Woman dealt drugs from home detention address
A woman has been jailed for 22 months for drug dealing from the Timaru house where was serving a home detention term for being an accessory to murder.
The home detention sentence has now been served, but Justice David Gendall decided that there could not be another home detention term for Stephanie Rose McCormack, also known as Lawrence.
He said she had “squandered” the opportunity of re-establishing her relationship with her daughter and possibly regaining custody of her, by reoffending, and jailed her for 22 months in the High Court at Dunedin.
McCormack last year admitted being an accessory to the murder of Oamaru dairy farm worker Justin Conrad McFarlane, for doing the driving on the night he was killed.
She drove the four attackers to the murder scene at Pine Hill Road, near Oamaru, on a stormy night in September 2013. She drove some of the attackers away from the scene after the murder.
Four men were found guilty of the murder at the end of a nine-week trial in the Dunedin High Court a year ago. The Crown case was that they had gone to the farm intending to steal drugs and a motorcycle, and then fatally bashed, stomped, and tied up Mr McFarlane after entering the house where he had been asleep.
McCormack was given an eight-month home detention sentence, with a condition that she was not to possess or consume alcohol or illicit drugs for the duration of the sentence.
This year, police got a court order to examine her cellphone and found that between July 20 and 31 she offered to supply the class B drug Ritalin nine times, to four people. The offending took place at her home detention address.
Judge Gendall said: “The nature of this drug offending might be said in the circumstances here to be all the more concerning, given the role Ritalin played in the offending leading to the charge of being an accessory after the fact to murder.”
Her pre-sentence report recommended imprisonment because of her inability to comply with home detention.
“In my view it is irresistible that this offending contained a commercial element. The
insidious effects of drug dealing are well known, particularly how such offending causes harm and violence to the community and its values,” said the judge.
He said he was concerned about McCormack’s criminal history, particularly the four previous drug offences. The history also indicated her “disdain” for complying with court orders.
Sadly, it was not a case where leniency could be justified on the basis of McCormack’s young daughter.
Category: Focus
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