A MAN with 80 previous convictions who burgled a family home while a teenage boy was asleep in the property has been jailed for three years and eight months.
In April this year, Dean Christopher Rawlinson (33) was unanimously found guilty by a Royal Court jury of entry with intent to commit larceny.
He entered a property in Les Quennevais shortly after being dismissed from his job at a building site, rummaged through drawers and put his head round the door of a bedroom in which a 16-year-old boy was asleep, which was caught on the flat’s internal security system.
He returned to the court yesterday for his sentencing, when he was also sentenced for three more crimes.
Crown Advocate Matthew Maletroit, prosecuting, said that on 16 April he had stolen two pairs of sunglasses from De Gruchy’s department store, hiding them under a black top.
On 5 September he was found to be driving without a valid driving licence. An honorary police officer stopped him in Trinity Road at 12.30am for driving with no headlights on, and he was found to have only a provisional licence. He also gave a false name and date of birth and tried to run off when the States police arrived.
Advocate Maletroit said: ‘He has a very poor criminal record with 80 convictions, 47 of them for burglary and theft. He has committed the offences in Jersey and the UK.’
He recommended a four-year prison sentence.
Rawlinson admitted larceny and failing to comply with the conditions of a provisional licence and resisting arrest.
But Advocate Nicholas Mière, defending, said Rawlinson still denied that he had illegally entered the flat.
Advocate Mière said that if his client had committed the crime, it had been opportunistic and unplanned, and pointed out: ‘There was no violence or threat of violence and there was no vandalism.’
Advocate Mière cited various similar cases in which sentences of three years or less had been imposed and argued: ‘Four years is simply too high. It would be an excessive sentence.’
The advocate added: ‘Mr Rawlinson has specifically asked me to apologise to the court.
‘He has made some extremely poor decisions. He realises it was stupid and petty conduct and anybody aged 33 should know better.
‘He wants to make something of his life.’
But the court was told that Rawlinson was deemed at very high risk of reconviction.
As well as the jail sentence he was banned from driving for six months.
The Bailiff, Sir Timothy Le Cocq, was presiding with Jurats Steven Austin-Vautier, Karen Le Cornu, David Le Heuzé, Alison Opferman and Michael Entwistle.
