STATE OF TASMANIA v ANDREW SCOTT COKER-WILLIAMS 13 SEPTEMBER 2019
COMMENTS ON PASSING SENTENCE PEARCE J
Andrew Coker-Williams, you plead guilty to trafficking in a controlled substance. On 26 March 2019 police officers searched your house in Scamander. They found various quantities of recently harvested cannabis drying in a shed and in a granny flat, along with four cannabis plants growing in the garden, some snap lock bags containing cannabis and other smaller quantities of cannabis in the shed and house. Of the plants, one had been completely harvested and two had been partly harvested. The other unharvested plant was small but loaded with bud. The undried weight of the cannabis, including parts usually regarded as waste or of lesser value, was much greater. However, the harvested and unharvested cannabis would have yielded a total of just over 1.5 kilograms of usable dried cannabis. Depending on the quantities in which it was sold it was capable of returning between $10,000 and $25,600.
When you were interviewed you admitted that you had planted the cannabis the police found. It was planted in November 2018 and all of the drying cannabis came from those four plants. You also admit having grown a similar quantity of cannabis between November 2017 and March 2018. Apart from a small amount occasionally used by your wife, you sold all of the product of that earlier crop between April and September 2018 to acquaintances at lower than market rates for a total return of about $2,000. You used the money to supplement your income and help pay for living expenses. You intended to do the same this year with the cannabis you grew. By selling cannabis and by possessing the plants in both seasons with the intention of selling the product you trafficked in it.
You are aged 51. You are married with a young child and care of your wife’s child from a former relationship. It is in your favour that you entered an early plea of guilty. You have no prior convictions for drug matters although you have traffic convictions including for driving with alcohol in your body in excess of the prescribed limit, and on one occasion with cannabis in your blood. As a result of that conviction you are no longer a cannabis user. You are employed as a deck hand on a fishing boat but that work is seasonal. The law provides for very heavy penalties for persons found guilty of this offence. I accept that the quantities involved in your case are not great, and your systems were not sophisticated, but the fact that your motive was entirely commercial makes it more serious. Cannabis is a proscribed drug, and it has been proscribed because it has harmful consequences, and trafficking in proscribed drugs is a serious criminal offence. It is very common for persons sentenced for trafficking for the first time to be given a wholly suspended sentence to encourage them to not offend again. I propose to adopt that course. I would have supplemented that sentence by community service or a fine, but neither of those sentencing options is available to me. You must understand that the law makes it a condition of a suspended sentence that you must not commit any offence punishable by imprisonment while the order remains in force. If you breach that condition by committing another drug offence, or indeed an offence of any type which may result in imprisonment, you are likely to have to serve the sentence. Your counsel has informed me that you intend to stop growing. It is important that you follow through with that.
Andrew Coker-Williams, you are convicted on the indictment. I assess, in accordance with the Crime (Confiscation of Profits) Act 1993, s 22, the value of the benefits derived by you from the commission of the offence in the sum of $2,000 and order that you pay to the State a pecuniary penalty equal to that sum. I can only give you 28 days to pay. If you require longer you may apply to enter into a repayment arrangement. You are sentenced to imprisonment for six months, wholly suspended for 18 months from today. It is a condition of that order that while it is in force you do not commit any offence punishable by imprisonment. If you breach that condition then a court must order that you serve that term unless it is unjust.