STATE OF TASMANIA v JOSEPH ANDREW ROOKS 28 NOVEMBER 2024
COMMENTS ON PASSING SENTENCE PEARCE J
Joseph Rooks, you plead guilty to dealing with property suspected of being proceeds of crime. I also agreed to deal with your plea of guilty to the summary charges of possessing, using and selling a controlled drug. The police searched your home on 11 August 2023. They found three zip lock bags containing a total of .09 grams of methylamphetamine, $1,775 in cash, empty zip lock bags, digital scales with weights, an ice pipe, a metal spoon and three mobile phones. On one of the phones were text messages sent and received between March and August 2023 which evidenced actual sales. By your plea you accept that the cash was proceeds of drug sales. When interviewed by the police you told them that you were purchasing about five grams of the drug for $2000 each fortnight and claimed that you sold about three points, a point being 0.1 grams, each week.
You are now aged 32. You grew up in the Northern Territory and were educated to grade 10. Your grandmother was the mother figure in your early life but when she died in 2013 you came to Tasmania. Regrettably you then developed a problem with drugs and alcohol. This deterioration in your circumstances is reflected in your record. In 2014 and 2015 you committed a number of alcohol related driving offences. In 2017 you were given two wholly suspended sentences for firearm offences, dishonesty, antisocial offences and more driving offences. You breached those suspended sentences by committing more driving offences. In 2019 you were given another short suspended sentence for driving while disqualified and a short term of actual imprisonment for destroying property. You next came before the court in 2013 when you were made subject to a six month home detention order, having spent about two months in custody for family violence. You breached the home detention order by being found in possession of ammunition and two months was added to it. On 1 September 2023 the order was cancelled and you were ordered to serve 22 days in prison backdated to 11 August.
You are not to be sentenced for trafficking, and you claim that it was your addiction, rather than the desire for profit which motivated the sales. By 2021 you were a heavy user of methylamphetamine. According to your counsel you were using almost a gram per day. I do not see how the level of the use you claim could possibly have been funded from the very few number of sales you admitted to the police. Reference was made to some savings you may have had but I regard that claim with scepticism. Even though the messages on your phone I was referred to are not large in number, they made clear that you were actively pursuing sales of methylamphetamine and were known as a person who sold methylamphetamine.
I am told that you have held casual employment since November 2023 as a motor cycle repairer, but that you receive social security benefits. You have moved to Scottsdale to live with your mother and, with her, you have recently taken over care of your two children. They are a motivating factor in your rehabilitation. I was also told that you have been abstinent from use of illicit drugs since your release on 1 September 2023. However the seriousness of selling methylamphetamine has been emphasised by courts in this State and elsewhere for many years. The use of the drug damages the health of users and generates other crimes of violence and dishonesty. The scale of your selling, as evidenced by the amount of the drug and cash found in your possession and the number of messages on your phone, was not large. In my view, the fact that you were selling drugs from your home while you were subject to the home detention order is a significantly aggravating factor. It demonstrates a contempt for the law and for the court order to which you were subject. A sentence of imprisonment is required. Had the scale of the sales been any greater I would almost certainly have ordered actual imprisonment. I will allow for your rehabilitation by suspending the terms I am about to impose. You should consider this to be your last chance.
Joseph Rooks, you are convicted on the indictment and on complaint 33652/23, counts 1, 2 and 3. I make an order that the items listed at paragraph 15 of the Crown statement of facts at items (a) to (l) inclusive, excluding the methylamphetamine for which no order is required, be forfeited to the State. I order pursuant to ss 11(1A) and 16 of the Crime (Confiscation of Profits) Act 1993 that the $1,775 seized by Tasmania Police on 11 August 2023 be forfeited to the State. I order that you pay the costs of the analysis of the methylamphetamine seized on 11 August 2023 pursuant to s 36B (2) of the Misuse of Drugs Act 2021 in the sum of $837. I can only give you 28 days to pay that amount but you may apply to enter into a repayment arrangement. On counts 1 and 2 on the complaint I make no further order. On the indictment you are sentenced to imprisonment for three months. On count 3 on complaint 33652/23, selling, you are sentenced to imprisonment for four months. I would have ordered that those terms be cumulative, but I wholly suspend both terms for two years from your release. It is a condition of the order that while it is in force you commit no offence punishable by imprisonment. If you breach that condition you will be required to serve the suspended terms in addition to any other sentence which may be imposed unless that is unjust. I impose a further condition that for a period of six months from today you will subject to the supervision of a probation officer. The conditions referred to in s 24(5B) of the Sentencing Act apply to this condition. They will be set out in a document you will be given. These include that you must report to a probation officer at the office of Community Corrections in Launceston within three clear working days, you must submit to supervision and comply with the directions given by your probation officer at the office of Community Corrections in Launceston by the close of business on Monday 2 December 2024.
You must:
- submit to the supervision and comply with the directions given by your probation officer;
- You must not leave Tasmania without permission and you must notify of any change of address.
In addition to the core conditions the order will also include the following special conditions that you must, during the operational period of the order, submit to the supervision of a Community Corrections Officer as required by that officer and attend educational and other programs, undergo assessment and treatment for alcohol or drug dependency, submit to testing for alcohol or drug use and submit to medical, psychological or psychiatric assessment or treatment as directed by a probation officer.