Hall v Costin

[1992] QCA 121

COURT OF APPEAL [1992] QCA 121

MACROSSAN CJ
PINCUS JA

McPHERSON JA

CA No 306 of 1991

DARREN CLINT HALL	Respondent
and
HELEN MAREE COSTIN	Appellant
BRISBANE
... DATE 11/5/92
JUDGMENT

JUDGMENT

MACROSSAN CJ: The appellant was convicted on 28 October 1991 of unlawfully supplying a quantity of cannabis sativa. That is the way the charge read. The charge was that the unlawful supply had occurred between 17 July 1991 and 19 August 1991. The dates provided in the charge came as a result of admissions made by the appellant to investigating police officers. Nothing further turns on those dates for present purposes. An appeal against he conviction is brought.

The only ground argued is that the Magistrate was wrong in finding that the defendant had the capacity to admit that the substance she supplied was marijuana. The Crown case depended upon her admissions. It appeared that the defendant, as she then was, appellant as she now is, admitted under questioning that she had sold a quantity of marijuana to two young males aged 18 or 19. We have had our attention directed to a transcript of a recorded interview which was taken by the police with the appellant. The transcript actually is of an exhibit which I understand to be the recording itself. In response to police questioning the appellant said that she had sold marijuana only once or twice. The occasion charged that I have referred to, the sale to the two young men, was one of these. She said she was an occasional user of marijuana. She told the police that she had last smoked it over a month ago. The investigating police searched her premises and discovered a separate amount of substance in her handbag which she said was marijuana. It was later appropriately analysed and found to be indeed marijuana.

The police found more of a substance in a cupboard in the kitchen. The appellant again said that it was marijuana, it was later analysed and found to be marijuana. The substance which she sold to the two young men she said was in a bag. It was in a plastic bag. In the course of the police investigation she did not claim any doubt as to the nature of the substance which she had sold. During the course of her evidence before the Magistrate she was disposed to raise some uncertainties as to the nature of the substance. She said, amongst other things, that she had not opened the bag. The Magistrate, relying on the evidence as he said adduced by the prosecution and the admissions of the defendant in conversation with the investigating police officer, concluded that in the case before him the appellant had knowledge sufficient to identify the substance which had been sold and he accordingly acted on the fact value of the admission which she made.

We have been referred to two somewhat different cases: The Queen v. Dillon (1983) 2 Qd.R 627, a decision which turned on its own facts, and the Victorian case of Parks v. Bullock (1982) VLR 258.

Nothing in those cases induces any doubt about the entitlement of the Magistrate quite reasonably to come to the decision that he did. He was entitled on the evidence to form the view that the appellant had a sufficient familiarity with marijuana to be able to identify it accurately.

No unsafe aspect appears in this. The appellant did not at any stage say during the police interview that she had doubts about what the substance which she had sold truly was. She was able to identify other substance accurately and that was conclusively proved. She was a user. I see no objection which can reasonably be raised at all to a reliance on the admissions which she made and accordingly, in my opinion, there is no substance in the appeal and the appeal should be dismissed.

PINCUS JA: I agree.

McPHERSON JA: I agree.

THE CHIEF JUSTICE: The appeal is dismissed.

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