Juror in tears as drug verdicts read out
A juror was sobbing and in tears in the jury box as guilty verdicts were delivered against 61-year-old Hugh James Robinson on the 12th day of his Christchurch District Court jury trial on BZP and firearms charges.
Judge Alistair Garland told the jury that they had “obviously applied themselves diligently” in considering the allegations of possession and conspiring to deal in party pills worth $240,000 on the street.
“I know it is very difficult, stressful, and can be a very unpleasant duty,” said the judge, as the juror continued to sob and was given tissues by a Corrections officer.
Judge Garland asked Crown prosecutor Deidre Orchard for Robinson’s criminal history, and then told the jury that he had been convicted in 1992 for cultivating cannabis and importing LSD and had been imprisoned for seven years six months.
That was apart from a conviction for possession of BZP – party pills which were declared illegal in 2008 – which they had heard about during the trial.
Robinson had denied charges of conspiring to sell the class C drugs, possession of them at his house, business premises, storage unit, and car, and possession of a sawn-off shotgun and ammuniton at the storage unit in Russley Road.
He said his son Jamie Daniel Robinson, 29, had been responsible for the drugs. Jamie Robinson has served a jail term for his drug offending.
Hugh Robinson said he had originally thought the pills had been left-over when his company, High Performance Health, stopped their production.
He also gave evidence explaining a series of cash transactions into his bank accounts as being related to synthetic cannabis sales at a time when it was still legal, and from sales of assets and artworks – including works by Picasso and Salvador Dali – which his wife Svetlana Robinson had brought back from Russia.
The jury rejected all the explanations with a clean sweep of guilty verdicts only about 2hrs 30min after it retired at the end of the judge’s summing up.
Judge Garland called for a pre-sentence report and remanded Robinson in custody for sentencing on November 16.
Category: Focus
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