The court system already tried to help Alexander Miller when he was caught selling drugs in 2015 as part of a major ice syndicate in Wangaratta.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
In 2016, he was sentenced to 13 months in jail and was placed on a community corrections order in order to help him rehabilitate.
Now the County Court judge who handed down his 2016 sentence has increased that time to a minimum of 4½ years, as extra punishment for breaching the original corrections order with further offending.
Judge Frank Gucciardo told Melbourne County Court that Miller, 25, had appeared to be meeting the requirements of his corrections order until October 2016 when a urine test came back positive for drug use.
“Cracks were beginning to appear in this thin veneer of rehabilitation,” he said.
“In reality, something else had been brewing underneath this facade.”
The “cracks” became clear when police arrested Miller for his role in selling 1.6 kilograms of methamphetamine between August and November 2016, plus using violence and weapons to collect drug debts.
His decision to never leave home without a firearm was described as “wannabe gangster stuff”.
Judge Gucciardo said Miller’s apparent progress after previous drug rehabilitation at Odyssey House had been an “illusory hope”.
“The community corrections order was put in place in order to seek to supervise, to assist in treating you and in aiding your rehabilitation … You ignored my warning, committed most serious criminal offences during the course of the order, commencing soon after its imposition,” he said.
“Although I must keep active and engaged the possibility of rehabilitation in your case, it appears to me that I should punish the breach with punishment and resentence according to the seriousness of the offending.”
He added an extra six months to the time Miller must serve before he is eligible for parole.
Judge Gucciardo said he took into account the fact Miller was clean from drugs when tested two weeks before his jail sentence was imposed in August 2018 and had completed programs such as the effects of the drug ice.
- Receive our daily newsletter straight to your inbox each morning from The Border Mail. Sign up here
