He might be a burglar, but he’s a clean burglar

IT WAS for an unusual reason that Jason Paul Graham was trespassing after entering the Merino Motor Inn at St George on February 2.

He hadn’t taken anything from the motor inn but he helped himself to a shower while he was there, Toowoomba Magistrates Court heard.

“Cleanliness is a good thing but not the way he went about it,” police prosecutor Rowan Brewster-Webb submitted.

That trespassing offence was the first of a dozen matters to which the father of six pleaded guilty via video link from Arthur Gorrie Correctional Centre.

The other offences included receiving a stolen Mastercard which he used four times to obtain goods on April 4, using another stolen bank card on April 9, and entering the Case Machinery Centre in St George and stealing a water pump on August 13.

Mr Brewster-Webb said the 34-year-old had 12 pages of criminal history and he had been sentenced to a ninemonth wholly suspended jail term in January this year for similar offending.

Graham’s solicitor Michael Corbin told the court his client usually lived in St George but was estranged from his family at the moment.

Unfortunately, his client’s partner had also recently gone into custody, he said.

Mr Corbin had a mental health assessment report of his client placed before the court which Magistrate Kay Ryan said she had read and would take into account.

Mr Corbin asked that his client be paroled after four months.

Ms Ryan noted Graham had endured a “disadvantaged upbringing” and that most of his offending had stemmed from the use of illicit drugs.

Noting he had been on a suspended sentence at the time of the offending, Ms Ryan activated the whole nine months of the suspended sentence and sentenced Graham to a further seven months in jail.

However, declaring the 107 days he had spent in pre-sentence custody as time already served under the sentence, Ms Ryan ordered Graham be released on parole as of December 16.

Ms Ryan also ordered Graham pay total restitution of $1043 for the people out of pocket due to his offending which she referred to SPER (State Penalties Enforcement Registry).