A man’s appeal against a five-year, three-month prison sentence for his role in growing cannabis at a Sunshine North factory has been upheld in the Supreme Court.
Quoc Danh Pham appealed against his sentence for cultivating cannabis in a commercial quantity on the grounds his defence had been given incorrect information by the prosecution before his February trial this year.
The court had heard police discovered an “elaborate and extensive hydroponic operation”, including 258 kilograms of cannabis, on September 2, 2013.
Police also found hydroponic hose fittings, a face mask, an address to a garden supply business, and a small amount of cannabis in Pham’s car.
Pham and another colleague had been paying rent to the factory’s landlord, meeting him in a Bunnings car park in Sunshine.
However, Justice Stephen McLeish found there had been a “substantial miscarriage of justice”.
He said Pham had not been given the opportunity to participate in an identification parade. He said also that inadmissible evidence had been used.
“Before pre-trial argument, defence counsel was given mistaken or false information about why an identification parade was not offered to the applicant, or conducted,” Justice McLeish said.
“A substantial miscarriage of justice was occasioned by the admission into evidence of a witness’s photo board identification of [Pham].
“[Pham] was not asked by the police, at any relevant time before the photo board identification, or at all, whether he would participate in an identification parade,” the judge said.
“At the time of the photoboard identification on 5 September 2013, he [Pham] was being held at the Melton police station.”
Pham was granted bail on September 24 until a further directions hearing on March 10 next year.
