NOT MOVING: Harley Hicks has been refused a request to transfer prisons.
A BENDIGO magistrate has refused a request by accused baby killer Harley Hicks for a transfer from youth detention to an adult prison.
Hicks, 19, made a brief appearance in Bendigo Magistrates Court yesterday to seek the transfer.
He is serving a 12-month sentence in youth detention after pleading guilty to 23 offences including burglary, aggravated burglary and theft committed between May 16 and June 15 in Long Gully, Bendigo and Bendigo North.
Hicks, who has a mild intellectual disability, was remanded after being charged with the murder of Long Gully baby Zayden Veal-Whitting in June last year. The murder case is still awaiting a DNA report to proceed.
Hicks’s lawyer told Magistrate Jennifer Tregent yesterday his client wanted to be transferred from youth detention into adult prison so he could access better mental health care.
The court heard Hicks was suffering depression and was also experiencing “wider issues” in youth detention.
Ms Tregent described the request as “most unusual”.
“I thought it was only the authorities themselves that could do something like that, I don’t know how to do it,” she said.
Ms Tregent chastised Hicks’s lawyer for lack of preparation and said it was not her job to wade through legislation and that he should have investigated how to deal with the request.
“He’s only got until April, he’s only got a month to go in detention, and then he will be moved, as I understand it automatically by virtue of the fact that there’s nothing to hold him there because he’s not undergoin