A couple have been jailed for their involvement in a Taranaki meth operation. Photo / Stock Image 123rf
A couple have been jailed for their involvement in a Taranaki meth operation. Photo / Stock Image 123rf
A couple caught peddling methamphetamine in a police sting were the heads of a "family business" that dealt in the class A drug.
Not even jail time following earlier convictions of the same nature could deter Dion Hunt and Ada Sharon Pue from getting back into the game.
Following years of delays, the Taranaki pair went to trial last year to defend their latest spate of meth crimes but a jury found them guilty and on Friday they were each jailed for five years and five months.
A minimum period of imprisonment of 50 per cent of their sentence was also imposed, as Judge Tony Greig blasted the couple's continued offending.
"Purely to line the bottom of your own pocket and create wealth for yourself, you've involved yourself in something that causes great harm to our community," he told Pue, who appeared via audio-visual link from Arohata Prison, and Hunt, who appeared from Whanganui Prison.
"Every day I see the effects of this drug in the damaged people who come before me, both as offenders and as victims."
Hunt and Pue, who were jailed in 2002 for manufacturing and supplying meth, were busted again in 2017 in a police operation targeting such crimes in the Taranaki area.
As part of the operation, they were placed under visual and electronic surveillance and while the pair spoke in code when it came to the drug, it wasn't difficult for police to figure out what was going on.
On July 5, 2017, Pue, then 56, and Hunt, then 55, arranged in a phone call to one another to supply Pue's son, Tony, with meth.
As a result of the conversation, the following day police kept watch on the carpark at New Plymouth's McDonald's.
Sure enough, Hunt arrived at the spot and supplied Tony with the drug.
Tony was stopped in a vehicle by officers shortly afterwards and was found in possession of two bags of meth, weighing a total of 33.79g.
This led to a search of Pue and Hunt's Tikorangi property and there police discovered a plastic box containing 24.2g of meth hidden along their fenceline.
Dion Hunt and Ada Sharon Pue appeared in New Plymouth District Court on Friday. Photo / Tara Shaskey
Later that year, Tony admitted charges of possession and supply of meth and selling cannabis.
While he was jailed for three years and eight months, his mum, Pue, and Hunt continued to deny their involvement.
But more recently, and after they were found guilty at trial, Hunt conceded to supplying one of the bags found on Tony at the time of his arrest.
At the couple's sentencing in New Plymouth District Court, Judge Greig rejected that admission and ruled that Hunt had supplied all of the meth found on Tony that day.
Part of that judgment was based on the nature of the class A drug, as one bag was made up of brown crystals and the other of white crystals.
"Evidence established that you're in the business of receiving brown crystals and washing them, or recrystallising them, turning them from a less attractive product into a more attractive white crystal product," he said.
"It's also inherently unlikely that Tony Pue would need a further 10 grams of meth along with the $4000 that you gave him if he was already in possession of over twice that amount."
While Pue was in Hamilton at the time of the trade, Judge Greig said it was a joint enterprise and she was equally guilty of the supply.
"This was, as the Crown said to the jury in their closing, a family business."
Judge Greig said Tony was "lower in the pecking order" while Hunt and Pue were the "architects and main actors in the plan".
On charges of supplying and possession of meth, the Crown argued for a starting point of five years for both Hunt and Pue, with an uplift for their previous offending.
A minimum period of imprisonment was also warranted, the Crown submitted.
But the defence counsel argued a starting point of four years was appropriate with no minimum period of imprisonment and that a string of discounts should be applied.
Judge Greig, who regarded their offending as serious and viewed each as having a high degree of culpability, adopted the Crown's approach.
He said there was significant premeditation in their drug operation and they were both at risk of reoffending.
From a starting point of five years' jail with an uplift of nine months, Judge Greig gave a discount of four months for time spent on electronically-monitored bail.
Of their five years and five months' jail sentence, the couple will serve a minimum of 32 months and two weeks.
"You've offended this way in the past and I note you served a minimum period of imprisonment in that case and it hasn't deterred you," Judge Greig said.
It was a sentence Hunt clearly disagreed with as before the AVL was disconnected, he pulled a middle finger at the judge.
