STATE OF TASMANIA v DYLAN MARK DENNIS JENKINS 23 MARCH 2020
COMMENTS ON PASSING SENTENCE PEARCE J
Dylan Jenkins, you plead guilty to trafficking in a controlled substance. I also agreed to deal with your plea of guilty to the summary charges of using and possessing a controlled drug. On 14 December 2017 the police searched your house at Youngtown and found a total of 853 MDA tablets in three separate snaplock bags. They also found $8,890 in cash in your bedside drawer. You were arrested. When you were interviewed you admitted that the cash and drugs were yours, that you used some of the tablets yourself but intended to sell them, and that the money was from past sales. Other evidence the police had from a different search in August 2016, disclosed that you had at least been discussing sales of MDMA in large quantities in August 2016. You have pleaded guilty to trafficking on the basis that over the indictment period of about 18 months between July 2016 and December 2017 you engaged in the regular and commercial sale of drugs of this type.
You are now aged 26. You have no relevant prior convictions. You are in a stable relationship and your partner is due to give birth to your first child in two months. You have held stable employment since leaving school in year 10, first in a hardware store, and then for a contractor to an aluminium smelter. There was a period of unemployment which I will mention again shortly, before you obtained work with an awning company in May 2017. You completed an adult apprenticeship and you are now a highly regarded and valuable employee in that business.
You commenced using cannabis at age 16 and progressed to what are commonly referred to as party drugs, such as MDMA and MDA, also called ecstasy. Your use escalated. You then began to sell the drugs to fund your use, but also to supplement your income and supplement a gambling habit. Your problems were exacerbated when you lost the job at the aluminium smelter due to a business turndown and the scale of the drug sales increased. With your arrest you ended your association with drugs, although it took you some time to achieve that. It has taken far too long to deal with this case, given that you indicated a willingness to plead guilty at a relatively early stage. The reason for the delay does not lie with you. Given what I am now told about you, I think that there is every reason to consider that you can be a responsible member of the community, and actual imprisonment, and exposure to the corrupting influence of prison, is a not a just outcome. It is necessary for me to balance the factors in your favour with the need to make clear to you, and others, that those who decide to sell drugs on a commercial basis, as you did, will be punished. MDA, as with other drugs of this nature, have potential to be dangerous and are the cause of much concern in the courts and the community. I considered home detention, but in your circumstances, including your employment and family circumstances, I have concluded that a wholly suspended sentence is the appropriate course. Given the nature of your trafficking, the term of sentence will be a significant one. The law imposes a condition on every suspended sentence that, while it is in force, you do not commit another offence punishable by imprisonment. You must understand that, if you re-offend in any serious way, a court must order that you serve the sentence I am about to impose unless it is unjust.
Dylan Jenkins, you are convicted on the indictment and on counts 3 and 5 on complaint 30220/2018. Pursuant to the Misuse of Drugs Act, s 36B, I assess the reasonable expense of and attending the analysis or examination of the controlled substance as $6,450 and award that sum against you as part of the costs of the prosecutor. I order that the gift bag and snap lock bags seized by the police on 14 December 2017 are forfeited to the State. I am satisfied that the sum of $8,890 seized by the police, is tainted property as being the proceeds of drug sales, and that no hardship will result from its forfeiture. I order, pursuant to the Crime (Confiscation of Profits) Act 1993, s 16(1), that the money is forfeited to the State. I may only allow 28 days to pay the sums you are required to pay, but you may apply to enter into a repayment arrangement. I impose one sentence. You are sentenced to imprisonment for 12 months. I wholly suspend that sentence for two years from today.