Life driving ban an ‘unjustifiable and excessive’ use of power by State against Halls Creek Indigenous man

A Halls Creek man who lost his licence over a drink-driving conviction 14 years ago has had the sentence overturned by a Supreme Court judge who labelled it as “unjustifiable and excessive”. Budding filmmaker Anthony Johnson, 64, received a life disqualification from driving and a $2000 fine after he refused to comply with a roadside breath test on the evening of March 15, 2008. At the time, Mr Johnson had two previous drink-driving offences on his record which had involved a blood alcohol content in excess of 0.1. The first of these offences had occurred more than 20 years prior and was therefore outside of the relevant time frame under the Road Traffic Act 1974. However, during the sentencing over the 2008 charge, the Halls Creek Magistrate wrongly considered that offence as his third and stripped him of his licence for life. Unaware of the error, Mr Johnson was forced to walk 5km each day to Halls Creek for more than a decade. Despite these difficulties he earned diplomas in screen and media at New York Film School on the Gold Coast in 2013. In 2018, 10 years after the conviction, Mr Johnson had numerous appointments with Legal Aid in Kununurra to have his disqualification lifted as he had misunderstood a “life” sentence to last only a decade. While Legal Aid explained this was not the case, they uncovered the error made during the sentencing. An appeal made in June of 2021 was rejected on the grounds that Mr Johnson had no justifiable reason for the delay in his appeal, which was required within 28 days of the conviction. Finally, early this year, a second appeal was made before Justice Marcus Solomon of the Supreme Court of WA and the sentence was changed. Justice Solomon was clear in the fact a significant miscarriage of justice had been made by the State. “It is about the unjustifiable and excessive use of executive power by the State against an Indigenous man living in one of the most remote regions in Australia, for whom the inability to drive a car, for the rest of his life, is a source of real hardship,” he said. With no available record of the hearing, he was uncertain as to whether the Halls Creek Magistrate made a mistake or simply believed it to be the appropriate sentence. He was certain, however, that Mr Johnson deserved the right to appeal the sentence despite being more than a decade late. Not only was the penalty “manifestly unjust” but there had been several miscommunications between Mr Johnson and the Magistrate’s Court in regard to his sentencing. This is not the first time an error of this nature has occurred in a WA court. In 1978, a Fremantle man was mistakenly disqualified from holding or obtaining a driver’s licence after a drink-driving offence was considered as his third. Appealing the sentence, it was found that the man had actually been convicted of drink-driving only once and there was no second offence at all.