Alan Phillips of our office instructed James Godbolt of counsel in relation to our client who was sentenced in the Supreme Court of Queensland on 7 August 2024.
The client was initially charged with trafficking a commercial quantity of dangerous drugs in relation to his role in a significant cannabis syndicate. The syndicate was said to involve the trafficking of hundreds of kilograms of cannabis and the movement of hundreds of thousands of dollars around Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia. The allegation was that our client was involved in the syndicate for a period of 4 months.
Our client had relevant history, having received a sentence of imprisonment for previous cannabis matters. He was middle aged.
Following a thorough review of the brief of evidence, a submission was made to the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions. The submission was accepted. The result was that the charge was reduced from a commercial quantity of cannabis, to only a marketable amount. That reduced the maximum penalty from life imprisonment to a maximum of 25 years. The trafficking period was also reduced to only 3 weeks as opposed to 4 months.
Other offenders in the operation had been sentenced for the offending who were much younger and had no history. They were also dealt with under State Legislation. Our client was being dealt with under Commonwealth legislation due to his offending spanning multiple states.
These features allowed for a compelling argument to be made that the defendant's sentence must be less than the other offenders involved, despite his age and previous conviction. We were able to argue the criminality involved only extended over a period of 3 weeks, which was significantly less than the co offenders. The sentencing Judge found he was genuinely remorseful and contrite.
As a result, an extraordinary sentence of 4.5 years imprisonment, with a non parole period of only 10 months was imposed.
Commonwealth non parole periods normally require the defendant to serve in the order of 50% to 66% in actual custody prior to the non-parole period being set. Our client was only required to serve less than 20% of the head sentence due to our office's thorough analysis of the brief and legal arguments at sentence.
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