UPDATE: Christopher Binse has spent 28 of the past 32 years in some form of custody, and now faces a minimum 14 more years in jail over a notorious 44-hour siege with police, and a string of other offences.
Binse, 45, was on Friday hit with a head sentence of 18 years and two months for offending in the first half of 2012, during which he gathered an arsenal of weapons, robbed Armaguard officers of $235,000 and fired at police while barricaded in his Keilor East home.
But Supreme Court Justice Terry Forrest said Binse – a career criminal known as ‘‘Badness’’ – was entitled to some sentencing discount given the onerous impact his confinement in isolation would have on his mental health.
Justice Forrest said Binse would serve most if not all of his term in isolation, with only a couple of hours for exercise outside his cell each day, because of his long history of offending, his previous escapes and attempted escapes from custody, and the danger he posed to other prisoners and himself through self-harm.
‘‘Although I consider you are largely the architect or your current prisoner status … there is no rule which necessarily denies a prisoner a sentencing benefit arising from being placed in a restricted custodial environment. Each case will turn on its own facts,’’ Justice Forrest said.
‘‘In my view your likely future accommodation will be so restrictive and of such a length that it would be inhumane to deny you some sentencing benefit arising from these factors.’’
FOLLOW THE DRAMA AS IT HAPPENED
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Justice Forrest accepted Binse’s mental health was of significant risk of worsening in prison, and that he was ‘‘thoroughly institutionalised’’, which had affected his ability to handle ‘‘unrestricted prison life or, for that matter, the outside world’’.
The court heard Binse had been taught to steal as a child by his father, was a ward of the state at 13 and was sent to Pentridge at 17 while awaiting sentence for a matter heard before the children’s court.
By the time he was 24, the court heard, he had recorded 96 convictions, and a sentencing judge gave him little prospect of rehabilitation. That was 21 years ago.
During a rare stint out of custody, in 2012, Binse became convinced he and his family were the targets of a man and so began surveillance.
On January 9, 2012, police found a semi-automatic pistol and silencer in Binse’s Land Rover, parked near the man’s home.
A previous court hearing was told he suspected the same man shot then Bandidos enforcer Toby Mitchell, a friend of Binse’s, outside a Brunswick gym in November 2011. The man Binse suspected cannot be named.
On March 19, 2012, Binse waited in hiding outside the Westside Tavern in Laverton and pointed a shotgun at two Armaguard officers and demanded their bag of cash. He had climbed a ladder behind a wooden fence to catch the guards by surprise.
Two months later, when police were investigating the thefts of stolen motorcycles, Binse pointed a gun at a police officer in the La Porchetta pizzeria in Niddrie and fled to his home.
The following day, on May 21, 2012, he barricaded himself in. He kept police at bay for 44 hours, during which he fired shots at an armed police vehicle and out the rear of his Sterling Drive property, one of which pierced a sound barrier fence on Keilor Park Drive.
Binse eventually came out of the house early on the morning of May 23, 2012, after police fired tear gas canisters into the house. He was shot with beanbag pellets, and arrested.
Binse pleaded guilty to armed robbery, theft, reckless conduct endangering serious injury, being a prohibited person using a firearm, and being a prohibited person possessing firearms. During the siege police searched and found several weapons including a sub-machinegun in shipping containers that he rented from a Braybrook storage facility.
Binse was earlier this year found not guilty at a trial of a charge of making a threat to kill, related to the incident at the La Porchetta restaurant.
Justice Forrest found Binse had poor prospects for rehabilitation but said it was important to to deter him and others from committing ‘‘outrageously unlawful conduct’’.
He took the guilty pleas into account but was not convinced of remorse, as letters of apology written to the Armaguard officers were self-serving.
The armed robbery would have been terrifying for the guards and a woman who witnessed the incident, the court heard, and police officers who were shot at during the siege had provided statements of the emotional impact they had experienced.
The bald and solidly-built Binse, dressed in a green long-sleeved T-short and cargo pants, bowed his head when the sentence was imposed. He has already served 715 days in custody, having been held since he was arrested after the siege.
