DPP v Wilson [2026] VCC 196

4-Methylene/dioxy/methamphetamine (MDMA). 6. The maximum penalty for this offence, charged under the Commonwealth scheme, is life imprisonment.

1. The facts underpinning your plea are set out in the 'Summary of Prosecution Opening for Plea' dated 13 February 2026. I sentence you on the basis of that document and summarise just parts of it in these reasons for your sentence.
2. After the dogs' indication that the suitcase contained drugs, ABF officers conducted a search of the case. Inside the outer case was a second suitcase, which contained 10 orange packages, weighed by Border Force officers at

13 kilograms, but which ultimately contained just under 10 kilograms of methamphetamine, which was later calculated as having a 'pure' weight of 7972.3 grams. This is the weight that I must sentence you on and which is particularised as I have said, in the indictment. 3. I note that this represents 10.6 times the threshold of the 750 gram commercial quantity threshold for that drug. 4. ABF officers also found: * a vacuum-sealed bag containing a powdery brown substance (1.8kg); and * 1 x vacuum sealed bag containing multiple pink pills. 5. These latter two items were analysed and found to contain MDMA. The 'pure' weight of the MDMA was 772.5 and 161.9 grams respectively or a combined weight of 934.4 grams. This represents 1.5 times or 0.3 times the threshold for commercial quantity of that substance, being 500 grams. 6. Finally, inside a shopping bag, inside the larger suitcase were two vacuum-sealed parcels each containing a white solid substance. Later analysis established this was cocaine about 2 kilograms, later calculated as 640.3 grams of pure substance, representing 2.56 times the marketable quantity of 250 grams. 7. Some of the packets were labelled with weights in marker-pen. 8. You were arrested at the boarding gate. You told police you were flying to Burnie. You were carrying a wallet with a false name. 9. You answered questions in an interview. Your answers were a mixture of admissions, denials, and avoidance of the question. You did check the bag in. You said you did not know who packed the bag. You were 'not too sure' where you got the suitcase. You denied packing the items in the suitcase. You said you were going to Burnie for a holiday. You had booked the ticket. You did not have a return flight. 10. The investigators later analysed your phone. The internet history showed your making the flight booking on the Rex site. It also showed you had been trafficking, quite separately, in relatively small amounts of drugs (cannabis, cocaine and MDMA) to five people that you knew between April and November 2024. You are not charged with that conduct, but it gives some context to the charge and the events before me. 11. During a search of your car, police found a boarding pass in a different false name for a flight from Melbourne to Burnie three days earlier on 25 November 2024. Again, there is no evidence about the purpose for that visit, but it provides context for this charge. 12. You were charged and remanded into custody, where you have since remained. 13. Your case proceeded through the Magistrates' Court and after a sentence indication in this court, was accepted by you, a plea hearing was conducted on

18 February 2026. 14. You have a minor and I find irrelevant criminal history. One court outcome concerns charges of criminal damage, being drunk in a public place and resisting an emergency worker on duty. The court imposed a conditional adjournment without conviction. There is an irrelevant traffic offence recorded in Tasmania. You have led, by and large, a lawful life.

1. You are 36. Your mother raised you after she separated from your father, who was in and out of gaol. Your mother's new partner was violent to both of you.
2. You were bullied at school and struggled academically. When you left school, you took labouring jobs until the decline in your mental health undermined your capacity.
3. You have four children from two relationships. They range in age from 16 to 11.
4. In 2014, your mother passed away and this gave way to a complex grief reaction in you. In this period, you were described as 'going off the rails'. But you had already a longstanding problem with illicit drug use, which you started in your late teens.
5. At 16 you sustained a serious head injury when you fell off the back of a vehicle.
6. You were left with a permanent acquired brain injury with enduring, lifelong impairments, including cognitive slowing, compromised memory function and difficulties with organising, planning, and higher-order attention.[2] You also satisfy the diagnostic criteria for a 'neurodevelopmental language disorder' which impairs your social functioning.
7. You have also experienced episodes of psychotic illness. You have been treated as an inpatient, have sometimes disengaged from that treatment and sometimes been accepting of antipsychotic medication.
8. I will return to these problems later in these reasons when I consider their legal significance for this sentence.

Nature and circumstances of the offending: Objective assessment of the offending

1. The quantity of the illicit drug and the role in the offending are the first guides to my assessment of the gravity for trafficking in drugs.
2. In this case, it was sensibly conceded by your counsel that your trafficking involved a 'very, very high amount of drugs'. I recall too that this charge is a rolled up charge of two commercial quantities and one marketable quantity. The principles in treating rolled up charges apply. The three rolled up charges though are of course referable to a single maximum penalty. I do not apply in my earlier consideration, that I raised during the plea, that the diversity of drugs makes this more serious. In these circumstances, the combined weight of the drugs and the 'rolled up' nature of the charge inform the objective gravity.
3. However, I do also remember that within this rolled up charge, there is a commonality of act and time in relation to each composite charge; the acts were all the same. The charge is a single date charge.
4. Parliament has determined that the maximum penalty for this charge is life imprisonment and this reminds the Court of the seriousness with which the community expects to have offending in this category dealt with.
5. The quantity of drugs you were found with pulls in the direction of the categorisation of your offending as objectively very serious, but I must also consider your role.
6. There is little information about the role you performed, other than what I can safely infer from the following:
   • you were trusted to carry a lot of drugs alone;
   • you were given a low-quality, low ranking task in that your exposure to risk of detection was very great; and
   • there is no evidence of any ongoing responsibility attributable to you for the onward movement of the drugs after your arrival in Burnie.
7. Your barrister argued that given the evidence of your impaired mental functioning, and their consequences for your functioning and judgment, I should find on the balance of probabilities, that the objective gravity of your offending be 'substantially reduced by 'by [your] cognitive impairment, lack of anticipated financial reward, and [your] limited role in the offending'.[3] He argued that your impairments left you vulnerable to exploitation.
8. In support of this, your counsel called Dr Treeby, a clinical neuropsychologist to give evidence about your various and low functional capacities, by reference to your acquired brain injury and a full scale IQ (in the 5th percentile range). These difficulties, it was submitted, reduced your problem-solving skills and made you vulnerable to being 'agreeable', and particularly to agreeing to things you did not fully comprehend. I accept that evidence.
9. However, your counsel, Mr Barreiro, then went further and submitted that I ought to make a factual finding on the balance of probabilities that you had in fact, prior to being at the airport, been specifically taken advantage by some other or others. He submitted that I should make this finding on the basis of what you had said to the neuropsychologist, then quoted at [40] of Mr Treeby's report:

A bloke said drop this bag off and I'll look after you. The bag was locked. I was worried I might get bashed. I thought I'd be hurt or killed. I still do.[4]

10. To Ms Lechner, quoted at [4] of her report, you said:

[you were] 'told to' take the bag to Tasmania and believed that [you were] 'helping out' a friend. [You] stated that although not directly threatened, [you] feared negative repercussions if [you] did not do so.

11. These statements, combined with the evidence of your disability, were said to be sufficient for me to make a finding that there had been a specific event of direct personal exploitation of you, during which you had difficulty saying 'no' on account of your being 'agreeable' and which caused you to book the ticket and take the bag to the airport. There was, it was said, a 'causal link' between your disability and your offending. The prosecution resisted that submission.
12. I conclude that there is insufficient evidence to support such a finding. Your untested statements to the report-writers do not provide sufficient evidentiary basis for such a finding. To make such a finding, I would have to infer or invent a factual scenario about which there is simply no evidence, other than your susceptibility.
13. I do accept this much; you were a junior, if necessary, cog in a trafficking enterprise that was not your own, and, like many carriers of drugs before you, you were put into a high-risk role where detection is almost inevitable; there is inherently, structurally, an aspect of exploitation in that scenario.
14. As I have said, your position in the enterprise bespeaks a limited, subservient role, and there is an exploitive quality to that, though it is one common more generally, to the drug mules' role.
15. I accept that the evidence allows an inference that you were an unsophisticated servant of a scheme in which you held little or no status. You were very exposed to apprehension. There was no evidence that you profited to any great degree, or if you did, you were being 'looked after' by being provided with small amounts of drugs.
16. I bear in mind that authority tells me that it is simply not always possible to make findings about role and seniority in drugs cases;[5] and the structure of drug trafficking is often specifically directed at the avoidance of understanding of that kind.
17. The prosecution urged a finding that you knew (as opposed to being reckless in regard to) the quantity of drugs in your possession. I decline to make such a finding. I have listed the evidence from which your state of knowledge can be inferred, and I conclude that on the information available, you were reckless, albeit to a high degree of recklessness, as to the quantum of drugs in your suitcase. My reluctance to put it any higher is in part based on the significant differences between the initial weight of the suitcase (20kg), the initial weights of the drugs and the ultimate weights of the pure drugs.
18. I assess your moral culpability. On the one hand, there are the circumstances surrounding your apprehension. You had evidence of low-level trafficking in drugs on your phone. You booked your own flight, you booked it using a false name. You had made three other recent trips to Tasmania, (about which nothing else is known) except the boarding pass in the different false name. You went to the airport ready for departure and went through self-check in. The suitcase weighed 20 kilograms, as I have said.
19. I find that you understood that your task was to carry the drugs in the suitcase, and that you had some idea of their weight, and that the drugs would be valuable.
20. That said, I accept that you were an unsophisticated participant in this arrangement. There was no attempt at all to conceal the contents of the suitcase. Your answers to investigators suggest only a very basic appreciation of the seriousness of the situation; you betrayed no signof having ever considered this moment and how you would manage, if you came to police attention. There is no evidence of enrichment.
21. I find that you knew the nature of what you did, but your profit from the role was small or modest, that you performed your role competently and that you were trusted.
22. Your offending was objectively serious, the quantum great, your rank low and your moral culpability of modest order.

1. Although not an early plea, you entered a plea of guilty and for that you are to receive a significant reduction of your sentence; you have, by your plea, saved the Court and the community important resources that can now be directed elsewhere. In my opinion, the crown case was always a strong one, but this does not detract from the utilitarian benefit which will be recognised and expressed in units of time.
2. You have also accepted responsibility for what you have done. This allows me, with the other evidence of your family, to conclude you have good prospects of rehabilitation. You will need to attend to the treatment that keeps your symptoms stable and to your habits of drug use, but you have good relationships to return to and it is clear, that you have affection and support in the community. Your offending is out of character and not entrenched. There were no submissions made in relation to the probable effect of your sentence on your family, for the purposes of s16A(2)(p) of the Crimes Act and applying Totaan,[6] but I infer that your children will miss their father, whose immediate affection they must live without for some time. This feature of mitigation earns only a very slight weight in this sentence given the state of the evidence.
3. I find there is a reduced role, reduced, not eliminated, for general deterrence on account of your cognitive and intellectual functioning. As the court said in Muldrock:

The retributive and denunciatory aspect of a sentence that is appropriate to a person of ordinary capacity will often be inappropriate to the situation of a mentally retarded offender and to the needs of the community.[7]

4. Although I have rejected the 'causal link' between your disability and your offending, I do also accept that custody will be more onerous for you than for a person who does not labour under your range of impairments.
5. Your counsel argued that yours was a case in which the court should exercise the discretion of mercy.
6. Professor Fox, cited in DPP v Snow, identifies the two kinds of mercy which can operate in sentencing.[8] The first is where mercy appears as a discretionary feature ...which can be activated in determining what weight is to be attributed to an established mitigating factor in arriving at sentence.
7. The second kind, described as 'the true privilege of mercy' said to be found in the residual discretion vested in each sentencer which allows a downward departure from the principle of proportionality outside the principles of mitigation. It can be utilised in exceptional circumstances to allow weight to be given to factors which are ordinarily not regarded as relevant mitigating considerations.
8. The prosecution submitted that your case was not one of those that provoked an unusual merciful sentence. The painful personal circumstances of the other drug couriers in the table of comparable cases were cited.
9. The history of drug couriers is, sadly, comprised of people whose personal circumstances make them vulnerable to exploitation by more sophisticated drug profiteers: the addicted, the mentally ill, the infirm, the indebted, the socially vulnerable. Your story does no more than sit among those stories of the exploited. There are significant matters in mitigation of your sentence, but it does not earn special treatment on either category of the doctrine of mercy.

1. On your plea, character references were tendered. Chelsea Smolenaers calls you her father and that is what you have been to her since she was eight months old. Chelsea's reference is brief and eloquent. She writes that:

My dad is a good man; he has always accepted my siblings and me for who we are and has done everything he can to support us. I understand what my dad did, but I don't believe his offences reflect who he is as a person.

Mathew and I co-parent extremely well. Mathew is an extraordinary dad, never misses a birthday, Christmas, easter, school activity or anything else that his children are involved with. He not only supports his children, but he also supports me, as the mother of his children.

3. By reference to these very special materials and your very limited prior criminal history, I find that with the right treatment for your mental health and drug use, your prospects for rehabilitation are good.
4. Originally, your counsel submitted that I could impose a Recognisance Release Order. This submission was later abandoned. The prosecution submitted for a head sentence and a non-parole period; this later became a common submission.

1. Pursuant to s16A(1) of the Crimes Act (Cth), my overriding duty is to impose a sentence that is of a severity appropriate in all the circumstances of the case.
2. I have considered all the other available sentences, including the Recognisance Release Order originally submitted for, but conclude that no other sentence than one of imprisonment, with a non-parole period, would meet the requirements of s16A(1) in this case. [9]
3. I note that I am fixing a sentence after giving a sentence indication; the indicated sentence of eight years does not govern the instinctive synthesis other than to fix a ceiling.
4. There is a need for this sentence to denounce your offending and even accepting as I have, the reduction in the role for general deterrence. The drug trade exploits the vulnerable, degrades lives, and you were charged with bringing in, in solid form, substances that would later poison people's lives and bring great suffering to their families.
5. I find there is only little need of specific deterrence in your case.
6. I was assisted by the provision of a table of comparable cases from a range of intermediate appellate courts Australia-wide. These gave me usual guidance to current sentencing practice, without setting upper or lower bounds of my sentence.
7. Before I impose sentence, I will say something about the fixing of the non-parole period in this case. That non-parole period may invite scrutiny, falling, as it does at the very lower end of the bracket of 'usual' non-parole periods.
8. I gave the fixing of the non-parole period careful consideration. I do not forget the gravity of the offending. I fix this non-parole period in order to provide for mitigation of punishment in favour of your rehabilitation through a lengthy period of conditional freedom.[10] You will have conditional freedom, under supervision which is still penal in nature. I have arrived at this non-parole period because of your very limited prior history, your family support and this all combines to give me some faith that with the right attention to your drug use and mental health (both projects will be better served in the community under supervision) your prospects for rehabilitation, and therefore for the safety of the community, will be served by this particular disposition.

1. So, Mr Wilson on the charge of trafficking in a commercial quantity of controlled drugs, you are convicted and sentenced to eight years' imprisonment.
2. I direct that you are to become eligible for parole after serving four years and 10 months. I have already stated my reasons for arriving at that part of the sentence. Pursuant to 16E(2) of the Crimes Act 1914 (Cth) and s18 of the Sentencing Act 1991 (Vic), I declare that you have already served 454 days which will be calculated and reckoned as already served pursuant to this sentence. Pursuant to s6AAA of the Sentencing Act, I indicate that had you been found guilty after trial, rather than pleaded guilty, I would have imposed a head sentence of 13 years with a non-parole period of eight and a half years. Counsel that completes the sentence.
3. MR BARREIRO: May it please the court.
4. HER HONOUR: Ms Baxter, have I missed any orders?
5. MS BAXTER: No, Your Honour.
6. MR BARREIRO: No, Your Honour.
7. HER HONOUR: Thank you for your assistance. Mr Barreiro, we have a few minutes before we start our next case, if you wish to speak to your client, you can have that time now, just for a few minutes.
8. MR BARREIRO: Thank you.
9. HER HONOUR: All right, thank you everyone.
10. MR BARREIRO: Thank you, Your Honour.

[1] Contrary to Criminal Code Act 1995 (Cth) s 302.1(1).

[2] Psychological Report of Dr Matthew Treeby dated 12 October 2025 [70] ('Dr Matthew Treeby Report').

[3] Plea Submissions dated 29 October 2025 [7].

[4] Dr Matthew Treeby Report (n 2) [40].

[5] R v Olbrich [2000] NSWCCA 389; Weininger v R [2003] HCA 14; 212 CLR 629; 196 ALR 451; 77 ALJR 872 (2 April 2003).

[6] Totaan v R [2022] NSWCCA 75; (2022) 108 NSWLR 17 (Bell CJ, Gleeson JA, Harrison, Adamson and Dhanji JJ); Mohamed v R [2022] VSCA 136, [83]-[93].

[7] Muldrock v The Queen [2011] 244 CLR 120 [53]-[54].

[8] DPP v Snow (a pseudonym) [2020] VSCA 67 [83] - [84].

[9] Crimes Act 1914 (Cth) s 17A.

[10] DPP v Josefsky Per Callaway J at [2005] VSCA 265 [43].