STATE OF TASMANIA v SHANE MICHAEL HODGE 9 MAY 2024
COMMENTS ON PASSING SENTENCE PEARCE J
Shane Hodge, you plead guilty to trafficking in and a controlled substance, in this case cannabis. On 18 August 2023 the police went to your home in Falmouth for an unrelated purpose. During the course of your conversations you volunteered to them that you were storing cannabis in a caravan on a friend’s property not far away. After a search warrant was obtained you took them to that place. They found a total of just under 14 kilograms of cannabis in 10 packages. The cannabis was high quality dried manicured cannabis head which had been tightly compressed into reusable shopping bags pressed into rectangular shapes. Within each package was a quantity of loosely sprinkled white pepper. Each bag was wrapped in brown packing tape, put inside two layers of oven bags and then wrapped in black electrical tape. The result was ten packages of uniform size, shape and appearance each containing, give or take a few grams, 1.4 kilograms of cannabis. The packages were concealed in a compartment below a drawer under a bunk inside the caravan. The compartment had been covered with a plywood panel secured with metal brackets, lined with polystyrene and sealed with a combination of silicone and wooden beading. You had purchased the caravan in 2017 but it was registered in the name of an acquaintance of yours. When found it had a cover over all of it.
If sold by the pound the cannabis could have returned about $130,000. If sold in $25 deals it could have returned about $290,000.
Your account is that in early 2023 you, while surfing in a very remote area on the east coast, you noticed human activity on shore. When you later investigated it turned out to be compounds of cannabis. At that time you had debts following a marriage breakdown. You owed money to friends, your daughter, on your credit card and mortgage. As a result, you decided to watch the compounds as the cannabis grew and, when it was ready to be harvested in about April 2023, you stole it from various locations at times and in quantities so that you hoped the owners would not notice. You then dried it in the bush under polycarbonate translucent roofing sheets. I confess that I experienced some scepticism about how this somewhat obscure account of occasional covert harvesting of cannabis grown by others could be consistent with the quality and quantity of the cannabis found and the meticulous manner in which you processed, packaged and concealed it. There could have been no doubt that all the trouble you went to is consistent only with an intention to harvest, process and package the cannabis for profit.
However, your account is not controverted by the State. There is no evidence before me of any actual sale of any further involvement in the commercial production or sale of cannabis. The cannabis was found as it had originally been packed and stored. The fact that you volunteered its existence and location to the police in circumstances that make it highly improbable that they would otherwise have known anything about it or found it, supports your claim that, once you had it, you had no real idea about how to realise its value or how to go about selling it. As a result you did nothing and your intention to sell it evaporated. There is no sign of wealth arising from the sale of cannabis and you still have the debts which prompted the initial plan. Your house is currently on the market.
You are now aged 58. You are single with adult children. Although you now receive social security benefits you have a history of stable employment and running your own business. Your only prior convictions are for driving and traffic related matters. You have no prior convictions related to drugs, trafficking or selling in particular. Your cooperation with the police and your relatively early plea of guilty is in your favour. You are guilty of trafficking because you harvested, processed and possessed the cannabis, and guarded and concealed it, with the initial intention of selling it. I accept that no community service programs will be available where you live and the currently unstable nature of your housing situation makes home detention unsuitable. Having regard to the large quantity and potential value of the cannabis involved, imprisonment is the only appropriate sentence. Prior to your eventual disclosure there was a plan to sell and a realistic chance that a large quantity of the drug would somehow find its way into the market. I think, based on what I have been told, that you are unlikely to re-offend, but the sentence I am about to impose is aimed at providing a strong disincentive to future criminal conduct. I will allow you the opportunity to avoid having to actually serve the sentence by wholly suspending it. If you do anything like this again then it is almost certain that you would go to prison.
Shane Hodge, you are convicted on the indictment. You are sentenced to imprisonment for 15 months, wholly suspended for two years from today. The law imposes a condition on that order that if you commit another offence punishable by imprisonment then the term must be activated unless that is unjust.