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[2025] QCA 137
procedural. The application for leave to appeal against sentence was struck out. Bowskill CJ gave the reasons, with Bond JA and Boddice JA agreeing.
1 cited instrument linked from this judgment.
Blackmore wanted permission to appeal his sentence, arguing that it was manifestly excessive. The Court did not decide whether that argument was right. It struck out the application because he had not filed the required submissions, did not attend the hearing, and had not otherwise taken steps to move the case forward. The judgment therefore resolves the application on procedural grounds, not the merits of the sentence.
AI-generated legal information, not legal advice. Zoe can make mistakes. Check the cited source, and for advice about your situation consult a qualified Australian lawyer.
1,962 words · generated 07/10/2026
The Queensland Court of Appeal dealt with Terry Allen Blackmore’s application for leave to appeal against sentence in R v Blackmore [2025] QCA 137. Bowskill CJ delivered the Court’s reasons. Bond JA and Boddice JA agreed with the proposed order and reasons.
The proposed appeal concerned a sentence imposed after Blackmore pleaded guilty. On 3 August 2023, he was convicted of trafficking in dangerous drugs and nine counts of unlawfully possessing various drugs. On 16 October 2023, he received five years’ imprisonment for trafficking, suspended after he served 15 months, with an operational period of five years. On the remaining counts he was convicted but not further punished, because those offences essentially formed part of the trafficking.
The judgment describes the trafficking as lasting one year and nine months. It involved a range of steroid drugs and a sophisticated operation using encrypted messaging apps and then a dark-web website. The judgment records about 2,093 orders, at least $565,000 in “total transaction money”, and Blackmore’s acceptance below that his earnings would have been “a little higher than a $100,000”. These details describe the offending and the sentencing context. The Court of Appeal did not revisit or determine the sentencing merits.
The sole proposed ground of appeal was that the sentence was manifestly excessive. However, the Court did not decide that question. It instead considered whether the application should continue when Blackmore had not filed an outline of submissions, had not attended the hearing, and had not otherwise progressed the application. The Court struck it out.
The judgment supplied in the question has no numbered paragraphs. For that reason, this analysis does not assign paragraph references. Quotations are identified by the text itself rather than by invented paragraph numbers.
The Court’s decision turned on the procedural history. The application was filed on 14 November 2023. It was listed for hearing on 13 February 2025, but Blackmore asked for it to be delisted, referring to further information and evidence he said he needed because of alleged previous lawyer error. The Court adjourned the matter to a date to be fixed.
The Registry later tried to relist it. Blackmore asked that it remain delisted while “attached and outstanding matters” were dealt with. After the respondent requested a review hearing, Blackmore continued to say he was waiting for the result of another case. A review hearing took place on 28 April 2025, although Blackmore did not attend. Justice Mullins directed that the application be listed for hearing on 30 July 2025 and that the Registry inform Blackmore how to request a change to that date.
The Registry told him that his outline of submissions was due by 2 July 2025. It also explained that a request to change the hearing date had to be made to the Court at a review hearing, rather than administratively. No outline was filed. In July, Blackmore again asked for delay, saying the other case related to charges that had not been dealt with at sentencing and that he could not provide full details until its outcome was known. He also said he might prefer to “pull it completely”. The Registry explained that abandoning the proceeding required a Form 30 notice, and that a formal Court order was needed for a further adjournment. No notice of abandonment followed.
When the matter was called on 30 July, Blackmore did not appear. Bowskill CJ described the position directly: “The applicant has taken no steps to advance his application in this Court.” The Court also considered his emails insufficient to justify letting the proceeding continue to languish. The outcome followed from that assessment: the application for leave to appeal against sentence was struck out.
The judgment does not state a general multi-part test for striking out an application for want of prosecution. Its reasoning is fact-specific and procedural. The relevant features were the repeated opportunities and communications, the failure to file submissions, the absence at the hearing, and the lack of a filed notice formally abandoning the proceeding.
The judgment does not describe the law before the decision, analyse competing authorities, or announce a new legal test. It cites no cases or statutory provisions. It therefore cannot, on its own, support a detailed account of the general law governing delay or strike-out powers in criminal appeal proceedings.
What it does establish about this particular proceeding is limited but clear: the Court considered it appropriate to strike out the leave application in the circumstances before it. The reasons connect that result to the applicant’s failure to advance the matter and the inadequacy of his explanations for further delay.
The decision did not alter or clarify the substantive law of sentencing on trafficking in dangerous drugs. Although the judgment records the sentence, the nature and scale of the offending, and the proposed ground that the sentence was manifestly excessive, it does not assess the sentence against sentencing principles or compare it with other cases. Nor does it decide the legal consequences of the alleged lawyer error or of the other outstanding charges mentioned in Blackmore’s emails.
Accordingly, the “after” position that can safely be drawn from the supplied judgment is narrow: this application ended by being struck out, without a ruling on its proposed sentencing ground. Any broader account of the governing strike-out rules, the effect of a strike-out on future proceedings, or the sentencing law would require sources not included in the judgment text supplied here.
The reasons begin by identifying the proposed merits issue: “The sole ground on which the applicant would appeal, if given leave, is that the sentence is manifestly excessive.” In plain English, Blackmore was asking permission to challenge the length and structure of his sentence on that basis. The phrase “if given leave” matters: the Court was considering permission to appeal, not an appeal after leave had been granted.
The Court summarised the sentencing context, including the scale and organisation of the drug operation. It recorded that the sentencing judge had placed considerable weight on the likely deportation to the UK after the custodial portion and on Blackmore’s difficult family circumstances. Those matters explain the sentencing decision described in the judgment, but the Court of Appeal did not decide whether the sentencing judge had weighed them correctly.
On the procedural issue, Bowskill CJ said: “The applicant has taken no steps to advance his application in this Court.” This was the Court’s overall characterisation of the conduct of the proceeding. The earlier account shows the concrete matters behind it: no outline of submissions, no attendance at the hearing, and no formal abandonment.
The Court added that the applicant’s emails were “inadequate to explain why this proceeding should be permitted to languish any further.” In everyday terms, the Court did not consider the explanations about the related matter and alleged lawyer error enough to justify keeping the leave application pending indefinitely.
Finally, the Court concluded: “In the circumstances, it is appropriate that the application for leave to appeal against sentence be struck out.” This is a procedural disposition. It does not mean the Court found that the sentence was not manifestly excessive; it means the Court did not decide that issue.
The judgment is most directly relevant to a narrow procedural pattern: an applicant seeks leave to appeal against sentence, has been told about a hearing and a submissions deadline, does not file the required submissions, does not attend the hearing, and has not taken formal steps to abandon or otherwise progress the application. The Court also took account of repeated Registry contact and earlier opportunities to seek a review of the listing.
The case may be useful when examining how a court records a proceeding that has remained inactive despite procedural reminders. The judgment demonstrates that informal emails requesting delisting or delay were not treated here as sufficient to keep the application pending. It also records that the Registry told Blackmore that a formal Court order was required for a further adjournment and that a Form 30 was required to abandon the proceeding.
That description should not be turned into a universal rule. The judgment does not say that any failure to file submissions, any non-attendance, or any request based on another proceeding must result in a strike-out. It does not discuss exceptions, compare other procedural circumstances, or set out a threshold applicable to all applicants.
The facts also include a claimed connection to other charges and alleged lawyer misrepresentation. But the Court did not investigate those allegations, decide whether they were accurate, or determine whether they could affect any future proceeding. They appear in the reasons as part of the applicant’s explanation for seeking delay, which the Court found inadequate to justify further continuation of this application. The decision should therefore be used for its actual procedural reasoning, not as a finding on the truth or legal significance of those allegations.
The supplied judgment contains no discussion of later cases, and the text provides no subsequent judicial treatment of R v Blackmore [2025] QCA 137. The judgment itself was delivered on 30 July 2025, so the text alone cannot establish how later courts have applied, followed, distinguished, or otherwise treated it.
It also contains no citations to earlier decisions. There is therefore no precedent relationship to extract from the supplied text, and no basis here for describing the decision as applying or distinguishing a particular authority.
For legal research purposes, the safe source-grounded description is that this is a short Court of Appeal decision striking out a sentence-leave application on the procedural facts set out in the reasons. Whether later courts have adopted its approach, and whether it has been cited in other decisions, cannot be answered from this judgment alone. The judgment does not claim to state a new general doctrine or identify itself as changing existing law.
Several matters remain unresolved because they were not before the Court for determination, or because the supplied judgment does not address them. First, the Court did not decide whether the sentence was manifestly excessive. The sole proposed ground was identified, but the application ended before the Court considered its merits.
Second, the Court did not determine the alleged lawyer error or misrepresentation. Blackmore said that charges from the same crime had not been dealt with at sentencing and that another court matter remained outstanding. The reasons record those statements as part of his requests for delay. They are not findings that the lawyer acted improperly, that the charges should have been dealt with together, or that any such matter altered the sentence.
Third, the judgment does not explain the broader legal test for striking out a criminal leave application for want of prosecution. It gives the Court’s conclusion on these facts but cites no authority and does not discuss potential exceptions or alternative procedural orders.
Fourth, the consequences of the strike-out are not explored. The judgment does not state whether, or in what circumstances, a further application or another procedural step could be available. No conclusion about that question can be drawn from this text.
Finally, the decision does not resolve the significance of the deportation and family circumstances considered by the sentencing judge. Those matters are part of the background to the sentence, not issues decided by the Court of Appeal. The central holding remains procedural: in the circumstances described, the Court struck out the application because it had not been progressed.
This is general legal information, not legal advice. Zoe can make mistakes. Before acting on or relying on this analysis, have it checked by a qualified Australian lawyer.
Source: Queensland Judgments (Supreme Court Library Queensland) (www.queenslandjudgments.com.au). Converted to plain text by ZoeLaw. Not the official version.
[2025] QCA 137
COURT OF APPEAL
BOWSKILL CJ / BOND JA / BODDICE JA
CA No 218 of 2023 / SC No 39 of 2023
THE KING / v / BLACKMORE, Terry Allen Applicant
BRISBANE
WEDNESDAY, 30 JULY 2025
JUDGMENT
BOWSKILL CJ: The applicant was convicted on 3 August 2023, on his pleas of guilty, of one count of trafficking in dangerous drugs, as well as nine counts of unlawfully possessing various drugs. On 16 October 2023, he was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment for the trafficking, suspended after serving 15 months for an operational period of five years. In respect of all of the other counts, he was convicted but not further punished (because those offences essentially formed part of the trafficking).
An application for leave to appeal against the sentence was filed on 14 November 2023. The sole ground on which the applicant would appeal, if given leave, is that the sentence is manifestly excessive.
The trafficking took place over a period of one year and nine months and involved a wide range of steroid drugs, including those listed in schedule 1 and some listed in schedule 2 of the Drugs Misuse Regulation 1987. The applicant’s trafficking operation was aptly described as professional, organised and sophisticated. It initially involved the use of encrypted messaging apps, for about the first three months, after which the applicant created and administered a website, operated on the dark web, on which he advertised steroids and other illegal drugs for sale, and also arranged for other vendors of drugs to sell their drugs, for commission paid to the applicant. The intensity of sale activity was substantial, with some 2,093 orders placed on the website, and at least $565,000 of “total transaction money” paid. Although it was difficult to identify how much the applicant made from his illegal drug business, it was accepted by him below that it would have been “a little higher than a $100,000”.
The applicant entered a late plea of guilty, about a day before the trial was to commence, in the face of “powerful evidence” of his guilt. As against that, the learned sentencing judge placed considerable weight on the fact that it was virtually inevitable the applicant would be deported to the UK following the custodial portion of any sentence, and his difficult family circumstances, as a result of which his incarceration would be more burdensome. It was this factor in particular which persuaded the sentencing judge to accept the applicant’s submission to “go as low as” a five year sentence for the trafficking, and to suspend the sentence at about the quarter mark, namely, 15 months.
The applicant has not complied with the requirement to file an outline of submissions in relation to his application for leave to appeal.
The application was listed for hearing on 13 February 2025. The Registrar wrote to the applicant on 6 February 2025, asking when he intended to file his outline of submissions.
The applicant emailed the Registry on 13 February 2025, requesting that his application be delisted “due to additional information and evidence required due to previous lawyer error”. He said he would contact the Court to relist the matter “once further information is present”. The Court did, on that date, adjourn the application to a date to be fixed.
In March this year, the Registry took steps to try to relist the application. The applicant’s response, on 3 April 2025, was that he wanted the application to remain delisted for the meantime “until attached and outstanding matters have been dealt with”.
On 4 April 2025, the respondent requested that the matter be listed for a review hearing. On 16 April, after a number of emails from the Registry, the applicant said that he did not want a date for a review to be scheduled, because he was “awaiting the result of another case which is included” and could not schedule a date until then. That was not acceptable to the Court, and the matter was listed for review on 28 April 2025 before Justice Mullins.
On 26 April 2025, the applicant sent an email to the Registry saying:
“I have asked a number of times for this to be delisted. This was requested under the grounds of misrepresentation from my lawyer. The same crime had lower level charges that were meant to have been handed up to the Supreme Court but were not. After my time was served I was surprised but the remaining 5 year old charges from the same crime. Those are currently in the courts, and until they are dealt with, the extent of lawyer misrepresentation is not clear.
Again I will ask, for this to be delisted until all charges from the same crime are dealt with.”
The review was not delisted and took place at 9.30 am on 28 April 2025. The applicant did not appear. Justice Mullins ordered that the sentence application be listed for hearing on 30 July 2025. Her Honour also directed the Registrar to advise the applicant of the listing, and that if he wishes to change the listing date, he must request a review of the matter.
The Registry emailed the applicant on 28 April 2025, as directed, as well as informing the applicant that his outline of submissions was due to be filed on or before 2 July 2025. This email informed the applicant that “any request to change the hearing date of the appeal must be made to the Court at a review hearing and cannot be changed administratively”. The applicant did not file any submissions.
On 3 July 2025, the Registry emailed the applicant, in relation to his now overdue outline. The applicant responded on 8 July to say that:
“This has been delayed due to another outstanding and connected court case where charges were not handed up due to lawyer error. I have been awaiting an outcome on that before I can address everything with this.
At this stage, not knowing the outcome of the outstanding court matter, I cannot provide the full details for this as my request was filed under lawyer misrepresentation and his negligence to have all matters addressed at Supreme Court handled at sentencing falls under the same claim of misrepresentation.
I would require this to be delayed until all matters are dealt with. If this can be delisted, I can make contact once all matters are dealt with.”
The Registry responded on the same day to remind the applicant that he was told on 28 April 2025 that his application was listed for hearing on 30 July, and that if he wished to change the hearing date, he was required to request, and appear at, a review hearing. He was also told that if he did not appear at the hearing today, orders may be made in his absence dismissing his appeal for want of prosecution.
The applicant responded, still on 8 July, in similar terms, indicating that he could not file an outline, and if the matter could not be delayed until all matters are dealt with, “it’s pointless, as it will be missing vital information”. He also said that he would rather, “pull it completely and not waste my time without full details of the extent of misrepresentation”.
The following day, 9 July 2025, the Registry responded to advise the applicant that if he wished to abandon his proceeding, he would need to sign a Form 30 - Notice of Abandonment (which was provided to him as an attachment to the email). He was also told that he could raise his concerns with the Court on 30 July 2025 if he wished to continue with his appeal, and that a formal order of the Court would be required in order to further adjourn the proceeding. Once again, he was told that if he did not appear at the hearing, orders may be made in his absence dismissing the appeal for want of prosecution. There has been no further correspondence with the Court since that date, no Notice of Abandonment has been filed, and no outline of submissions has been filed by the applicant.
When the matter was called in Court today, there was no appearance by the applicant. The applicant has taken no steps to advance his application in this Court. His emailed communications are inadequate to explain why this proceeding should be permitted to languish any further. In the circumstances, it is appropriate that the application for leave to appeal against sentence be struck out.
BOND JA: I agree with the order proposed by the Chief Justice and with her reasons for so doing.
BODDICE JA: I also agree with the orders and reasons.
BOWSKILL CJ: The order will be that the application for leave to appeal against sentence is struck out.
R
Blackmore [2025] QCA 137
The application for leave to appeal against sentence was struck out. Bowskill CJ gave the reasons, with Bond JA and Boddice JA agreeing.