The State’s highest court has shown mercy to a machete armed robber who threatened staff at an OTR petrol station on Halloween night dressed up as Zorro.
Jordan Owen Lane was 21 when he carried out the violent theft that was part of a two-year drug-fuelled crime spree across Adelaide.
Now aged 24, Owen was sentenced to a total of 20 years in jail for armed robbery, assaults, thefts and serious criminal trespass. He was given a 12-year non-parole period which would leave Lane eligible for parole in mid-2029.
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court of Criminal Appeal unanimously allowed an appeal against the severity of the sentence.
The court slashed his non-parole period by three years and reduced the total sentence to 16 years.
Justice Chris Bleby in his lead judgment said that “mercy in the face of what is likely to amount to a crushing sentence” needed to be exercised.
“This offending occurred as part of a series of like offences carried out over a two-year period,” Justice Bleby said.
He said the total period of imprisonment was characterised by appallingly vicious and brutal episodes of offending.
In the early evening of October 31, 2016, Lane entered an On The Run service station in Largs Bay dressed as Zorro and armed with a machete.
It was still daylight and people in Halloween costumes were roaming the streets.
With his getaway driver waiting in the car outside, Lane went to the counter and demanded money and cigarettes from a staff member.
“Give me all your money or I will slit your throat,” he said.
He did not produce the machete until he was leaving the store when he threatened a customer. Lane escaped with $400 in cash and over $7000 in cigarettes.
Lane was arrested in July 2017, bringing to an end a two-year spree of offences motivated by his drug dependency.
He has remained in custody since then, having been sentenced for three separate collections of offences stemming from the crime spree.
In February, Judge Paul Rice sentenced Lane to eight years in prison for the Halloween robbery to be served at the completion of a 12 year sentence he was already serving.
His total sentence was 20 years, five months and nine days, with a non-parole period of 12 years.
The Supreme Court ordered that the sentences should run partially concurrently, reducing the head sentence with a non-parole period of nine years, backdated to July 2017.
Extracted from Adelaide Now