Australia, June 2 -- New South Wales Land and Environment Court issued text of the following judgement on May 2:

1. Liam Michael Tubby ("the offender") appears for sentence in respect of four matters under the Commonwealth Criminal Code (CCC) and a further matter under the New South Wales Crimes Act. The offences are referred to in the exhibits by way of their sequence number. The below table sets out the five offences by reference to the sequence number, the section of the legislation, date of alleged offence, a brief statement as to what constitutes the offence and the maximum penalty. There is no standard non-parole period in respect of the New South Wales matter and there are no matters to be dealt with by way of either a Form 1 under NSW legislation or by way of a section 16BA schedule under the Commonwealth Crimes Act (CCA).

Table omitted, can be viewed at: (https://www.caselaw.nsw.gov.au/decision/1968a28eb50653c4ddb4b8d9)

2. I take the maximum sentences into account as a legislative guidepost indicating the legislature's view of the seriousness of the offence so as to assist in arriving at the appropriate sentence.

3. The facts of these matters are set out below. The agreed facts suggest very serious offending extending to the transmission of child abuse material (sequence 4), and accessing and possessing almost 7000 child abuse videos (sequences 9 and 12). Yet the case for the offender in relation to sequence 4 is to rely on evidence of he and his sister on oath suggesting that the material that he forwarded to others had been sent to him in circumstances forming part of blackmail activity requiring him to then forward it to others. As to the accessing and possession of almost 7000 child abuse videos the offender seeks to explain it away as being something that appeared as a link on his screen late at night and which he then stored on the cloud along with his other legal pornography. The contention is that volume of material was barely looked at by the offender, was accessed by him by clicking on a link that had appeared as a link in his snapchat app, and which he stored in his "prawn" folder on his "mega" account, which is cloud based. This leaves sequence 16 as the remaining Commonwealth offence which involved the possession of a small number of videos, namely seven, and the State bestiality charge which the Crown accepts is not the most serious example of such offending.

4. I have set this out at the beginning of these reasons because the accused seeks to persuade the Court that if the facts as contended for by him are accepted then those facts together with his subjective case give a basis for a finding of exceptional circumstances with a consequence of him being released immediately upon a release recognisance order. In short, the argument, which requires considerable examination, is that sequence 4 should be significantly mitigated due to the non-exculpatory duress involved, sequences 9 and 12 should be viewed as matters where the offending has little moral culpability, and with the remaining counts being minor.

The facts and objective seriousness

5. Chronologically the order of the offences is sequence 16, 12, 9, 4 and 11. Sequence 16 is alleged and admitted to have occurred on or about 10 July 2019. It strikes me as odd that sequence 12 is said to have occurred in a date range that commences (23 June 2020) prior to sequence 9 given that sequence 12 is the possession of the material whereas sequence 9 is the accessing of it and one would think logically that in order to possess something you must first access it. Sequence 4 occurs in the period 2 May 2023 to 21 January 2024 and there is then the bestiality charge arising from what was found on the search on 8 February 2024 at the offender's residence. The facts will be set out in that order.

*Rest of the document can be viewed at: (https://www.caselaw.nsw.gov.au/decision/1968a28eb50653c4ddb4b8d9)

Disclaimer: Curated by HT Syndication.