STATE OF TASMANIA v MEGAN DAWN LAMBERT 19 JUNE 2024
COMMENTS ON PASSING SENTENCE PEARCE J
Megan Lambert, you plead guilty to attempted aggravated armed robbery. I also agreed to deal with your plea of guilty to four counts of stealing. On 6 January 2024 you went to the Coles supermarket in Kings Meadows. During the course of that day you stole a number of items: at 8.04 am a Wiltshire knife, at 8.15 am, a bottle of Coke, and at 8.00 pm a packet of sandwiches and another bottle of coke. The next morning, 7 January, you went back and at 8.09 am you stole another bottle of Coke. At 10.35 am you presented at the front counter of the supermarket. As a female employee walked towards you, you produced the knife you had stolen the day before, waved it at her from the other side of the counter, swore at her and demanded she give you cigarettes. When she asked that you leave you threw the knife at her which struck her on the arm, causing a 5 centimetre superficial cut just above her elbow. You verbally abused her as you walked away and then left the store.
The police soon found you about 150 metres away. You told them that you were “desperate for a cigarette” and had “held her up with a knife”. At the police station you accepted your responsibility for the armed robbery but made no further comment.
You are aged 31. I was given details of your background and circumstances by your counsel, from a comprehensive report from a forensic psychologist, Dr Hannah Dawson, a report of your suitability for a drug treatment order and a pre-sentence report prepared by community corrections. You have had a very difficult life dominated by drug abuse and mental health problems. You have not lived with your parents since you were about 14. You have little relationship with your father. You reported to Dr Dawson that your mother neglected you and kicked you out of home but other material suggest that you left after falling into bad company and a decline in your own behaviour. You dropped out of school in year 8. Since then there have been long periods of homelessness. You have never been in employment or a stable relationship. You have two children now aged 8 and 9 but sadly, as I will further explain, the children were removed from your care a few years ago. There have been very few good influences on your life.
Your criminal record lists numerous offences starting when you were 15 and continuing ever since. It is mostly for stealing and other offences of dishonesty but also includes nine counts of common assault, three of assaulting police and one of assaulting a public officer. Not all of these offences resulted in convictions either because of your youth or for some other reason. There are also driving offences, some concerning drugs, and other anti-social offences. However you have no prior convictions for any form of robbery.
The trauma and dysfunction to which you were exposed in your early life led to complex mental health issues closely interrelated with drug use. For most of your life you have used illicit drugs, first cannabis and then methylamphetamine. In 2013 you were made subject to a drug treatment order. It must have had some effect because there is a break in your record until a suspended sentence was imposed in March 2019 for drug driving, and then nothing further until you started committing offences again in 2022 when your mental health declined. Very unfortunately, your children were removed from your care. You relapsed into drug use and lost the housing you had been maintaining for eight years and were either homeless, in custody or at Northside. Which factor was the initiating cause of this decline is not entirely clear. What is clear is that you recognise that your life is better if you are not using drugs. In any event, in October 2022 a partly suspended sentence was imposed for offences including stealing, three counts of common assault, one count of assaulting a public officer, multiple driving offences, many involving drug use, breaches of bail and restraint order and abusing the police. You breached the suspended sentence and on 30 June 2023 you were sentenced to imprisonment for a total of six months. On 16 October 2023 a further 28 days was added. You were released on 9 November 2023 and the crimes for which you are now to be sentenced were committed about two months later. You have been in custody since 7 January 2024.
Your background and the interrelationship with your drug use and mental health are important factors in sentencing. You were in custody by the time you spoke to Dr Dawson and by then you had resumed your anti-psychotic medication. She describes your symptoms as being consistent with schizoaffective disorder, complex post-traumatic stress disorder and bipolar affective disorder. You also meet the criteria for substance abuse disorder. You have chronic suicidal ideation. You have many features of borderline personality disorder which Dr Dawson attributes to the effect of trauma. Dr Dawson points out that at the time you committed this crime you were subject to a treatment order. In the period of great instability leading up to then you had taken an overdose of your medication and on other occasions were noted to be “floridly psychotic” in the context of polysubstance abuse. According to Dr Dawson your substance abuse appears to have always served a self-medication function to manage your psychiatric symptoms and distress at the lack of a support network. In Dr Dawson’s opinion, at the time of the crime you were affected by ongoing delusions and a severe depressive episode which, combined with substance abuse, reduced your ability to act rationally and to weigh up the consequences of your acts. I accept that, as a result, your moral culpability is reduced. In addition, Dr Dawson also believes that a prison sentence is likely to weigh more heavily on you. On the other hand your counsel points out that you believe prison is a place where you receive the support and treatment you need, and a prison sentence may therefore not be much of a personal deterrent.
All of those things are reasons for considering a sentence other than imprisonment. However there are other factors at play. You have been assessed as unsuitable for both a drug treatment order and for a community based supervision order. The reasons are complex. There has been poor compliance with many community based orders in the past. The author of the drug treatment order assessment report considers that there is a high risk of re-offending and assesses the primary risk factor as your mental health conditions which require intensive treatment and management. Your mother remains emotionally supportive but points out, consistently with Dr Dawson’s report, that you require almost constant supervision to ensure compliance with administration of your medication, supported accommodation and assistance from an NDIS worker to complete daily tasks, manage finances and attend appointments. The report also expresses the author’s concern about the nature of this crime and previous crimes involving violence. The same issues, combined with your drug abuse, leads the author of the pre-sentence report to recommend against community based supervision. That report suggests that you would benefit from being managed by Forensic Mental Health Services but I have no means of achieving that aim through the sentencing orders available to me. It would be most beneficial to have NDIS funding and programs ready but on the information available to me that will take further time to achieve.
It is also of importance to recognise that attempted armed robberies of this nature are serious crimes and should generally lead to a sentence of imprisonment. Your crime was committed against a person who was working in the type of business which is an easy target. The staff and customers of such businesses are entitled to the protection of the law. Crimes like this can have devastating effect on victims who are frequently traumatised by what they are confronted with and suffer from long term psychological symptoms. In this case there is no victim impact statement. That does not mean that there was no impact. However I do not regard this as a very serious example of an armed robbery. You produced the knife when the supermarket employee was still a considerable distance away from you. She was not to know what you might do but you remained separated by the counter and by distance and there was no realistic chance that you could have struck her with the knife, unless you threw it at her, which you then did. She did not suffer anything other than a superficial scratch, although I do not wish to understate the serious of your conduct.
You have been in custody since 7 January 2024. I have concluded that because of your complex mental health conditions and requirements that a drug treatment order is not an appropriate sentence. Imprisonment is the only appropriate sentence. The lack of stable housing may affect a possible grant of parole. Even so, I have decided that parole, rather than suspending part of the sentence with a condition requiring supervision, is the best course because it will provide for your re-integration into the community and support with housing and treatment while allowing a more immediate response if you do not comply.
You are convicted on each count on complaint 30092/24. I make a compensation order in favour of Coles Kings Meadows in the sum of $37.80. On counts 1, 2, 3 and 5 I make no further order. On count 4 you are sentenced to imprisonment for two years from 7 January 2024. I order that you not be eligible for parole until you have served half of that term.