He has now successfully appealed his sentence in the Court of Appeal in the Supreme Court, with his sentence cut in half.
Luke Brown and his brother, Liam Mitchell Brown, were both jailed after the Olympic Ave house was set alight.
The court heard Liam Brown used a blowtorch to try to set a television alight in one of the bedrooms while a man slept only metres away.
Footage from a camera in the room showed Luke Brown standing nearby, and by his guilty plea he admitted to encouraging or assisting Liam Brown by his presence.
The television did not catch alight.
Liam Brown then went to another front bedroom and used the blowtorch to set fire to combustible material there.
The three occupants home at the time escaped from the fire, but the house was extensively damaged and later had to be demolished.
The court heard a Victoria Police forensic scientist found the source of the fire that resulted in the extensive damage was the fire ignited by Liam Brown in the front bedroom.
Luke Brown’s defence counsel argued in the Court of Appeal that the sentencing judge had evaluated the seriousness of Luke Brown’s conduct by reference to the activities of Liam Brown in the front bedroom, which they said did not involve Luke Brown.
The Court of Appeal’s Justice David Beach and Justice Terry Forrest said Luke Brown, who was aged 34 when he was sentenced, was not the “principal offender” and that his role was to “stand by, assisting and/or encouraging by his presence”.
“The offending (by Luke Brown) took place over a couple of seconds and ultimately amounted to very little,” the justices said.
Both Brown brothers received the same head sentence of 18 months in prison on the charge of reckless conduct endangering serious injury.
Liam Brown, who was 27 when he was sentenced, received further time for charges of arson and making a threat to inflict serious injury, resulting in a total jail sentence of three years and six months, and he will have to serve two years and four months before becoming eligible for parole.
However, on Luke Brown’s appeal, the justices ruled there “should be some meaningful distinction in sentence” between the sentence of the two brothers on the charge of reckless conduct endangering serious injury and reduced Luke Brown’s sentence by half on this charge.
On appeal, the justices sentenced Luke Brown to nine months in prison for the charge of reckless conduct endangering serious injury.
He was also sentenced to one month in prison for breaching a parole condition, with this sentence to be served concurrently, resulting in a total sentence of nine months in prison.
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