Public Prosecutor v Tabi - Sentence [2006] VUSC 85; CRC 044 2006 (3 November 2006)

IN THE SUPREME COURT
OF THE REPUBLIC OF VANUATU
(Criminal Jurisdiction)

Criminal Case No. 44 of 2006

PUBLIC PROSECUTOR

v

MICHAEL TABI

Coram: Justice C. N. Tuohy

Mr. Tavoa for Public Prosecutor
Mr. Bartels for Defendant

Dates of Sentence: 03 November 2006

SENTENCE

1. Michel Tabi you appear before the Court charged with cultivating cannabis and you had pleaded guilty to the charge. The police searched the house where you have been living, your grandfather’s house, and they found there a number of growing cannabis plants of different sizes totalling ten plants and they also found a number of seeds. You were growing those apparently for the purposes of smoking them although if that number of plants had reached maturity there would be far more cannabis than one person needs to smoke.
   
2. Through your lawyer you tell the Court that you found these seeds and that you thought they were sunflower seeds. I need tell you that the Court is not stupid and does not believe that story. I am satisfied that you knew exactly what you were doing and that you were growing cannabis.
   
3. You are aged 18 years, you come from Pentecost, and you arrived in Vila a few months ago without work and without money and not surprisingly you have got yourself in this trouble. It is a classic example of the problems of young men drifting to the urban areas without money and away from the structure of their village and their family.
   
4. Marijuana or cannabis seems to be becoming a real problem among young people in Vanuatu. Vanuatu has one advantage. It is thirty or forty years behind the other surrounding countries in so far as the use of marijuana or the abuse of marijuana is concerned. Because of that there is still time to stop this dangerous drug among young people before it gets worse like it has in other countries. It has many bad effects. It takes away motivation to work and to succeed. It can also bring about or precipitate mental illness. I commend the police force in Vanuatu for their zero tolerance attitude to marijuana and efforts in stopping it.
   
5. The Court is faced with sentencing you. Effectively there are only two sentences available to the Court: imprisonment immediate or suspended or a fine. A fine is not appropriate because you have no work and no money and no way of paying a fine.
   
6. I understand that there is legislation shortly to go before the Parliament which will enable the Court to impose sentences of community work and also to impose sentences of supervision placing young people especially under the guidance of a Correctional Services Officer. The sentence of supervision will also enable the probation officer from Correctional Services to direct a defendant where he should live. If those sentences were available to me today then I would use them because they are the appropriate sentences for this offending by an 18 year old but they are not yet available. What would be particularly useful would be to have a way of imposing a legal order that you go back to Pentecost. At the moment I do not have the power to order that but I am suggesting to you Mr. Tabi that that would be a very good idea and that if you stay in Port Vila with no money and no work you will only likely get yourself into trouble.
   
7. In other cases like yours the Chief Justice has imposed a term of imprisonment but then suspended it and I think that that is appropriate in your case as well.
   
8. Taking into account your age and your plea of guilty I impose a sentence of 6 months imprisonment. If you were older or if you had not pleaded guilty the sentence would be higher. I am going to suspend that sentence for a period of 1 year. I do that because of your age and because of the nature of the offence. In my view an immediate imposition of imprisonment is not appropriate.
   
9. What this means that if you commit any other offence within the next year then you will go to prison for 6 months for this offence plus anything you get for the additional offence. So this sentence is like a sword hanging over your head for the next year. If you do not commit any offence in the next year then this sentence will not go into effect at all. So whether you serve the sentence or not depends on your behaviour in the next year. So that is another reason why you should go back to Pentecost. The temptation to commit an offence I think will be less there than it is here.
   
10. That is the sentence of the Court if you wish to appeal you have 14 days to do so.
    

Dated AT PORT VILA on 3 November 2006

BY THE COURT

C. N. TUOHY
Judge