R v Thialal TOURE

[2008] NSWDC 335

CITATION:	R v Thialal TOURE [2008] NSWDC 335
HEARING DATE(S):	5 December 2008
JUDGMENT DATE:	5 December 2008
JURISDICTION:	Criminal
JUDGMENT OF:	Berman SC DCJ
DECISION:	Sentenced to imprisonment for 7 years and 6 months with a non parole period of 4 years and 6 months. Drugs to be destroyed
CATCHWORDS:	Criminal law - Sentence - Import a marketable quantity of a border-controlled drug - Cocaine
LEGISLATION CITED:	Crimes Act 1914 (Cth)
PARTIES:	The Crown Thialal Toure
FILE NUMBER(S):	DC 2008/11/0680
COUNSEL:	A P Cook SC (Offender)
SOLICITORS:	Commonwealth DPP Legal Aid Commission

SENTENCE

1 HIS HONOUR: Thialal Toure appears for sentence today, having pleaded guilty before the Local Court to an offence of importing a marketable quantity of a border-controlled drug. The drug in question was cocaine, the quantity was significant. Indeed, there was 843.5 grams of cocaine secreted on the offender’s body when she arrived in Australia on 21 April 2008. That drug was part of an admixture of more than a kilo; 1,290.1 grams, in fact.

2 As might be imagined, the value of the drug was significant. The unchallenged evidence is that its wholesale value was at about $368,000 and its street value somewhere around half a million dollars. These figures demonstrate a number of things, perhaps the most important of which is the need to impose sentences which would deter those who might be tempted to make easy money out of drug trafficking.

3 The offender was offered, she says, 10,000 euros for carrying these drugs into Australia. Clearly those higher up in the hierarchy stood to make much more than that. A sentence that imposes a burden upon the offender consistent with the need to deter others who might be tempted to indulge in drug trafficking because of the easy money that can be made is therefore required. Of course, the offender was a courier; she was not high up in the drug hierarchy, but the Court of Criminal Appeal has said on many occasions that if those higher up in the drug hierarchy find it difficult to obtain couriers, then the evil trade in the trafficking and importation of drugs is made harder as a result.

4 The offender says that she was in financial difficulty because she had some medical debts which arose because of the need for her to receive treatment and her daughter to receive treatment. In her daughter’s case, she is a diabetic and requires regular insulin injections. She said that she approached a cousin of hers in order to see if she could make some money to pay off those debts. Part of the preparation for the importation in April involved an earlier trip to Australia in February. It is not suggested that on that occasion the offender imported drugs but as I understand her evidence, it was perhaps something of a dry run.

5 Shortly before she left Paris to come Australia, she had been visiting her parents in Senegal. On her return to Paris, she went…