A vigilante has avoided further time behind bars for smashing a Canberra tavern patron's jaw, leaving the drug-affected man to spit out his own teeth after he "behaved appallingly" and threatened women.
Former Gungahlin resident Dean O'Brien, 24, was sentenced in the ACT Supreme Court on Friday to nine months and two weeks in jail.
Justice Michael Elkaim backdated the sentence by 50 days to reflect the time O'Brien spent on remand following his arrest, and suspended the remaining jail time with immediate effect.
Agreed facts show O'Brien, who recently pleaded guilty to a charge of recklessly inflicting grievous bodily harm, committed the offence at Moby Dick's Tavern in Holt last July.
Early on the morning in question, Irishman O'Brien intervened when he heard the victim, Russell James Stark, calling a woman a "slut" and threatening to "punch her head in".
Mr Stark, who had been drinking excessively and taking cocaine, had earlier been observed yelling at another woman in the tavern.
O'Brien's efforts to calm Mr Stark down failed, and the victim said words to the effect of "come on you Irish c----, I'll glass you" while holding a schooner of beer.
O'Brien responded to this threat by standing up from a stool and punching Mr Stark twice in the head, causing the victim to fall backwards and hit his head on a table.
CCTV footage played to the court shows the Irishman then standing over the top of Mr Stark and comprehensively thrashing him on the floor, landing another seven or eight punches.
In sentencing on Friday, Justice Elkaim said an ambulance was called to the scene because Mr Stark, who suffered a broken nose and jaw in the bashing, was "clearly injured".
"[The victim] was spitting his teeth out of his mouth," the judge said.
While Justice Elkaim stressed that there was no excuse for O'Brien's offence, he said Mr Stark had "behaved appallingly" and wondered why tavern staff did not "throw him out" prior to the bashing.
"[Mr Stark] deserved to be reprimanded and evicted from the pub," the judge said.
"But whatever Mr Stark's failings, there was no room for vigilante conduct."
Reiterating previous remarks that "vigilantism can be as criminal as the conduct it seeks to address", Justice Elkaim said people should know taking the law into their own hands would not achieve justice.
"It will only result in the condemnation of the attacker," he said.
While he condemned O'Brien, Justice Elkaim agreed with prosecutor Beth Morrisroe and O'Brien's barrister, Andrew Hourigan, that the Irishman had served a sufficient period behind bars on remand.
Before suspending the balance of O'Brien's jail sentence, the judge noted that the 24-year-old had expressed regret and attended a number of counselling sessions to "deal with his emotional upset".
The court had earlier heard the Irishman's past had been marred by tragedies, the first of which was the death of a 15-year-old sister who fell overboard from a cruise ship.
This had a "devastating" effect on O'Brien's family, Mr Hourigan said, with the offender's father later dying by suicide.
O'Brien, who now lives with a different sister in Sydney, must abide by the terms of a two-year good behaviour order to prevent the suspended portion of his jail sentence being activated.
