of sentence of 6 months’ imprisonment. That is reduced to a sentence of 4 months’ imprisonment, reflecting the defendant’s plea of guilty.
Considering the appropriate totality of sentence, I order that 2 years only of the sentence imposed in respect of the third charged offence be served consecutively to the sentence imposed in respect of the first charged offence and that the sentence imposed in respect of the theft the subject of the 2nd charge be served concurrently with the other sentences.
That is a total sentence of 5 years 4 months’ imprisonment.