18 Nov 2014
The Court held that none of the grounds advanced by the applicant raised a point of law of great and general importance arising from the prior judgment; accordingly the application for certification is dismissed.
26 Nov 2013
The application for leave to appeal out of time was dismissed because the applicant failed to provide an acceptable explanation for an inordinate 6½ year delay and the proposed grounds lacked merit; the sentencing judge acted within discretion following prevailing guidelines (applying ecstasy benchmarks to ketamine), correctly treated importation as an aggravating factor and applied an appropriate one‑third discount for the guilty plea; the court exercised its s83W power to disallow one month of pre‑determination custody from reckoning against the sentence.
11 Aug 2010
The Court dismissed both applications: for Farias (offence before Abdallah) the starting point of 23 years with a 2-year enhancement and one‑third plea discount fell within recognized pre- and post-Abdallah benchmarks for 1.634 kg with an international element; for Arrua (offence within Abdallah regime) Beeson J correctly applied the Abdallah tariff and 2-year enhancement for international element and the resulting sentence after plea discount was appropriate. Personal circumstances of foreign defendants carry little weight in serious drug trafficking cases.