A man convicted of growing commercial quantities of cannabis at a Werribee property has had his sentence reduced after his co-offender received a shorter prison term.
Anh Dung Khoa was sentenced to two years and three-months’ imprisonment with a 15-month non-parole period in November last year after pleading guilty to one charge of cultivating a commercial quantity of narcotic plants between August 1 and November 1, 2013.
His wife and co-offender, Thi Le, was sentenced to a one-year community correction order, while another co-offender, Thi Do, was sentenced to seven months in jail.
In April 2013, Khoa recruited Do to be a crop-sitter looking after cannabis plants at a property in Fisher Court, Werribee, while promising her up to $10,000 for the job.
Wife Le was recruited in October to help Do harvest the crop.
On the morning of November 1, 2013, Khoa loaded bags of the harvested cannabis from the Fisher Court property into his van and drove away with Le.
Police intercepted the van a short distance away and seized 15.56 kilograms of cannabis.
Police found another 16.02 kilograms of cannabis plants after executing a search warrant at the Fisher Court property.
Khoa argued that there was a marked disparity between his and Do’s sentence, despite each pleading guilty to the same charge.
He appealed to the Supreme Court’s Court of Appeal to reduce his sentence on the principle of parity, and judges Mark Weinberg and Emilios Kyrou found that sentencing judge Mark Taft “was correct in concluding that the applicant’s offending was more serious than that of Ms Do because he was higher up in the hierarchy”.
“However, the judge’s remarks indicate that he understated the importance of Ms Do’s role to the success of that enterprise relative to that of the applicant,” the court transcript reads.
Khoa’s prison sentence was reduced to 18 months, with a one-year non-parole period.
