Delay in charging 2020 prison rioter 'beggars belief', judge says

A judge has blasted the length of time it took to charge one of the detainees involved in a costly riot at Canberra’s jail almost four years ago.

On 10 November 2020, rioters started five fires at the Alexander Maconochie Centre (AMC) and caused damage that cost up to an estimated $1.6 million to repair – although this figure may be unreliable.

However there was a delay in police charging one of the rioters, the now-31-year-old Norman Robert Collier, as he was not issued his charges until May 2023.

When the matter came before Justice Louise Taylor for a sentencing hearing in the ACT Supreme Court, she said nothing could explain this delay because Collier and his other co-offenders were almost instantly identified.

“I mean it’s an outrageous delay, isn’t it?” she said.

“It’s entirely unsatisfactory, isn’t it, in terms of the administration of justice?

“It makes for a very difficult sentencing exercise in circumstances where this matter could have been dealt with long ago.”

Collier was last before the Supreme Court in February 2022, when he was handed a jail sentence for assaulting and ‘jugging’ a fellow inmate at Canberra’s jail in October 2020.

Justice Taylor said the judge who sentenced him then could have been told there were offences relating to the riot, but “simply no effort was made to bring charges in relation to the riotous behaviour”.

“In circumstances when the offenders were almost instantly identified, it beggars belief,” she said.

Collier pleaded guilty to a charge of arson over the riot, entering his plea the day before he had been scheduled to face trial.

Court documents say on 10 November 2020, tensions were high among AMC detainees due to COVID-19 restrictions, as well as cigarettes and desserts not being handed out.

Some detainees decided to resist that evening’s lock-in to protest their conditions, but this turned into a riot that carried on until the early hours of the following day.

Over the night, the jail’s property was damaged and detainees started five fires. Collier was involved in two of these fires and helped smash a locked fire hose reel cabinet.

He faced the Supreme Court over an audio-visual link on Wednesday (16 October) as he was in custody at the South Coast Correctional Centre (SCCC) in Nowra.

He agreed with his barrister, John Purnell, that all of his offending had been related in some way to his drug use, but he had now been abstinent for several years and was receiving medical injections to manage his former drug use.

He also said he took “a fair bit” of drugs with him when he went into the AMC in August 2020 and was under the influence of them during the riot, having taken ‘ice’, heroin and “oxys”.

The court heard he had worked in scaffolding, his close family was in Goulburn and he had been transferred to the SCCC by the AMC and did not have any outstanding matters in NSW.

Justice Taylor reserved her decision and said she hoped to sentence Collier later this month.

He is not the first detainee to come before the court over the riot. Earlier this year, then-34-year-old George George was sentenced to a total of three years’ jail over his role in the incident.