STATE OF TASMANIA v MICHAEL PETER LEE JAMES BLAKE 27 NOVEMBER 2020
COMMENTS ON PASSING SENTENCE BLOW CJ
Michael Peter Lee James Blake, you have been found guilty by a jury of a charge of trafficking in a controlled substance, namely methylamphetamine, and also on a charge dealing with the proceeds of crime. I am also sentencing you for two related summary offences – the possession of a controlled drug, namely cocaine, and the possession of some cannabis seeds. I am dealing with those two charges under s 385A of the Criminal Code.
Police officers saw you near your home at 2.40am on a morning in November 2018. You had a backpack. You fled from the police. That made them suspicious. One thing led to another. You were found. Your backpack was searched, and later your house was searched. There was $25,950 in cash in the backpack. Also in the backpack there were two packages of methylamphetamine. One of them weighed 27.7 grams, just under an ounce. The other weighed 5.5 grams. When your home was searched later on, a further 3.1 grams of methylamphetamine was found in a vehicle of yours. The police also found 1.1 grams of cocaine and 33 cannabis seeds. The cocaine was in the backpack. The cannabis seeds were in your back shed.
I accept that you were a user of methylamphetamine, and that some of the methylamphetamine in your possession was intended for personal use. I cannot quantify the amount that you wold have sold, and the amount that you would have used. But it is significant that what you had was very valuable. Altogether there was 36.3 grams of the substance. You could have sold it for $80 to $100 per point, a point being a tenth of a gram. On that basis you had methylamphetamine with a street value of $29,000 or more. There is evidence that an ounce could be bought for up to $8,000, so, roughly speaking, the wholesale value of what you had was somewhere in the vicinity of $10,000.
Methylamphetamine is a dreadful drug. I am somewhat surprised to hear that you managed so well when you were using it, and when you stopped using it. No doubt it affects some people terribly and others not so terribly. But users usually find it highly addictive. It ruins people’s lives. It leads them to commit crimes of dishonesty, and it leads them to commit crimes of violence. In my view, given the scale of your trafficking activities that the amount of money and the amount of methylamphetamine indicates, I think the only appropriate penalty for you is a sentence of imprisonment. So I reject the submission that home detention is an appropriate penalty.
There is a question that I have to resolve as to how much of the money I should treat as the proceeds of illegal drug sales for sentencing purposes. The question I have to decide is how much of that money I am satisfied beyond reasonable doubt came from the sale of illegal drugs. That is a very difficult question, and any doubt that I have counts in your favour. The money in the backpack was divided into four different components. There were two parcels of $1,000 each. You gave evidence that they were deposits paid by customers in respect of motorbikes that you were dealing in. That sounds plausible, but it is also plausible that it was drug money because 8-balls sell for $1,000 or thereabouts. There was another $18,750 in a particular compartment of the bag which you said in your evidence was, in effect, general funds from your businesses. And there was a further $5,200 in loose notes in another compartment of the bag, and you evidence was that that was money from the sale of firewood. That would seem to reflect a lot of firewood.
I think it is not plausible that more than about a third of the money in that backpack was money from sources unrelated to drugs. Doing the best I can, I assess the amount of money in that backpack that came from the sale of drugs in the sum of $17,000, which is a little bit under two thirds. I am satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that at least that much came from drug sales. I will be ordering the forfeiture of that amount.
You are 29 years old. You do not have any significant prior convictions. I accept that you had nothing to do with illicit drugs until 2017. You are a man with little education, but you are very industrious. You have worked in all sorts of occupations since the age of 12. You have acquired all sorts of useful skills as a result of the work that you have done. You have been operating three business – a firewood business, a tow truck business, and a business called Launceston Bikes and Custom Build that modifies motorcycles and does similar work in relation to other sorts of machinery. I acknowledge that you provide employment for people in those business, and that you have provided employment to people who, because of a lack of sophistication or a lack of literacy skills, would have been unlikely to have found work anywhere else. And I accept that imprisonment is likely to, at best, put their employment at risk.
You have a partner whom you have been together with for something like 12 years. You and she have two young children. You going to prison will mean that she will have to give up her work. You going to prison will mean that she will face financial difficulties in relation to mortgage payments and payment of rent on your commercial premises, if they are retained. The law requires that the impact of sentencing on relatives and family members not be taken into account except in exceptional circumstances, and so, whilst the consequences for your family are unfortunate, I am not going to take them into account because they are not exceptional. I can say at the outset, though, that I do not propose to fine you because I think, in the circumstances, that it would be preferable that there be some money for the benefit of your family.
So far as other mitigating circumstances are concerned, some usual mitigating circumstances are absent. You did not plead guilty. You are not a youthful offender. It is significant, as I have said, that you do not have significant prior convictions. But, to me, a very serious consideration in this case is the harm that methylamphetamine does to people. I need to impose a penalty that should deter people like you, others who face the same temptation as you did, from dealing in methylamphetamine. And so that is why I think the only appropriate penalty is a prison sentence. It is a credit to you that you have managed to cease using methylamphetamine as a result of the police intercepting you and searching your house, and your partner giving you an ultimatum that you needed to give up drugs. Because of that I am going to suspend a part of your sentence, and because of that I am going to impose the shortest possible non-parole period.
I convict you and sentence you to two years’ imprisonment. I suspend six months of that sentence on condition that you not commit any offence punishable by imprisonment within 18 months after your release from custody. I order that you are not to be eligible for parole until you have served nine months of your sentence. I order that the sum of $17,000 from the funds seized in November 2018 be forfeited to the State of Tasmania, together with the scales and the plastic spoon that were seized at the same time.