Periodic detention for drug, receiving counts

Press, 15 November 1984, Page 19

Periodic detention for drug, receiving counts

On four drug offences, including possession of heroin, and two charges of receiving stolen property, Eric John Risdon was sentenced in the District Court yesterday to four months non-residential periodic detention. Imposing this sentence Judge Paterson told Risdon, aged 26, unemployed, that he was showing signs of rehabilitation and it was hoped this was genuine. He said the defendant, with his experience, should realise the futility of living outside the law, and the

importance of choosing his friends and keeping out of the drug scene which had involved him in crime. Risdon (Mr W. Rosenberg), changed his pleas to guilty yesterday to charges of possessing heroin and possessing cannabis, on August 28. He had pleaded guilty at an appearance last month to charges of possessing a syringe and needle, and possessing cannabis, on August 1. He pleaded not guilty yesterday, but was convicted after the defended hearing

on two charges of receiving stolen property, a wrist watch and a push button telephone. Sergeant J. E. Dwyer, who prosecuted, said in relation to the drug offences on August 24, that the police had searched the defendant’s house and found a paper sachet containing 7 milligrams of heroin, a Class A controlled drug, in the kitchen.

The police also found lOgm of cannabis leaf under a pot plant in a hanging container. The defendant admitted the drugs were his and said they were for his own use. He said the quantity of heroin comprised one “taste” and he had paid $5O for it.

Evidence in relation to the receiving offences was that the defendant was wearing a wrist watch when the police made the drug search and this was found to be one which was stolen in a house burglary last December.

The telephone found in his house had not been reported stolen by any person renting telephones from the Post Office. However, all telephones remained the property of the Post Office, according to evidence.

The defendant told the police, or said in evidence, that he had purchased the

watch for $lOO from a man about six months before. He did not know it had been stolen.

He had been given the telephone by his brother, who had it in his flat before he went to Australia. After finding that the wall connection would not fit his existing telephone connection he had put it in a cupboard and forgotten about it He did not realise the telephone remained Post Office property. The Judge, finding both receiving charges proved, said the defendant had “reconstructed an explanation to produce a defence” about having bought the watch from a man for $lOO when he told a detective initially, that he had got it from somewhere but did not know if he had bought it or it had been given to him. The Judge said the defendant would not have forgotten the details of a purchase of that kind. He said the defendant must have known, as everybody should know, that telephones for use in the subscriber telephone system belonged to the Post Office. Mr Rosenberg, in submissions in mitigation of penalty, said the defendant had rehabilitated himself to a quite remarkable degree from earlier troubles and drug addiction.