STATE OF TASMANIA v LEVI JOSEPH DAVID HALL 27 SEPTEMBER 2021
COMMENTS ON PASSING SENTENCE PEARCE J
Levi Hall, you plead guilty to persistent family violence. I also agreed to deal with your plea of guilty to five counts of breaching a police family violence order. You and the complainant met in July 2018 and were in a significant relationship for about 12 months. You lived with her and her children at her unit and she sometimes stayed with you at a different residence. Very soon after the relationship commenced you began to use violence, intimidation, threats and abuse towards her. The specific instances of abuse which I will describe were committed in the context of your generally violent, abusive and controlling behaviour. You would not allow her to use a mobile phone unless you were present, her parents could only contact her through you and you would not permit her out of the house without you. As will be explained, your physical and emotional abuse of the complainant was the continuation of a long standing pattern of such behaviour towards women, disregard of court orders put in place in an attempt to protect them, and despite imposition of sentences of imprisonment.
Six particular examples of violence are relied on by the prosecution. On a day in August or September 2018 you and the complainant had both been using methylamphetamine. You accused her of infidelity. You held her against the wall in the hallway by her throat. She was frightened and struggling to breathe. Her children were there and were screaming. You called her a dog. When she broke free and tried to get out the door, you slammed it saying that she was “not fucking going anywhere.”
Later the same day, you argued. You pushed her onto the dish drainer rack in the kitchen. A plate smashed on the floor. You picked up a piece of the broken plate and, accompanied by vile and degrading abuse, you threatened to stab her with it. As she backed into a corner you sliced the back of her left elbow with the broken plate, causing a laceration. Realising what you had done you claimed remorse, and called your ex-partner who came and bandaged the wound. To avoid questions about how she was injured the complainant did not seek medical treatment. A photograph taken by her father taken about two weeks later shows a serious wound which, despite the lapse of time, was still deep and open.
On another occasion between August and October 2018 you accused the complainant of cheating on you. You were withdrawing from drugs and were angry. You threw her up and down the hallway. She hid in her bed under a blanket but you found her and kicked her, while she used the blanket to suppress the force of the kicks. You followed her into the bathroom and put her in a choke hold. She tried to reach up to free herself, said that “you’re going to kill me” but you continued until she lost consciousness. When she woke you were shaking her and calling her name, again in an apparent realisation of the seriousness of what you had done, but even so you made her sit in the bath, would not let her leave the room and told her that you were going to have to kill her, take her into the bush and put her in a barrel.
In November 2018 the complainant’s parents convinced her to leave Tasmania to get away from you and to resolve her drug addiction. She moved interstate until March 2019 but you kept in daily contact with her even while she was away. On her return your relationship resumed.
Facebook messages between April and May 2019 disclose a disturbing mix of expressions of affection interspersed with jealous and controlling threats and abuse. During the evening of 3 May 2019 a police family violence order was made to protect the complainant. There were conditions that you not stalk her, threaten or abuse her or go to where she was living. Despite the order just having been given to you, you immediately began searching for her. You found her early the next morning in Devonport and accused her of sleeping with another man. You took her to the home of one of your female friends. During the course of that day and night, you kept her there, assaulted her, called her degrading names and interrogated her about what she had done the night before. Your friend, and the other female also present, were too frightened to intervene. The assaults you perpetrated continued over many hours and included hitting her face repeatedly, pushing her head into the floor, hitting her head with a piece of wood, and putting your hand around her throat and squeezing. On the following day you took her to your ex-partner’s home in Devonport where you kept her, not allowing her to leave, for a few days. You continued to abuse her and made her sleep on the floor without blankets or a pillow.
On 9 May 2019 you assaulted the complainant by punching her to the head.
The next morning, 10 May 2019, you were due to appear in court. Seeing an opportunity to escape, the complainant suggested to you that you could go alone. You called her a “fucking dog” and punched her in the back of the head. She went with you because you insisted she do so, but while you were speaking with your lawyer she ran to a store over the road, asked the manager if she could hide while someone called her mother. Arrangements were made for her to be collected.
Even a couple of months later you sent more text messages making claims of affection and professing a desire to resume the relationship.
On 21 August 2019 the police contacted the complainant after you sought to revoke the police family violence order. It was only then that the complainant told them what had happened and you were interviewed. You denied the allegations of abuse and violence. You have been in custody since then but some of that time is attributed to sentences for other offences.
You are now aged 31. At the time this crime was committed you were aged 28 and 29. You have six children although none of the complainant’s children are yours. Your upbringing was unstable. You lived with your mother after your parents separated but you claim to have been subjected to violence at the hands of a step-father. You were removed to foster care and separated from all but one of your four siblings. You were educated to grade 11 but you fell into bad company and began using illicit drugs. When you were 17 or 18 your saw your best friend die after a seizure. You became addicted to methylamphetamine and were a regular user. You have had some limited casual employment.
You began to commit family violence offences in 2010 when you were 20, and you have continued since then to commit offences of escalating seriousness. Not all of your record is for violence or family violence, but it was asserted by the prosecution without dispute that family violence offences have been committed against seven different partners including the complainant. You have numerous prior convictions for common assault which include multiple acts against former partners involving deprivation of liberty, punching, kicking and striking with objects. You have not been deterred by family violence orders which you have breached on almost 70 occasions, bail conditions and increasingly punitive sentencing orders, starting with community service, two drug treatment orders, then suspended and actual prison sentences. The community based orders were almost always breached by re-offending. I will specify only those in the couple of years prior to the offending I am dealing with. On 22 January 2016 you were sentenced to imprisonment for 12 months, half of which was suspended, for offences of dishonesty, firearm and drug offences, but also two counts of common assault, 18 counts of breaching bail and 21 counts of breaching a family violence order. You breached that suspended sentence by committing more assaults resulting in a sentence imposed on 23 November 2016 of a total term of 10 months from 25 July 2016. On 26 October 2017 and again on 8 November 2017 you were sentenced to terms of four and nine months respectively for assaults and numerous breaches of a family violence order. Another 51 days was ordered on 17 May 2018 for more family violence order breaches. Another 18 days was ordered on 24 October 2018 for another family violence order breach. That was not long after your relationship with the complainant had commenced.
There are also subsequent convictions for breaches of non-contact family violence orders committed while you were in custody. On 6 May 2020 you were sentenced to imprisonment for 14 breaches or attempted breaches of a family violence order. That sentence was ordered to commence on 23 September 2019, the day you were taken into custody for the crime I am now dealing with. You have been in custody since then. On 9 June 2021 you were sentenced to a further 14 days for more such breaches. The result is that it is agreed that any sentence I impose is to commence on 5 February 2020.
On your behalf your counsel said everything that could reasonably be said in your favour. You pleaded guilty. You have thereby facilitated justice. The complainant has been spared the additional trauma of having to prepare for trial and give evidence. The plea of guilty came after resolution of dispute about the particulars of the acts of family violence which constituted the crime. However it took the immediate prospect of trial for resolution to occur. The complainant was required to give evidence at preliminary proceedings, although confined to evidence of the nature of your relationship, and she has had the prospect of trial hanging over her head for two years. Your repeated offending, both before, at the time of and since the crime, discounts any claim to the type of genuine remorse a court looks for. You claim to have abstained from illicit substances while in custody, despite their availability. Custody has been more difficult for you because of other co-operation with the authorities and, as a result, you are housed in a protective unit and programs are less available. You have already been in custody for two years, but only just over four months of that is attributable to other sentences.
I do not accept the submission however that this is not a serious example of the crime. It is possible to think of factors which might have made the crime even worse, for example permanent or disabling physical injuries or sexual crimes. However, over many months you exposed the complainant to a terrifying and degrading ordeal, apparently without any insight into the seriousness of your offending. You targeted her with the type of violent, abusive and controlling conduct which the community rightly condemns. You betrayed her trust and affection, took advantage of her vulnerability, blamed her for your own acts, all with the intention of making her fearful and compliant. The first occasion occurred in the presence of her children. The incidents of violence and abuse after 3 May 2018 were committed in breach of a police family violence order made to protect her. That is both an aggravating factor and an offence, and so you are not to be punished twice. But it is yet more evidence of your repeated refusal to comply with the law and your contempt of authority. Courts have repeatedly emphasised the seriousness of such conduct within family relationships. It is cowardly and insidious, committed in the privacy of the home, unseen, and away from help. The complainant’s victim impact statement refers to a scar left by the serious wound you inflicted to her on her arm. At the time her decision to not seek medical treatment was to protect you. She is embarrassed about the scar and it is a permanent reminder of her trauma. On at least three occasions you assaulted her by choking, twice by grabbing her throat and on the other by applying a choke hold despite her attempts to free herself. On that occasion she was frightened for her life and but you continued until she became unconscious. Choking is a particularly serious form of assault. It is very dangerous and can quickly lead to serious injury or death, as well as grave psychological harm. Not only that, it is a strong indication of the exercise of dominance and control. Even without more, each of those incidents would warrant a lengthy term of imprisonment. There seem to be no other serious or long term physical impacts, but the complainant describes the type of profound psychological impact which is to be expected from conduct of this nature. She continues to feel afraid, unsafe and insecure. She has nightmares and feels anxious whenever something reminds her of what you put her through.
There is a need to punish you, condemn your actions, and vindicate the victim. Your long and concerning record for violence, violence against women in particular, is also an important factor in sentencing. You are not to be punished for your prior conduct, but the complainant, and other women in the community, are entitled to such protection as the law is able to provide by imposition of a sentence that will act as both a personal and a general deterrent. I will allow for parole, but only after you have served enough of the sentence to adequately addresses the need for punishment and protection of the public.
You are convicted on the indictment and on counts 6, 7, 9, 14 and 16 on complaint 53749/19. Pursuant to s 13A of the Family Violence Act, I direct that each be recorded on your criminal record as family violence offences. All of the remaining charges are dismissed as either not proceed with or because they are subsumed in the indictment. I have been asked to exercise my power under s 36 of the Family Violence Act to make a family violence order in terms of the family violence order made 8 July 2021 but excluding condition 5 of that order. Unless there is a substantial change you should not have a firearm or firearm licence, and the remainder of the conditions require only, in effect, that you stay away from the complainant and not stalk abuse or assault her. Compliance should not be onerous. In light of your record and the seriousness of your offending I consider this to be an appropriate case to make the order and for an indefinite period and I so order.
I impose one sentence. You are sentenced to imprisonment for 5½ years from 5 February 2020. I order that you not be eligible for parole until you have served 3½ years of that sentence.