Published October 2025
Stealing charge discontinued WA | Prosecution pays legal costs
Perrella Legal successfully defended a man charged with stealing personalised vehicle registration plates from a Department of Transport office in Western Australia.
Our client maintained that he genuinely believed he was entitled to possession of the plates. A five-minute gap in the CCTV footage created a significant evidentiary difficulty, while a psychological report provided important context for his actions and beliefs.
Three days before trial, the prosecution reconsidered our submissions and ultimately discontinued the charge. The Court subsequently awarded our client’s legal costs in full, including the expense of obtaining the psychological report.
Our client, a man in his 30’s, was charged with Stealing. He had received correspondence from the Department of Transport regarding his seized personalised car registration plates (‘rego plates’), which led him to attend at a regional office to collect them. On arrival, CCTV footage showed our client at one of the counters speaking to a customer service officer. There is a 5 minute interval for which no footage is available. The CCTV next shows the same customer service officer in possession of the rego plates and a second customer service officer standing beside her. Minutes later, both customer service officers walk away from the counter but leave the rego plates behind. Our client reached over the counter took the rego plates, casually walked out the front door and through the carpark.
We presented a submission to the prosecution, which emphasised our significant disadvantage in establishing what had transpired in the 5 minutes of ‘missing’ CCTV, particularly our client’s insistence that the rego plates were handed to him and then rescinded from his grasp. We provided the prosecution with a psychological report explaining how our client’s recent diagnosis with level 2 Autism contributed to his honestly held belief that he was entitled to possession of the rego plates, notwithstanding the customer service officers’ unsuccessful attempts to explain to the contrary after she decided against handing them back to our client.
The prosecution initially rejected our submissions approximately four weeks before trial, without providing reasons. However, three days before trial, the prosecution reconsidered our representations and agreed to discontinue the charge.
On the scheduled trial date, the proceedings were discontinued. We subsequently secured an order requiring the prosecution to pay our client’s legal costs in full, including the cost of the psychological report that had been central to our submissions.
On what was meant to be the trial date, the prosecution discontinued the charge against our client. Our costs application was awarded in full, including the cost of the psychological report which was central to supporting our proposed line of defence.