A Crown prosecutor believes a Blenheim woman sentenced for selling LSD may have been covering for the person who supplied her the drug.
Tracey Diggs, 23, a sickness beneficiary, was sentenced to nine months' home detention, 140 hours' community work for possession of LSD for supply, supplying LSD and possession of cannabis when she appeared in Blenheim District Court yesterday.
Crown prosecutor Herman Roose said while it was "significant" Diggs admitted the 73 tabs of LSD and a small amount of cannabis found during a police search belonged to her, she was not fully co-operative with police.
Diggs would not tell police who she got the drugs except in vague terms, he said.
"It may be inappropriate to read between the lines, but it seems to me she may have been covering for someone. Her degree of assistance to police was not 100 per cent," he said.
"Police would liked to have known where [the LSD] came from other than someone passing through from Auckland."
Judge Tony Zohrab said Diggs told a friend she was in debt to her landlord, at which point the friend offered her the LSD to sell for about $30 each.
The friend would take a 50 per cent cut, he said.
About a week later on August 19, police were helping noise control officers at Diggs' house when they smelled cannabis and searched the premises.
Defence lawyer Gary Sawyer said Diggs' situation had a "certain uniqueness" in that, having only one minor previous conviction, she now faced "one of the most serious charges on the books" which had a maximum of life imprisonment.
The offending was "somewhat opportunistic" and Diggs was "not a sophisticated criminal", he said.
Diggs acted without guile when interviewed by police, was up-front about her intentions to sell the drug and was remorseful.
Judge Zohrab said Diggs was not in a situation where she was reliant on drugs, and the dealing was purely for financial gain.
Diggs was ordered to do alcohol and drug counselling as part of her sentence and an order was made to destroy the drugs.
A final warning was also recorded on Diggs' file that another commercial dealing offence would mean a prison sentence.
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