Rocco Arico has sentence cut by Court of Appeal
CRIMELORD Rocco Arico will walk from jail earlier after the Court of Appeal slashed years off his sentence for drug dealing.
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CRIMELORD Rocco Arico will walk from jail a little earlier after the Court of Appeal slashed two years off his sentence for drug dealing.
In a shock decision, one of the three Court of Appeal judges would have allowed the bumbling gangster to have a retrial.
But that wish was overruled and dismissed by a majority vote.
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It was Justice Phillip Priest who argued to have the suspected Calabrian Mafia figure retried.
Arico was sentenced in March last year to 14 years in jail, with a minimum of 10, over extortion, drug dealing and gun charges.
He will now have to serve 12 years, with a non-parole period of nine.
During that trial, the County Court heard it was a series of blunders by the violent criminal that brought him undone.
Arico broke the golden mob rule of crook survival when he lost his cool, threatening someone on a hot telephone.
In pushing for Arico to get a new trial, Justice Priest expressed his displeasure that evidence from a previous trial was allowed to be used in his second trial.
The offending evidence allowed the second jury to hear that Arico was previously found with a gun, ammo and drugs in his motor scooter.
Justice Priest complained the evidence was inadmissable because it was “irrelevant” or “because the danger of unfair prejudice outweighed the very slight probative value”.
His colleagues, Justice Mark Weinberg and Court President Justice Chris Maxwell, disagreed.
Justice Maxwell was also against reducing Arico’s sentence for drug trafficking from nine to seven years, but was overruled.
The court ruled the sentence was manifestly excessive because Justice Weinberg and Priest believed there was “never any such risk” of the drugs finding their way into the community.
Arico’s barrister Paul Holdenson, QC told the Court of Appeal that the jury ought to have had a reasonable doubt that his client was “bulls-----ing” about the drugs.
The County Court jury accepted Arico meant what he said when he claimed to be able to sell a kilogram of “dyno” — meaning dynamite, or pure, methamphetamine — for $145,000 a pop.
Justice Maxwell stated that he believed the sentence was “unimpeachable”.
“By fixing a maximum penalty of life imprisonment … the legislature had signalled its intention that this offence is to be treated as being of the utmost seriousness,” he stated.