Cannabis grown at prison

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33712, 9 December 1974, Page 2

Cannabis grown at prison

(N.Z. Press Association) HAMILTON, December 8.

A Rangipo Prison Farm inmate charged with cultivating cannabis at the prison has been committed to the Supreme Court at Rotorua for trial after depositions in the Taupo Magistrate’s Court.

Peter James Bruce, aged 33 (Mr A. A. Liddell), elected trial by jury at an earlier court hearing. A Rangipo Prison Farm

stock instructor, Mr Rowan Harrison, told Mrs R. Stevenson and Mr C. S. Currie,, J.P.s, that a cultivated patch had been found on the farm by another instructor on October 24.

“The next day I accompanied him to the area and saw a plot 12ft by 15ft dug out and containing four plants covered with plastic bags,” said Mr Harrison.

He found a shovel nearby and the area was surrounded by scrub and fem. On October 29, the farm manager, Mr Theo Wylie, was taken to the plot. The area had allegedly been redug and the plastic bags removed from the plants.

“I made it quite clear to the inmates that I was going away on November 1 and on that day I went to the cultivated area to try and identify the person involved,” said Mr Harrison.

Later that day he saw Bruce cutting scrub near the cultivated area.

Mr Harrison said Bruce had no authority th be in the scrub area and that his duties were confined to shifting stock from one area to another.

Mr Wylie told the J.P.s that on November 3 he accompanied a Taupo detective to the area and found a shovel, slasher, and a cardboard carton filled with soil and

covered with a window frame.

“We also found a roughly made seed box filled with soil,” said Mr Wylie.

Detective Sergeant T. J. Cullen, Taupo C. 1.8., spoke to Bruce at the prison farm on November 3. “He said he knew nothing about growing cannabis on the farm,’’ said Mr Cullen. He alleged that Bruce had told him he had gone over a fence into the scrub to look for deer.

Mr Rodney John Norris, a D.S.I.R. scientist, said he examined the plants and identified them as cannabis. The defence called no evidence.