In September 2022, Corey Robin Woodrow was sentenced to nine months’ home detention when he appeared in the Invercargill District Court on charges of cultivating, supplying and possessing the class-C drug for supply.
But it was only the start of a two-year legal battle which has now placed the ownership of their home in jeopardy.
Woodrow and his partner, Veronica Mary Cope, had assets, including the property they co-own on the Gore-Mataura Highway, restrained following a hearing shortly after the sentencing.
In a recently released decision, Justice Lisa Preston granted a profit forfeiture order to the tune of $150,000 each.
The hearing before the High Court at Invercargill was not straightforward, however.
After getting rid of their lawyer, Woodrow and Cope opted to represent themselves, filing documents with the court consistent with the "sovereign citizen" belief system.
"We don’t use or recognise nor consent to the use of titles as titles are only given to slaves. So who is Mr Woodrow and who is Ms Cope? See our unrebutted affidavits proving we are not Crown-owned slaves. We are living beings on the land," one said.
The arguments were swiftly brushed aside by Justice Preston, who noted the courts had consistently dismissed such a position as legally untenable.
When the hearing took place last year, the couple remained at the back of the courtroom and refused to acknowledge the court’s jurisdiction, interrupting the judge as she delivered her decision.
The court heard Woodrow came to police attention after they pulled over an unnamed man for a routine traffic stop in Lumsden.
Officers found two chilly bins of high-quality cannabis in the vehicle and cellphone data with coded references to "firewood" led them to the defendant. When they raided Woodrow and Cope’s home the following day, they found "commercial-scale cannabis cultivation" in a woolshed, complete with multiple fans together with an extractor system, LED heat lamps, thermometers/humidity gauges, fertilisers and electronic timers.
Police found cannabis packaged up, ready for sale, beside a set of digital scales, and turned up $10,000 cash in Woodrow’s bedside drawer.
The pair’s spending between June 2019 and November 2020 was carefully analysed and police’s asset recovery unit discovered significant cash deposits to their accounts alongside minimal spending.
When Cope was spoken to in 2020, she denied any knowledge of the cannabis grow. She knew her partner used the drug for "mood control" and to assist with anger issues after a car crash, but claimed she only had a suspicion of what was going on.
Text messaging between the couple 10 days before the search stood "in stark contrast" to Cope’s denials, the judge said.
"Love you Can you please spray young ones when you go over please. In wooden box and plastic box behind the bar in the man cave now ... Didn’t want to go to work smelling like weed," Woodrow messaged his partner.
Her responses showed she was familiar with the grow and the horticultural tasks it involved.
Cope claimed the cash she banked came from rent payments from her daughter, gig payments, furniture sales and selling puppies.
But Justice Preston said there was no evidence to support that.
As dictated by law, the Official Assignee must wait at least six months before selling the couple’s property to satisfy the court order.
