Final addresses in Nelson drug case

Press, 24 May 1985, Page 12

Final addresses in Nelson drug case

Nelson reporter

A jury which for two days heard evidence and legal argument in the District Court at Nelson about an alleged illegal drug transaction retired at 3.30 p.m. yesterday to consider its verdict.

Graham William Boland, aged 33, an autowrecker, was standing trial on a charge that on December 3, 1983, at Higgs Reserve, near Nelson, he sold cannabis to John Charles Needham and Tina Louise Williams.

The hearing was before Judge Laing. Mr W. R. Flaus appeared for the Crown and Mr D. L. Stevens for Boland.

Mr Stevens called only one defence witness, Peter Arthur Cooper, a meteorologist at Nelson Airport, who gave evidence about the weather on December 3.

In his final address, Mr Flaus again suggested that the jury consider carefully the credibility of the Crown witness, Miss Williams, who had already pleaded guilty to and been convicted on a charge of possessing can-

nabis for supply. He suggested she had a convenient memory. Many facts he sought to obtain from her she could not remember, yet when cross-examined by Mr Stevens she was adamant that the man who sold the cannabis to her husband was not the defendant, that the vehicle he had was a station waggon and that although it was yellow like the accused’s vehicle had no writing on it. Detective Stebbings saw the transaction, recognised Boland as one of those taking part, and his utility vehicle, and a few hours later a car of which the registration number was noted by Detective Stebbings, was stopped in Wellington and found to contain cannabis. Mr Stevens submitted to the jury that the Crown’s evidence fell far short of being conclusive. There was the unequivocal evidence of Miss Williams that Boland was not the dealer, and at that point, coming from the Crown’s chief witness, the Crown case failed completely.

He submitted that Boland was supposed to have handled the bags in which the cannabis had been found, but no police evidence disclosed any fingerprints. Needham obtained within a space of 90 minutes some 61b of cannabis, but he made a lot of telephone calls and it was not shown how many people he knew in the area, said Mr Stevens.

Referring to evidence given by a D.S.I.R. analyst at the conclusion of the Crown case that she examined seven bags of cannabis sent to her by the police, Mr Stevens said the Crown evidence was that only six bags had been sent. Either there had been a very serious mistake made by the D.S.I.R. or by the police — “very sloppy work on somebody’s part, and these sort of errors can’t be allowed to occur in a case as serious as this,” he said.

The case was based entirely on circumstantial evidence and fell woefully short of being established beyond reasonable doubt, Mr Stevens said.