Case note
Home detention for precursor offending
Sentenced almost twenty years after the verdict, under today's law: home detention, not prison.
- Court
- District Court
- Counsel
- G Duff, with F Choi
- Charges
- Possession of methamphetaminePossession of a precursor substance
- Outcome
- Eight months' home detention; convicted and discharged on the other charge
- Reported
- NZ HeraldRNZNewstalk ZB
What happened
In 2006 Ms McJarrow was stopped in a car in Whangārei. Police found a methamphetamine pipe, 0.3 grams of methamphetamine, and 44 boxes of cold and flu medication containing pseudoephedrine. A jury found her guilty of possessing methamphetamine and a precursor substance. Before sentencing she went to Australia, where she stayed for almost 20 years. She was deported in 2026, arrested at the airport, and granted electronic bail. The Crown sought imprisonment: a starting point of two to two and a half years, with nine to 12 months added for absconding.
The point worth pausing on
The sentencing law had moved on in the meantime. Applying Zhang v R [2019] NZCA 507, the Judge took the Crown's own evidence that the tablets could have produced about 35 grams of methamphetamine, a modest amount at the bottom of the Zhang bands, and treated the offending as partly driven by addiction rather than commercial gain. He adopted the defence starting point of 18 months.
Absconding was not rewarded, but it added two months, not the nine to 12 the Crown sought. Two months came off for the steps she had taken since returning, leaving 18 months' imprisonment, which became nine months' home detention. One month came off for time on electronic bail: eight months' home detention.
A sentence imposed twenty years late is imposed under today's law, and today's law treats addiction differently.