Jail for man after second community service breach

Jail for man after second community service breach

Earlier this year Emanuel Renato Marques Pestana was sentenced to 150 hours of community service for committing a grave and criminal assault by kicking a drunk man in the ribs outside the Havana Club in the early hours of 16 April.

But the 23-year-old has only completed five hours of the work and at a recent hearing the Magistrate, Bridget Shaw, said there was no realistic prospect of the order being finished.

In early September Pestana’s arrest was ordered for failing to complete any of the order and failing to appear in court to answer the breach charge.

Police officers saw Pestana in Mulcaster Street on the evening of 22 September and questioned him as they believed he was wanted. When the defendant was searched, four bits of cannabis resin, weighing 3.6 gm, were found in his possession.

As a result, he was sentenced to a three-month binding-over order for possessing the drugs and was also ordered to complete an extra 20 hours of community service for the breach.

But he later committed a second breach, with 165 hours outstanding. Advocate Alison Brown, defending, said that her client was a chef who was required to work six and a half days a week. She said that on the morning of the latest breach Pestana was due to undertake community service but he had already worked 65 hours that week and fell back to sleep.

She said that he voluntarily turned up for community service work the following week. ‘This young man is very, very sorry,’ she said.

Mrs Shaw told the defendant: ‘You were sentenced to community service as a direct alternative to custody. You were brought back to court in October for a breach and given another chance and reinstated on the scheme with another 20 hours.’

The binding-over order imposed on Pestana for the drugs possession charge was dismissed.

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