Regina v D'Amico [2000] NSWCCA 290

New South Wales Court of Criminal Appeal

CITATION : Regina v D'Amico [2000] NSWCCA 290 FILE NUMBER(S) : CCA 60386/99 HEARING DATE(S) : 2 August 2000 JUDGMENT DATE : 2 August 2000

PARTIES : Regina v Traceylee D'Amico JUDGMENT OF : Newman J at 23; Sperling J at 1

LOWER COURT JURISDICTION : District Court LOWER COURT FILE NUMBER(S) : 98/41/0225 LOWER COURT JUDICIAL Goldring J OFFICER :

C B Craigie (Applicant) COUNSEL : R D Ellis (Crown) D J Humphreys (Applicant) SOLICITORS : S E O'Connor (Crown) CATCHWORDS : Criminal law - appeal against sentence - no question of principle. CASES CITED: R v Henry (1999) 46 NSWLR 346; R v Raz (Unreported) NSWCCA 17 December 1992; R v Edwards v (Unreported) NSWCCA 17 December 1996. DECISION : Leave to appeal granted, appeal dismissed.

IN THE COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEAL CCA60386/99

NEWMAN JA SPERLING JA Wednesday, 2 August 2000 REGINA v Tracylee D'AMICO

JUDGMENT

1 SPERLING J: The applicant pleaded guilty to knowingly take part in the supply of a commercial quantity of heroin. The maximum penalty for this offence is 20 years imprisonment and/or a fine of 3,500 penalty points. 2 The applicant was sentenced to imprisonment for six years with a minimum term of four years. The applicant employed two runners who delivered the drugs for her to retail customers. She was a heroin user as were her runners. Over a sixty day period she bought a total of 350 grams of heroin. Of this she used 60 to 90 grams for herself and paid her runners with a further 60 grams for themselves. The balance was sold to retail customers for cash. 3 On that evidence, the main, if not the only function of the business was to support the applicant's habit. She had to buy in the drugs. If she used one-third of what she bought in for herself and her runners, the cash profit on the sale of the remaining two-thirds may have been fully utilised in paying for the one third that was used. The evidence does not enable one to tell precisely whether there was a profit in terms of cash flow. There might have been but it would not have been much. In this regard, the judge said: "I've said that these offences are very serious and I have said that they are part of a systematic business which was conducted for profit. It was suggested that Mrs D'Amico was a dealer because she was a user and in part that is true but the amount that she and her assistants used during the period covered by this charge is less than a third of the amount that she had in her possession and the rest was sold for profit. If she chose to devote that profit to feeding her habit that is not a matter with which the Court can be concerned".