R v Truong The Pham [2007] NSWDC 210

New South Wales District Court

CITATION: R v Truong The Pham [2007] NSWDC 210

HEARING DATE(S): 23 August 2007

JUDGMENT DATE: 21 September 2007

JURISDICTION: Criminal

JUDGMENT OF: Nicholson SC DCJ

DECISION: Convicted.; Sentence 5 years comprised of N.P.P. of 3 years to date from 26/2/07.; Overall sentence expire 25/2/12

CATCHWORDS: Criminal Law - Sentencing - Commonwealth - importing border controlled substance - carried internally - 110 grams heroin - wholesale value $50K - recruited because of gambling debt - low trafficable quantity - 43 year old Vietnamese refugee - claimed visit to sick relative.

LEGISLATION CITED: Crimes Act 1914 Commonwealth Criminal Code

R v Cuthbert (1967) 2NSWR329 CASES CITED: R v Rushby (1977) NSWLR 597 R v Hayes (1984) 1 NSWLR 740

PARTIES: Regina Truong The Pham

FILE NUMBER(S): 07/11/0398

SOLICITORS: Crown: Ms M Laguna Offender: Ms F Way

SENTENCE

1 Truong The Pham, a Vietnamese-born Australian National, is aged forty-three. He works in the marble granite industry as a subcontractor making kitchen benches. He claims to have only been making two hundred to three hundred dollars weekly.

2 He is married with two children. He told police at the time of his arrest about four years ago things started to go really slow and he only got bits and pieces [of work]. He said he rented a room for seventy dollars per week.

3 The picture he painted at the time he returned to Australia from Vietnam was the picture of a man struggling to make his way in the world. Yet somehow he had managed to be able to travel to Vietnam to support his eighty-six year old mother who he said had been hospitalised with pneumonia.