STATE OF TASMANIA v JAYKE ASHLEY SUTTON 14 JUNE 2024
COMMENTS ON PASSING SENTENCE BLOW CJ
Jayke Ashley Sutton, you have pleaded guilty to a charge of possessing a prohibited firearm when not the holder of a firearms licence of the appropriate category.
On 30 November last year, police officers conducted a search at your parents’ home where you were living. They found a 22 calibre Stirling bolt action repeating rifle with a homemade silencer attached. You did not have a firearms licence. Even if you did, it is illegal to have a firearm with a silencer unless you have an exemption from the Commissioner of Police, and of course you did not have one.
I accept that you were storing this for someone who wanted it stored who gave you money in return for storing it. Your counsel told me that as a result of drug use and drug addiction, you were involved with the wrong crowd of people. Obviously you were. You met someone who wanted to pay you to store a rifle with a silencer on it.
This is a serious charge. Heaven only knows what the intended use of this weapon was, but I do not think anybody was going to go out and shoot rabbits.
You have a lot of prior convictions but not for anything as serious as this. You have no firearms convictions. You pleaded guilty at the earliest possible stage in the Magistrates Court and that counts in your favour. The charge had to be re-written, which is why you had to plead guilty to a slightly different charge in an indictment today.
I think you have reached a point where you know you have to do something about your drug addiction. You have been remanded in custody on other matters since 17 May. There is no suggestion that you gave this weapon to anybody else or that you used it or that you had ammunition.
I think the most appropriate sentence that I can impose is a quite short sentence of imprisonment, backdated to 17 May. If I sentence you to four weeks’ imprisonment, that will take you through up to and including yesterday. I convict you and sentence you to four weeks’ imprisonment with effect from 17 May 2024.
I order that the firearm and sound suppressor be forfeited to the State of Tasmania.