Police v Maa'e [2015] WSSC 124 (21 April 2015)

THE SUPREME COURT OF SAMOA
Police v Maa’e [2015] WSSC 124

Case name:	Police v Maa’e
Citation:	[2015] WSSC 124
Decision date:	21 April 2015
Parties:	Police (prosecution) and Lemo Maa’e, male of Palisi (defendant)
Hearing date(s):
File number(s):
Jurisdiction:	CRIMINAL
Place of delivery:	Supreme Court, Mulinuu
Judge(s):	Justice Aitken
On appeal from:
Order:	Two years, four months’ imprisonment
Representation:	R Titi and L Tavita for the Prosecution Defendant appears in Person
Catchwords:	Possession of cannabis – possession of cannabis seeds – possession –
Words and phrases:
Legislation cited:	Narcotics Act
Cases cited:	R v Teriwi [1999]
	P v Ray Toa Lesa [2014] P v Valerie Toiloto P v Mika Papalii
Summary of decision:

THE SUPREME COURT OF SAMOA

HELD AT MULINUU

BETWEEN:

P O L I C E
Prosecution

AND:

LEMO MAA’E
male of Palisi
Defendant

Counsel:
R Titi and L Tavita for the Prosecution
Defendant appears in Person

Sentence: 21 April 2015

ORAL SENTENCE OF JUSTICE E M AITKEN

1. Mr Maa’e, you have pleaded guilty to 6 charges, under the Narcotics Act; 3 of possession of cannabis in various amounts and 3 of possession of cannabis seeds in various numbers. You are one of three offenders charged with this offending jointly; two of whom have pleaded guilty, you and Mr Semau. But despite Mr Paepaetele’s not guilty plea, the Prosecution brings the charges on the basis that the three of you are equally responsible for what happened and I will sentence you on that basis.
2. In brief, the facts are that on 23 January, the Police were alerted to your behaviours and approached you and the two others in the Palisi area. As they came up to the group, the three of you ran off but both you and Mr Semau, either dropped a bag or threw away bags as you were running. The bags that you both threw away were found by the Police and in those bags was found a significant amount of cannabis and seeds. The Police also searched the area where the three of you had been standing and found yet more cannabis and more seeds in that area also.
3. The total amount of cannabis, including the loose leaf and cannabis branches, weighed an excessive 148 grams and the Police estimate that to have been sufficient to produce 220 cannabis cigarettes and there was a total of 183 cannabis seeds, and the joint charges relate to those joint amounts.
4. As I said, you have pleaded guilty to all 6 charges; 4 pleas of guilty were entered at a very early opportunity and the pleas of guilty to the other two charges were entered on the morning of trial but once the Court had explained to you what the law relating to parties meant.
5. As you are no doubt aware, this sort of offending carries a term of imprisonment and to determine the appropriate sentence I must have regard to the maximum penalty and to the various cases already decided in this and other Courts. The maximum penalty for each of these offences is 14 years imprisonment; that is a clear signal from the Government here that the Government regards this as very serious offending, and certainly the decisions decided in this Court previously for this sort of amount of cannabis make it clear that the penalty must be one of imprisonment.
6. I refer very briefly to the decision of the New Zealand Court of Appeal in R v Teriwi, a decision decided in 1999 but cited from time to time by the Justices of this Court. I find the approach in that decision to be helpful, and in that decision the Court divided up culpability into three categories. In the first category, the Court looked at possession or cultivation of cannabis for personal use; it then looked at possession or cultivation for profit but a small scale operation; and it distinguished that from a large scale operation. Given the amount of cannabis and the number of seeds involved in your case, I assess this as being a small to moderate operation of both selling and potentially cultivation, and if I were to be guided at all by the New Zealand decision, I would fix the very broad range of penalty for such small to moderate operations as ranging from 3 to 8 years imprisonment.
7. I then have regard to decisions of this Court and in particular, there are two that are very similar; where similarity really is determined by the amount. In the case of P v Ray Toa Lesa (decided last year), the Court fixed a starting point of 4 years imprisonment where there was approximately 145 grams of cannabis; and in the case of P v Valerie Toiloto, again a starting point of 4 years where there was a similar amount of cannabis and 192 seeds. At perhaps another end of the spectrum is the decision of the Court in P v Mika Papalii, where the starting point was fixed at 5 ½ years. Your offending is not as serious as that; it is more equivalent to that of Valerie Toiloto, and for that reason I fix the starting point here as one of 4 years imprisonment.
8. I turn now to look at your personal circumstances. You have prior conviction for theft in 2010 but that is not, in my view, an aggravating factor as it is unrelated offending and, given the penalty for the offending, falling at the lower end of the spectrum. As to other matters, you are 32 years old; you are a single man but someone who has a very good employment history even though you left college in Year 10. You are the son of Church Ministers and travelled with your parents or moved with your parents as they moved from one parish to another in your youth. I acknowledge the presence of your mother in Court, who clearly still supports you, and I accept that you are remorseful and no doubt feel that you have brought a degree of shame to yourself and your family. You are described by the matai and the Village Mayor as a hardworking young man, someone who contributes to the work of the community, and somebody who is humble and obedient.
9. You have also demonstrated, in my view, aspects of your remorse and your good character. Firstly, you have openly acknowledged your prior cannabis use over the past 3 years, which takes some strength of character to admit. Secondly, I granted you bail releasing you from custody so you could have some time with your family to put your affairs in order before you were returned to serve your prison term, and you have honoured your bail, knowing that you are going to prison. The same cannot be said for your co-accused, Mr Semau.
10. What I infer from all of this information about you, Mr Maa’e, is that the whole process of being arrested and being brought before the Courts has caused you to think long and hard about your behaviours and is likely to already have had a significant deterrent effect.
11. For those reasons, I give you credit for those personal qualities and they permit me to reduce the sentence by 6 months – in other words, down to a sentence of 3 ½ years. From that sentence, you are also entitled to significant credit for your early pleas of guilty. They were entered, as I said, at a very early opportunity, with two exceptions, but given that you were unrepresented I intend to give you the maximum credit for your pleas of guilty to all charges. That would be a period of 14 months and that would reduce your sentence down to an end point sentence of one of 2 years and 4 months imprisonment, and that is the sentence that I now pass.
12. In respect of each of the charges, you are convicted now and sentence to serve 2 years and 4 months imprisonment but time served is to be deducted from that sentence.
13. In light of your age and your personal insights into your behaviour, I do not intend to impose a term of supervision to follow that; conditions on your release will be a matter for the Parole Board.

Thank you, Mr Maa’e, you may stand down.

_____________________
JUSTICE E M AITKEN