COURT UPHOLDS JAIL SENTENCE FOR WATSON'S ROLE IN ACT DRUG RING

Drugs campaigner turned drug dealer Marion Watson has failed to
convince the Full Federal Court that two years in jail for selling
$28,000 worth of heroin a week is an excessive penalty.

In a 3-0 ruling yesterday, the court dismissed 47-year-old Watson's
appeal against the four-year sentence, incorporating a two-year
non-parole period, imposed by the ACT Supreme Court last year.

While concluding that the sentence was, in fact, somewhat lenient,
Justices Murray Wilcox, Marcus Einfeld and Susan Kenny dismissed a
Crown appeal against its leniency.

Watson had not disputed that she was part of a sophisticated drug ring
and admitted selling heroin for 4-5 months before her arrest on
Christmas Eve 1998. It was not disputed that she ran the ring's
night-shift four days a week and was selling about $28,000 worth of
heroin a week, in part to support her drug habit.

Watson's appeal was based on alleged errors on the part of the
sentencing judge relating to the risk that she would reoffend, given
that she had tested positive to illicit drugs while on bail, and the
degree to which she was remorseful and a good candidate for
rehabilitation. She also said the sentence she had received was
excessive compared with that of her coaccused.

The Federal Court judges rejected the suggestion that the Supreme
Court had not been entitled to take a negative view of the unexplained
presence of drugs in Watson's blood.

The judges thought the court had also been entitled to conclude that
Watson had been reluctant to enter a drug-rehabilitation program and
that her view was that there was "no social harm in selling drugs to
drug-dependent people".

They rejected the claim that Watson's rehabilitation should have been
the controlling factor in the sentencing process.

Having regard to the offences themselves and the circumstances under
which they were committed, "this was a case that called for an
immediate custodial sentence", they said.