Man gets eight months of non-custodial sentence

By JAMES GUMUNO
A young man found guilty of being in possession of 33 rolls of marijuana and carrying an offensive weapon has been given a non-custodial sentence and ordered to do two hours of weekly community work in Mt Hagen.
District court magistrate Joseph Donald yesterday ordered Moses Paul to report to probation office every Monday where officers would tell him where to do community work for two hours.
Donald told Paul that if he breached the condition set, he would be rearrested and sent to Baisu jail to serve eight months with hard labour.
Donald said this non-custodial sentence was a new approach the court had taken.
If it worked out well, the court would apply the same in any similar cases in future.
The defendant was arrested on Jan 28 this year with 33 rolls of marijuana and a bush knife in his possession.
Paul told the court that the drug rolls were not his and somebody put them into his pocket.
The court found that he was lying and found him guilty as charged, imposing a custodial sentence of eight months imprisonment at Baisu.
Donald told Paul that he would not sentence him to jail, but wanted him to do community work every week, for the next eight months.