A father who killed his two-year-old son in a Christmas Day ATV crash after he lost control while doing a burnout will be jailed after an appeal by prosecutors.
Christopher Browne avoided jail when sentenced in the Victorian County Court after admitting he was to blame for the death of two-year-old Lincoln.
The youngster was thrown from an ATV buggy and crushed while his father did doughnuts at their family property at Barnawartha North in Victoria's northeast in 2020.
Browne was placed on a three-year community corrections order, along with 250 hours of community work and ongoing treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder.
But prosecutors challenged the sentence, saying the case was no different to another Victorian father jailed for more than three years for causing the death of his nine-year-old daughter in a buggy crash.
Browne was re-sentenced to 15 months behind bars by the Victorian Court of Appeal on Friday. He must serve six months before he is eligible for parole.
Three appeal judges noted Browne had deliberately disregarded several safety precautions including holding his son on his lap and overriding a seatbelt-activated speed limiter.
When initially sentencing Browne, County Court judge Michael Cahill had taken into account that the father was suffering PTSD after the crash.
But Victoria's Chief Crown Prosecutor Brendan Kissane challenged the extent to which that should have enabled such a vastly different sentence to the other father.
"It's trite to say any parent who is involved in the death of their child would be grief-stricken, would be suffering, or would suffer from stress and anxiety, and the distinction, if there is one, is not such to warrant the distinction in sentence," he said.
The judges found the two cases were strikingly similar.
The court was told Browne's admission to dangerous driving causing death and reckless conduct endangering serious injury were double-barrelled.
He had deliberately driven dangerously by doing the burnouts or doughnuts and had also deliberately flouted built-in safety features on the buggy by sitting on top of a clipped-in seatbelt, overriding a safety lock that would have limited the speed to 25km/h.
Lincoln had been sitting on Browne's lap, and Browne's sister was in the passenger seat of the buggy, which should only have had two people on board.
"He deliberately did not heed the warnings, disregarded the safety measures and embarked on an inherently dangerous course of conduct," the judges said.
Browne's barrister, Jason Gullaci, SC, said Browne had admitted to police that he had been trying to scare his sister, that he had been doing doughnuts, and confessed to flouting the seatbelt rules.
"He has taken full and direct responsibility for the devastating consequences of his very reckless behaviour," he said.
By the time of the appeal Browne had already completed more than 100 hours of the required community work.
He and his wife, who remains his loyal supporter, learned after prosecutors filed the appeal that they are expecting another child, Mr Gullaci said.
The couple had stillborn twin daughters before Lincoln's birth and another surviving child.
