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District Court 30 October 2007

R v Raymond John CADD

[2007] NSWDC 244

Drugs
CRIMINAL LAW SENTENCE SUPPLY PROHIBITED DRUG METHYLAMPHETAMINE CANNABIS DEPRESSION

Citation: R v Raymond John Cadd [2007] NSWDC 244
Court: NSW District Court
Date: 30 October 2007
Judge(s): Berman SC DCJ

Background

Police attended the offender's premises in February 2007 acting on information that he was dealing drugs. The search uncovered 248.7 grams of cannabis and 9.4 grams of methylamphetamine, along with electronic scales and $5,000 in cash bundled in $1,000 lots. The offender was interviewed at Singleton Police Station and admitted both possession and supply.

The offender was a middle-aged man receiving a Disability Pension, having been unable to work consistently since a motor vehicle accident in 1982 requiring spinal fusion surgery. He told police he had turned to drug supply to supplement his income, fund gambling, and cover family expenses. He suffered from chronic pain and depression.

This was his third time before the courts for drug supply offences. He had previously been convicted in 2001 (three months imprisonment) and again in 2002 (three years with a two-year non-parole period) for similar offending.

  • What sentence was appropriate for a third-time drug supply offender convicted of supplying both methylamphetamine and cannabis?
  • What weight should be given to personal deterrence where prior custodial sentences had plainly failed to deter reoffending?
  • How should the court treat mitigating factors including the offender's guilty plea, chronic pain, depression, and personal hardship?
  • Whether special circumstances existed to justify extending the parole period beyond the statutory ratio.

Decision

The court found that personal deterrence had ceased to function as a meaningful sentencing purpose. Given three prior drug supply convictions and two prior terms of imprisonment, the court concluded there was no realistic prospect that another sentence would deter the offender from reoffending upon release. The court characterised its role in those circumstances as primarily preventative, keeping the offender from committing further offences during the sentence, while acknowledging that this reasoning could not inflate the sentence beyond what was otherwise appropriate.

A significant aggravating feature was that the offender was not himself a drug user. The court described non-user dealers as the most serious category of drug supplier, noting that the offender had acted purely for financial gain rather than to fund a personal addiction. The existence of $5,000 in cash on the premises underscored the commercial nature of the operation.

A 25 per cent discount was applied to reflect the utilitarian value of the guilty plea, entered at the earliest opportunity. The court acknowledged that the offender would serve his sentence harder than most due to restricted access to his pain medication in custody and his depression. However, the court gave these matters limited weight, observing that the offender had entered the criminal conduct with full awareness of the consequences of imprisonment for his condition. The court expressly found the offender was sorry for the consequences to himself but was not genuinely remorseful in the mitigating sense.

The court declined to find special circumstances to extend the parole period. It considered an extended supervision period would serve no utility, and separately concluded that the non-parole period was already at its lowest defensible level given the objective seriousness of the conduct.

Orders Made

  • On each count: imprisonment with a non-parole period of three years commencing 27 February 2007 (eligible for parole from 26 February 2010) and a head sentence of four years.
  • Sentences on both counts made wholly concurrent.

Key Takeaways

  • The District Court confirmed that where repeated custodial sentences have failed to deter an offender, the sentencing purpose of personal deterrence may be given minimal weight, with greater emphasis placed on the protective function of imprisonment.
  • Non-user drug dealers are treated as the most serious category of drug supplier; the absence of personal addiction removes any basis for treating supply as partly self-directed conduct.
  • A 25 per cent sentencing discount for an early guilty plea was applied consistently with established practice, even where the offender was re-arraigned on a technical defect in the committal.
  • Hardship in serving a sentence, including restricted access to pain medication and pre-existing mental illness, may warrant some allowance in mitigation but carries limited weight where the offender was aware of those consequences before reoffending.
  • Concurrent sentences across two counts involving different drug types may be imposed as a measure of leniency, reflecting the overall criminality of a single episode rather than treating each drug as a separately aggravating matter.

Legislation and Cases Referenced

No legislation or cases were cited in the judgment text or metadata.