The Court: Dandenong Magistrates Court
The Lawyer: Daniel Walsh
The Charges:
- Trafficking a Drug of Dependence
- Possess a Drug of Dependence
- Prohibited Person Possesses a Firearm
- Possess Prohibited Weapon
The Allegations:
The client’s house was searched under warrant, and a range of property was found throughout various locations.
There were almost 200 grams of alleged drugs in the garage, along with a dismantled pistol in two pieces, a butterfly knife and a baton. In the bedroom of the property, mobile phones were seized.
The 200 grams of alleged drugs were found in several different bags of various weights, all contained in a suitcase in clear view on the desk. The dismantled firearm was found hidden in the corner behind an old immovable car.
Despite our client being the registered tenant of the property, quite a few other people had access, particularly to the garage. However, when police entered the property, they witnessed our client and another person exiting the garage.
Police found a range of messages dating back a few months on the seized mobile phone that showed our client making agreements to sell drugs.
At Court:
The first thing our solicitor noted in this matter was that police had not charged our client with Trafficking a Commercial Quantity of Drugs despite the total weight of the substance. This suggested that the police were not confident that the 200 grams of substance they found was of high purity or even that it was a drug, for that matter.
Ultimately, our client had to accept that he was trafficking drugs on some level, given the text messages found on the phone. However, there is a clear distinction between trafficking based solely on historic agreements to sell, and trafficking almost 200 grams of a substance. Therefore, our solicitor needed to dig a little deeper into the substance found in the garage.
On the day of the case conference at court, our solicitor asked whether any testing had been conducted on the substance. Police had not yet done any spot testing but were going to send it all off for proper forensic analysis. The matter was adjourned for contest mention to allow this testing to occur.
The results eventually came in. Of the 11 bags of varying weights, there was one small 0.5-gram bag at 86% purity, two bags of 5-6% purity, and the rest all less than 0.8% purity. In essence, notwithstanding that it was a mixed quantity of drugs, it was of extremely low purity and would most likely not be sold as drugs.
Thus, discussions ensued with the prosecution on what charges would proceed and how they would be framed. Eventually, police agreed to proceed with the trafficking of methylamphetamine based only on the text messages, a charge of possessing methylamphetamine for the low-quality mixture found in the garage, and two charges of possessing a prohibited weapon for the knife and the baton. They withdrew the remaining charges as there was no heroin, and they accepted that they could not prove our client knew of the firearm.
The police were at one point happy to withdraw the charge of possessing methylamphetamine as an alternative to the trafficking; however, we did not accept that. This would have suggested that our client was trafficking the low-quality mixed substance in the house, which would have been a much more serious situation than being based solely on historic test messages. Thus, we wanted the prosecution to clarify that the trafficking was based on the messages alone and the possession was a standalone charge.
The Outcome:
The plea then proceeded to the above arrangement, and notwithstanding that it was our client’s third court appearance for drug trafficking charges, he was given another opportunity with a Community Correction Order. This result would likely not have been attained if police had maintained their initial allegation that he was trafficking the substance found in the house.
Attention to detail in resolving the charges achieved a great outcome. It would have been all too easy for some to accept the withdrawal of the possession charge as an alternative to the trafficking charge without considering how that would affect the factual basis of the allegations.
