Cruise v The King; R v Cruise [2025] SASCA 59 (2 June 2025)
This case was one where the Director of Public Prosecutions appealed against a sentence imposed on Cruise in the District Court of South Australia for assaulting a police officer, as well as two security officers. The police officer, in company with another police officer, stopped Cruise and her two male companions in Rundle Street to speak with them following a complaint from two security officers at the Exeter hotel that members of the group, including Cruise, had assaulted them when they were being evicted from the hotel.
Cruise and her two male companions responded aggressively when the two police officers, a male and female, stopped them to question them about the complaints of assault of the two security officers. The police officers decided to make arrests, which Cruise violently resisted by punching the female officer in the face and then pulling her hair to such a violent extent that the officer had a clump of hair removed from her head, leaving a weeping and bloody patch.
Cruise was charged with intentionally causing harm to a prescribed emergency worker, namely the police officer. She was also charged with the aggravated assault of the two security officers, the circumstance of aggravation being that security officers in licensed premises are in positions of vulnerability because of the nature of their employment.
Cruise pleaded guilty to the assaults on the security officers and not guilty to the charge of the assault on the police officer. She was found guilty of that charge after a trial before a judge sitting without a jury. Upon convicting Cruise, the judge imposed a sentence of imprisonment of three years and eight months for the assaults on the police officer and the two security officers. She suspended that sentence upon Cruise entering into a bond to be of good behaviour.
The Director of Public Prosecutions appealed against the sentence imposed on the basis that it was manifestly inadequate. The appeal against sentence was allowed and the sentence imposed by the judge in the District Court was set aside. Upon re-sentencing the Court of Appeal imposed an immediate term of imprisonment of three years and three months for the assault on the police officer. The court imposed a sentence of imprisonment of nine months and two weeks for each of the assaults on the security officers, to be served partially concurrently with the term of imprisonment for the assault on the police officer. The resulting head sentence was three years, nine months and two weeks with a non-parole period of two years.
The Court of Appeal made observations concerning the need to protect prescribed emergency workers, and security officers, from assault.
The suspension of the term of imprisonment imposed by the District Court was described as amounting to an ‘egregiously inadequate’ sentence which was so grossly disproportionate to the seriousness of the offending that it required correction in the public interest.
The Chief Justice, on imposing sentence, said:
The sentence must be served in prison. A suspension of the terms of imprisonment would utterly fail to enforce those laws which Parliament has enacted to protect emergency workers and frontline security officers. Those laws reflect the entrenched values of the South Australian community. Unfortunately, intoxication, personal dysfunction and hostility all too frequently lie behind the risks that first responders face.