Vic: Aspro heir loses appeal against drug sentence

AAP General News (Australia)
04-07-2000
Vic: Aspro heir loses appeal against drug sentence

MELBOURNE, April 7 AAP - A grandson of the founder of the Aspro pharmaceutical firm
today lost an appeal against his conviction over a $12 million heroin deal.

But David Michael Nicholas' 15 year sentence was reduced to 12 years.

The Victorian Court of Appeal ruled that the minimum non-parole term the 59-year-old
was sentenced to in February last year should be cut to eight years.

The County Court trial heard that Nicholas was caught in an Australian Federal Police
"sting" operation involving 6.5 kilograms of heroin with an estimated street value of
$ 12.5 million.

Nicholas, formerly of the Melbourne suburb of Malvern, who owned the Victorian franchises
for KFC and Pizza Hut in the 1970s, pleaded not guilty to possessing a trafficable quantity
of heroin and attempting to possess a commercial quantity of the drug.

Nicholas in his appeal against conviction and sentence submitted that the trial judge
had erred by failing to rule that a listening device warrant was invalid and therefore
evidence obtained with the aid of such a device was illegal.

The presiding judge, Chief Justice John Harber Phillips, said in today's judgment that
Nicholas had received a fair trial in the County Court.

"We cannot detect any unfairness or accept, as claimed, that it was impossible to have
a fair trial," said the judgment.

However, in reducing the sentence, the judgment stated that the trial judge attached
too much weight to Nicholas' prior convictions on fraud charges in 1990.

AAP sew/jlw/bdm

KEYWORD: NICHOLAS (CARRIED EARLIER)

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