STATE OF TASMANIA v LACHLAN ANTHONY LE FEVRE 8 MAY 2024
COMMENTS ON PASSING SENTENCE PEARCE J
Lachlan Le Fevre, you plead guilty to trafficking in methylamphetamine. I also agreed to deal with your plea of guilty to the summary charges of possessing a controlled drug, possessing a thing used for administration of a controlled drug and possessing ammunition without a firearm licence.
At about 4.00 pm on 1 June 2022 you were intercepted by the police at Launceston airport. You were in company with a female. You had flown from Melbourne carrying 108.9 grams of methylamphetamine in four snap lock bags concealed in your backpack. You had gone to Melbourne the day before specifically to purchase the drug from a known supplier. It was a planned visit arranged by means of an encrypted messenger application. You had paid $15,000 for the drug.
After you were arrested at the airport the police searched your home. They found a snap lock bag containing 0.21 grams of methylamphetamine, nine MDMA tablets, two containers containing traces of GBH, two glass smoking pipes and four .410 shotgun cartridges.
You are now aged 31. You were 29 when this crime was committed. In January 2016, in Queensland, you were convicted of a number of drug related offences including possession and the equivalent of evading police. You were sentenced to a total term of imprisonment of 12 months, of which you served about two months before being released on parole. However, in December 2016 you were sentenced in the Supreme Court in Brisbane to a wholly suspended three year sentence for drug related crimes including trafficking and possession committed in 2014. In late 2016 you moved to Tasmania. In 2020, on a visit to Queensland, you were dealt with for some relatively minor offending. However your circumstances in Tasmania deteriorated in late 2021 when you lost your job and your drug use increased. Although in June 2022, at the time of this crime, you had no relevant prior convictions in this State, you had committed a series of offences here during the previous six months or so but were not yet on bail for those. Those offences included five counts of driving with an illicit drug in your blood (in each case methylamphetamine), one count of evading police and one count of selling methylamphetamine. Before any of the offending was dealt with you absconded back to Queensland where you resumed employment and obtained support from your mother and three brothers.
You were extradited to Tasmania in April 2023. You were held in custody until, in August 2023 you were sentenced by a magistrate to imprisonment for a total term of ten months, half of which was suspended. The result is that you have been in custody on the matters for which I am to sentence you since 21 September 2023 and so the sentence I am about to impose will commence then. There are good prospects for your return to employment and to the support of your family in Queensland on your release. I take into account that you have already been in prison since 17 April 2023, although the offences for which you were sentenced in the Magistrates Court involved further and separate criminality. I will allow the earliest opportunity for parole.
As to the summary offences, the possession of the small amount of methylamphetamine, MDMA and GBH all concern your personal use arising from your addiction. Those charges do not warrant any additional punishment and could well have been dealt with by the magistrate. The prosecution does not assert that anything sinister is to be inferred from your possession of the shotgun cartridges although of course you should not have had them. You have no prior convictions for firearm offences.
The evils of trafficking in methylamphetamine have been explained many times. The drug is a scourge on society and those who seek to profit from its sale must expect to be punished. By your plea of guilty you admit that you intended to sell at least some of the drug. Had all of it been sold in the usual way it was worth about $54,000. However the State does not dispute that you did not intend to sell the drug in the usual way. At the time, as the offences I have referred to suggest, you were heavily addicted to methylamphetamine. Some of the money you used to purchase the drug was provided to you by other people you know were established methylamphetamine users. You agreed to buy a larger amount of methylamphetamine to reduce the cost, keep some for yourself and then distribute the rest to those who had contributed to the purchase price. That nevertheless amounts to selling within the meaning of the legislation, even though you did not intend to profit from it in the usual sense. However, with your record, you should have known that you were risking serious punishment by importing methylamphetamine in that way. By comparison with some cases of trafficking seen by this court the quantity was not large. You entered a relatively early plea of guilty.
You are convicted on the indictment and on complaint 32982/22, counts 2, 3 and 8. On those counts on the complaint I make no further order. I order pursuant to s 36B(2) of the Misuse of Drugs Act 2021 that you pay the costs of the analysis of the drug in the sum of $1309 and award that sum against you as part of the costs of the prosecutor. You have 28 days to pay that amount. On the indictment you are sentenced to a term of imprisonment of 18 months from 21 September 2023. I order that you not be eligible to apply for parole until you have served half of that term.