Women sob as verdicts given

Press, 10 September 1988, Page 8

Women sob as verdicts given

A woman sobbed softly at the back of the court and a woman juror had tears streaming down her face and was trembling when the foreman announced guilty verdicts against three people on drug charges in the High Court last evening.

Mark John Walters, aged 27, of London, who has been in custody for more than two years awaiting trial, was found guilty on two charges of conspiring to import LSD, a classA drug, into New Zealand and supplying the drug. Patricia Aitken, aged 26, of Takaka, was convicted on two similar charges and Moray Ross Aitken, aged 33, a goldminer of the Happy Sam Community of Takaka, was found guilty of one charge of conspiring to supply LSD.

Mr Justice Hardie Boys remanded the three accused in custody to September 16 for sentence.

The jury reached its verdict after deliberating for five-and-a-half hours after a two-week trial. The Crown case was that Walters had been one of two men “at the very top of the pyramid” of a drug ring operated in 1986 to im-

port LSD into New Zealand and to distribute it to dealers. ' The other man at the centre of the drug operation was David Alistair Jarvis, who at the time lived at Ruby Bay, Nelson. He is now serving nine years jail for drug offences. Much of the prosecution evidence in this case consisted of tape recordings made from a bug planted in Jarvis’s home telephone. Two Scotland Yard detectives were flown to Christchurch to give evidence at the trial.

Walters gave evidence and the Aitkens called three witnesses. Walters was arrested in London on July 29, 1986, and extradited to New Zealand. He has been in custody since that time. The day after his arrest Jarvis, the Aitkens and others involved in drug dealing were arrested in drug squad raids.

Both defence counsel submitted that the Crown had failed to prove the necessary elements of conspiracy.

Messrs Graham Panckhurst and Mark Zarifeh appeared for the Crown; Mr Stan Barker and Ms Jane Farish for Walters and Mr Barry Hart, of Auckland, for the Aitkens.