A man who was armed with a metal pole and helped bash a group of friends celebrating the birth of a baby has been jailed for more than two years.
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Russell Lee Tilley, 32, was sentenced in the ACT Supreme Court this morning after a judge dismissed his claim he was trying to make peace between his group and the victims.
Tilley was with three other men bearing a machete, axe handle and baseball bat when they carried out the "cowardly and brutal" attack in a suburban Giralang street in March last year.
He had pleaded guilty to three charges of assault occasioning actual bodily harm but told the ACT Supreme Court that he had actually been asked to mediate between the two groups when the attack took place.
The victims were a group of friends who had been drinking to celebrate the birth of a baby girl on March 12, 2010, when they became involved in a confrontation with Scullin man David John Welch, 27.
Welch turned up uninvited to the new father's home in Giralang and performed a burnout on the lawn, prompting an altercation when the other man urinated on his car.
In the early hours of the morning Welch returned with three other men - Tilley, his brother Benjamin Thomas Sherd, 25, and 22-year-old Steven Paul Beattie- and the group of friends were viciously bashed in a nearby street and backyard.
Sherd, Beattie and Welch have all been sentenced to jail terms.
In sentencing proceedings earlier this year Tilley told the court he had had a "change of heart" about his guilty plea and contested the facts of the matter.
He gave evidence that he was asked to mediate between Welch's group and the victims and said Welch was worried the other men were seeking a fight.
Tilley said he and his group armed themselves with "crap they found" in an alleyway outside the new father's home, including a machete and baseball bat, before heading to another nearby house.
He also told the court the victims, who had moved the party to a third house nearby, were the aggressors and he only became involved in the bashing when he saw one of them punch his brother.
But Justice Burns said Tilley was an unreliable witness and the bashing was clearly a revenge attack.
"This was no peace-keeping mission," he said.
Justice Burns sentenced Tilley to two years and nine months' jail with a non-parole period of one year and nine months.