Groundless court appeal dismissed

Sunday 20 January 2019

A 20-year-old has had an appeal to have his youth detention time reduced thrown out of the Royal Court.

Grant Harvey was sent down for a total of 10 months in October last year, after he destroyed four saplings and damaged the bowls green at Delancey Park just weeks after being given a five month suspended sentence.

The Magistrate at the time said he had gambled on giving Harvey that suspended sentence after he pleaded guilty to stealing an unlocked car, drunkenly driving it without insurance and crashing it into scaffolding. But that that gamble had failed when Harvey once again re-appeared in court weeks later. He had handed himself over for committing the criminal damages at Delancey Park. 

Harvey's appeal was based on the grounds he had been given five months for the driving offences, and five months for the criminal damage offences, which did, in his and his advocate, Sam Steel's opinion, not add up as they viewed the driving offences as worse. It was also argued the Magistrate had not given Harvey credit for his very early guilty plea and also for turning himself in after he did the damage at Delancey. 

But the Prosecution told the Court they did not see any value in comparing the sentences for the two different sets of charges. The only valid comparison, it said, was the fact that the first offences were an aggravating factor for the second set. Additionally, a portion of the transcript from the original sentencing hearing was read to the Court, where the Magistrate referenced acknowledging Harvey's guilty plea, along with his mitigating factors and more. While it was said the Magistrate could have been more explicit in the discount that was awarded for that guilty plea, the prosecution said it was still reasonable to assume some had been given. 

After further reviewing the transcript and the sentence itself, Deputy Bailiff Richard McMahon told Advocate Steel and Harvey the Court was satisfied that the grounds of the argument for the appeal were not valid, the sentence was not "manifestly excessive" and that the guilty plea was given credit. 

"None of the grounds advised show this was manifestly excessive, and this appeal is dismissed," he said.

Pictured top: Inset, Grant Harvey's crash and the saplings he later destroyed.