Vicious thug James Joseph Elphick will spend an extra nine months behind bars after an appeal court agreed his two-year jail sentence for repeatedly kicking a Wollongong bus driver was too lenient.Handing down the judgment in the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal, Justices James Allsop, Michael Grove and John Hislop said it was difficult to convey the appalling conduct they saw on graphic CCTV film using words.
VIDEO: The shocking attack (footage is extremely violent and suitable for mature audiences only)They said that sentencing Judge Paul Conlon's belief that he was constrained to hand down a maximum two-year jail sentence was incorrect.The appeal justices said that in light of that error, the grounds of the Crown appeal should be sustained."The respondent is able to call upon only little by way of subjective matters to attract leniency," the written judgment said. "He was on parole at the time of the current offences and had already served a term of imprisonment for an offence of violence."On February 11 last year, Elphick began kicking bus driver Ian Chalmers because he refused to drop him home after Elphick had fallen asleep.Elphick repeatedly kicked Mr Chalmers in the head, arms and body over a distance of about 1km and at times forcing the bus to veer onto the wrong side of the road.Bleeding and dazed, Mr Chalmers managed to pull over outside a 7-Eleven store on the corner of Shellharbour and Wattle roads at Shellharbour.The shocking assault was captured on CCTV and the video was publicly released by Judge Conlon after sentencing Elphick to a minimum 18 months' jail.On April 19, the Crown launched an appeal claiming the sentence imposed on Elphick was manifestly inadequate.Elphick was charged with affray, which carried a maximum sentence of 10 years.However, because the related charge of assault occasioning actual bodily harm had been accepted in a lower court, Judge Conlon had believed he was restricted to a much lesser sentence.Elphick will now be eligible for parole on November 10, 2011.
