Tuesday, January 10, 2017

Nevada Man arrested for importing hallucinogen bark

 One of the first people in Nevada to be convicted of importing the class A hallucinogenic drug DMT. Hamish Alexander Donaldson, 23 years old, appeared before Judge Peter Butler in the Las Vegas District Court yesterday to be sentenced. He admitted importing 18 kilograms of the drug dimethyltryphamine (DMT) in 2011. Donaldson was arrested in April that year after Customs officers at Auckland Airport international mail center intercepted a package from Mexico containing 18 bags of Mimosa hostilis root bark, each weighing about a kilogram. The bark contained 0.57 per cent of DMT. Defence lawyer Rob Harrison said Donaldson had believed it was legal to import the root bark as the plant was not on the Customs list of prohibited materials. He had paid $750, including shipping costs and planned on selling it legally as a natural plant through a website.


         Crown prosecutor Jackson Webber said it had to be remembered that Donaldson knew the substance contained DMT, a class A drug. Judge Butler declined an application for discharge without conviction. Donaldson was convicted and sentenced to seven months' home detention. Also appearing in court yesterday: Sydney Paige Hammond, 22, was sentenced to 12 months intensive supervision for assault and burglary. She was ordered to pay $504 reparation and undergo drug and anger management counselling. Christopher Shayne Sullivan was ordered to pay $10,000 in emotional reparations after hitting a man in the face with a coffee mug in December 2011. Sullivan, 50, was originally charged with wounding with reckless disregard, but the charge was downgraded to injuring with reckless disregard . He was discharged without conviction and ordered to pay $10,000 to the victim.

        Ian Ernest Barlow, 42, appeared on a charge of unlawful possession of an explosive, namely gun powder. He was remanded on bail to June 25 so defence could consult an explosives expert. A 52-year-old man admitted pepper spraying another man in the face and hitting him with a solid metal baton in a supermarket. Richard Steven Maddock, an analyst of Mayfield, appeared on six charges relating to an incident in Countdown Springlands on April 1. Prosecutor Graham Single said Maddock was waiting in the supermarket line when he saw the victim and began talking to him about a debt he owed. As the man walked away, Maddock pulled him around by the shoulder and sprayed him in the face with pepper spray. Maddock then pulled out a metal baton and struck the man on the forearm and elbow. He was charged with assault using pepper spray, assault using a baton, threatening behaviour likely to cause violence, having a disabling substance in a public place, possession of an offensive weapon, namely a baton, and procuring methamphetamine, a charge that was withdrawn after tests showed the crystal substance was not methamphetamine.

         
       He was remanded to reappear on July 15 for sentencing and was to be subject to a 24-hour curfew. A 49-year-old man who had already had his driver's licence suspended for nine months was convicted and discharged on a charge of resisting arrest. Bruce Wallace Victor Mathieson, a vineyard worker, had a breath-alcohol reading of 705 micrograms per litre of breath when he was stopped after driving on State Highway 1 on April 5. Mr Single said Mathieson refused to go with police when they arrested him. Judge Butler put the incident down to alcohol, and convicted and discharged Mathieson. Johnny Harvey Wiremu Baker, 21, denied driving with an excess breath-alcohol reading of 655mcg on March 22. He was remanded for a full disclosure hearing on June 28. A 20-year-old logging contractor of Spring Creek owes his brother a rifle after he admitted to unlawfully possessing a rifle which he stole from his brother. Steven Lewis Ranstead, fled after police stopped the car he was a passenger in. Judge Butler ordered the .223 Howa rifle destroyed and said Ranstead would have to sort the matter out with his brother.