A CROWN Court judge discovered that he could not please a depressed defendant - even by jailing him as requested.

David Peterson interrupted Judge Richard Pickering's sentencing remarks to tell him: "It's not that I don't understand. I just don't care. I'm finished in this court. You just don't get it."

Peterson, formerly from Bridge Street, Birkenhead, tried to leave the dock at Liverpool Crown Court to begin serving his three-year jail term for burglary but was told by Judge Pickering to settle down.

"People have tried to help you. If you are just a negative person, carry your own burden with you."

Earlier Judge Pickering had said that Peterson had gone on 'a little orgy of burglary', making a mess of other people's business premises within 10 days of his release from a prison sentence.

Referring to a letter written to him by Peterson, the judge said: "Looking back over the years, I think I have never received a letter from a defendant quite like it.

"It must deeply trouble anybody who has to consider it and your case, because you complain repeatedly how you have not had help and have been hurt all your life.

"But, of course, the simple history is that the courts have tried supervision order after supervision order, probation order after probation order and community sentences. Every effort has been made to help you.

"I fear that your deeply depressive view of yourself and society was behind not only breaking into other people's business premises, but to cause them mess and upset."

He said the sentence would begin in August after Peterson, of no fixed address, had finished serving the remainder of the sentence which he was released from in February this year.

Miss Wendy Lloyd, prosecuting, said that all the burgled properties were in Upton Road, Claughton, and they were broken into the over the space of three days.

Three of the businesses - a butcher's shop, a hairdressers and a fitness studio - were all broken into on February 28. Eggs were smashed on the floor of the butcher's and charity boxes ripped open, she said.

Peterson was arrested after he and another man were overheard by the husband of the woman who ran the fitness studio saying they had a lot of gear to sell.

Mr Trevor Parry-Jones, defending, said that Peterson was a depressed person, whom reports said was not suffering from any mental illness.

He is not going to be cured by prison but may be considerably assisted by counselling in custody, he said.

Peterson, 23, pleaded guilty to four charges of burglary.

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