Shelley Fay Hart pleads guilty to mailing drugs into Lotus Glen
A Kuranda woman who smuggled drugs and tobacco disguised as fake legal documents claims she was coerced into mailing packages to Lotus Glen and “didn’t have a choice in the matter”.
Cairns
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A Kuranda woman who smuggled drugs and tobacco disguised as fake legal documents claims she was coerced into mailing packages to Lotus Glen and “didn’t have a choice in the matter”.
Shelley Fay Hart pleaded guilty in Cairns Supreme Court on Tuesday to three counts of supplying a dangerous drug within a correctional facility and three counts of giving a prohibited thing to an inmate.
Her offending involved the concealing of smoking products, up to 1000 suboxone strips and the anabolic steroid Oxymetholoneto into the Lotus Glen Correctional Centre in hollowed out documents contained within five packages purporting to be sent from Preston Law and Impact Legal.
Exploiting legal privilege by marking the packages as “private and confidential legal correspondence” added an aggravating element to the crime, Crown prosecutor Christian Peters told the court.
A police investigation uncovered CCTV vision that placed the defendant at the post office, while the relevant law firms stated the prisoners receiving mail were not their clients.
Mr Peters told the court a “significant amount of money” was transferred into Hart’s bank account between October 2021 and January 2022 by people found by police to be associated with other Lotus Glen prisoners.
“The total of those transactions is $20,640, there’s 27 different people that feature in those transactions,” he said.
“Those transactions were payment for both the criminal items and the dangerous drugs supplied to other prisoners within the correctional centre.”
In her defence, Hart took the stand and detailed a visit from an unknown man to her Kuranda residence which she shared with her partner’s parents in December 2021.
She claimed the man gave her instructions about the mailing of contraband into the jail to be addressed to Lotus Glen inmate Joel Olm.
“I was fearful and I knew they knew where I lived and for the rest of the family, I felt like I didn’t have a choice in the matter, I did feel quite threatened and vulnerable being home alone,” she told the court.
Justice Jim Henry appeared unconvinced by the story but did say: “I have no difficulty accepting she was under pressure from someone inside the jail”.
Joel Anthony Olm pleaded guilty in the Cairns Supreme Court on August 24, 2021 to trafficking ice and was and was sentenced to seven years imprisonment.
Hart made admissions about successfully mailing tobacco to her partner Rick Murray before later failed attempts to smuggle drugs were intercepted by prison officials after being detected by an x-ray device at the jail.
Pushing for a custodial sentence, Mr Peters told the court the offending undermined the administration of justice and abused the legal privileged mail going into the jail, while Justice Henry said smuggling drugs undermined the rehabilitation prospects of inmates trying to stay on the straight and narrow.
Defence barrister Dane Marley said his client was exposed to drugs at an early age and has struggled with life since her boyfriend overdosed on heroin.
Due to her facing a custodial sentence, Hart was taken to the cells below the court ahead of Justice Henry delivering sentence on Thursday.
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Originally published as Shelley Fay Hart pleads guilty to mailing drugs into Lotus Glen
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