Her 10 previous drink-drive convictions spanned 30 years, six of them involving readings in excess of 1000mcg – more than two and a half times the 400mcg limit (for drink-driving resulting in criminal conviction).
On March 12 Newman was spoken to by police after exiting her vehicle and going into a fast food restaurant. She was found to have been driving with a breath-alcohol level of 1134mcg.
She was also driving while disqualified.
Both charges were laid in the aggravated (third or subsequent) form.
On July 12, she again drove while intoxicated and disqualified, in order to go to commit an assault on a woman. Arriving at the property, she banged on the door and demanded the woman come out, then grabbed her by the hair, threw her to the ground and punched the woman in the chest.
Newman’s son intervened.
Returning home, Newman was confronted by police who found the bonnet of her vehicle still warm and Newman sitting on the front porch. She refused testing for alcohol — undoubtedly because she knew her reading would be a high one, the judge said.
The sentence starting point of 20 months imprisonment for the first drink-drive accounted for the proximity of her previous similar conviction in August 2016 and that it was further aggravated by the disqualified driving.
While he viewed the level of the offending during the second incident as even higher, he had to recognise the principal of totality, so would limit the uplift to 12 months, the judge said.
Credit for Newman’s guilty pleas reduced the sentence to the final 24 months as imposed.
She was disqualified from driving indefinitely.
The sentence also covered a breach of bail by Newman on May 22, for which she was convicted and discharged.
Judge Roberts warned Newman any further drink-driving by her would be unlikely to result in a sentence other than imprisonment.
While the sentencing principles of denunciation and deterrence were important in her case, the need to protect the public was more so, the judge said.
He noted her previous drink-drive convictions: January 1987 (refused an alcohol test); February 1993 (1113mcg); February 1996 (911mcg); May 1997 (refused testing); October 2008, two charges (1111mcg and 1272mcg), for which she was jailed; November 2008 (984mcg); June 2010 (1183mcg); April 2015 (1082mcg), and August 2016 (1297mcg).
Her previous driving while disqualified offences were in 2000, 2008, 2010, 2015, and 2016. Three of those occurred in conjunction with drink-drives.
Newman also had numerous convictions for breaching sentences.
Pre-sentence report information said Newman was initially ambivalent about her offending and had not considered the consequences of it. She had engaged with health services to explore reasons for her chronic abuse of alcohol and traced it back to a childhood incident.
Her counsellor recently noted some positive change.
She was unemployed but had previously worked and was regarded as a good employee.
She had been previously given all manner of court sentences.
Her home address was not suitable for home detention – her partner also had a dependency on alcohol and there had been violence between them. Police had been called to 21 family harm incidents involving Newman, the last while she was confined on a sentence of detention.
She disputed having driven while intoxicated to assault the woman, saying her son drove her. She also denied the assault was intentional.
