ONLY ONE PUNCH

Governments, both Federal and State have been bombarding you recently with expensive campaigns about alcohol. Teenage binge drinking. The physical and legal consequences when too much is consumed and tempers flare and people get reckless. And people get hurt. And lives get ruined. And people die.One of the graphic new TV ads shows a bar scene.  A guy drinking too. Gets aggressive. Throws a punch and his victim crashes to the ground. Words flash on screen like ‘drink, excess, drink, excess, aggressive, charge, conviction.’

The community service ads are aimed at young people. They should be aimed at our judges and magistrates. Especially when it comes to the ‘charge-conviction’ bit.

How else do you explain two extraordinary cases this week? Where innocent victims have been bashed by thugs and then bashed again by the courts.

Former Australian basketballer Russell Riches, 62, suffered a fractured skull and bleeding on the brain after being king hit from behind outside the Gold Diggers Arms Hotel in Geelong. Riches was knocked out and his head hit the footpath. He almost died. He’ll never fully recover.

Riches had stepped in to calm down a fight between a woman and her boyfriend when another man appeared from nowhere and king hit him.
Now the court has king hit him again. The coward who nearly killed him has walked free. Even though he already pleaded guilty to assaulting another patron inside the hotel, in a separate incident, earlier that night. And he had prior convictions for assault, theft and burglary.

Luke Anderson, 27, pleaded not guilty in Geelong Magistrates' Court to charges of recklessly causing serious injury and riotous behavior.

He was found guilty. And then Noddyland stepped in. Magistrate Rosemary Carlin said she was satisfied the victim could not have seen the punch coming.  That Anderson's decision to punch Mr Riches was a spur of the moment action and occurred when he was already in an aggressive frame of mind after assaulting a patron inside the hotel. That he had shown no remorse, had pleaded not guilty and the injuries were very serious.

And she made a big deal about it being only a ‘single punch’. So what?  That’s all it takes. That’s the message people aren’t getting. It’s like the Mayor of Hiroshima saying ‘Don’t worry, it’s only one plane’.

Then Magistrate Carlin gave Anderson a total three months suspended sentence— which is no sentence – and 125 hours of community service. She said: ‘The sentence I am about to impose is designed to assist you and send a message to the community.'’

What message? Ignore the anti-booze, anti-violence commercials? She obviously has.

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2009