The offence to which you have pleaded guilty is a serious one. It was a robbery at a jewellery shop where you posed as a customer. It involved some planning. The occasion of the robbery was your second visit to the shop posing as a customer. You brought a knife to the shop and pointed it at the proprietress of the shop and a sales assistant there, thus being able to make off with a gold necklace, a gold pendant and a gold bracelet.
This is not your first offence. In the past, you were fined for a number of instances of theft and put on probation for a number of instances of attempted theft. But all of that was long ago in 1990. Moreover, you are to be sentenced for your present offence and not for your past offences. All that your past offences mean is that you are unable to put forward a previous good character as an element of mitigation.
It appears that you committed this robbery in order to put yourself in a position to spend some money on yourself so as to feel less unhappy. On the whole, your life appears not to have been a happy one. Indeed, you suffer from depression and you have been receiving psychiatrictreatment as an outpatient.
I will deal with you as leniently as my duty to protect the public permits.
In all the circumstances, I consider a starting point of seven-and-a-half years to be appropriate.
Having taken into account everything urged on your behalf, including your guilty plea, your cooperation with the police, your medical condition and your offer to make restitution, I am prepared to give you a discount of slightly more than a third thereby reducing the starting point to one of four-and-a-half years’ imprisonment.
You are therefore sentenced to four-and-a-half years’ imprisonment.
I will also make an order that you should make restitution in the sum of $16,542 within 2 days from today.