Supreme Court turns down Colombian farm worker’s bid to seek discharge over cocaine conviction

Some of the items found in the Christchurch cocaine bust after a Police and Customs investigation. Photo / George Heard

• Ruth Yanid Ramirez-Alfonso has lost her fight to avoid a conviction for importing cocaine.
• She was part of a group accused of importing 50kg of cocaine from Colombia.
• The Supreme Court dismissed her appeal, upholding her conviction and potential deportation.

A Colombian national “roped” into importing cocaine while working on a New Zealand farm has lost her fight to avoid a conviction.

Ruth Yanid Ramirez-Alfonso was among eight people arrested in 2021 in one of New Zealand’s biggest drug busts.

She pleaded not guilty to being involved in importing drugs, but later admitted a representative charge of importing cocaine.

Cocaine found inside a box as part of Operation Mist. Photo / Police

It landed her in prison last year after she unsuccessfully sought a discharge without conviction.

Ramirez-Alfonso then appealed against the High Court’s decision.

After the Court of Appeal dismissed her appeal, Ramirez-Alfonso went to the Supreme Court to try again, but that too has now failed.

The conviction stands, and so does the likelihood she will be deported.

Ramirez-Alfonso, then 38, was part of a group accused of bringing 50kg of cocaine worth millions of dollars from Colombia into New Zealand.

In the Supreme Court’s decision this month, it said Alfonso had been a migrant worker employed on dairy farms in South Canterbury.

The drug syndicate she was linked to used farm workers as cover for their cocaine importation operation, the decision noted.

The charge, for which Ramirez-Alfonso was sent to prison, was linked to her involvement in the importation of 1.8 kg of cocaine - she had supplied a residential address for its receipt in three separate packages between October 2019 and December 2021.

She received $5000 as well as “another cash sum” which she claimed was a lesser amount for the assistance she provided, the court said.

Ramirez-Alfonso was sentenced last July to three years and six months’ imprisonment and issued with a deportation liability notice.

$200,000 in cash seized as part of Operation Mist. Photo / Police

The High Court accepted she had played a lesser role in the offending, and handed out a sentence that reflected her reduced role in the operation, her “initial naivety” and her lack of insight into the amount of drugs being imported.

From a starting point of five years and six months, the court arrived at the end sentence, taking into account personal factors, the disproportionate impact of imprisonment in this country and the guilty plea.

In rejecting the application for discharge without conviction, the court found the risk of deportation was not out of all proportion to the offending, as it was a “predictable risk” faced by offenders in Ramirez-Alfonso’s position.

The Court of Appeal agreed with the High Court’s categorisation of the offending as serious, and accepted a conviction was nonetheless “a proportional and unsurprising consequence” of this type of offending.

Ramirez-Alfonso argued her offending was the result of “naivete and exploitation” and asked the Supreme Court to give these concepts further consideration.

She submitted that the High Court accepted she was drawn into the offending by her “friends”, and exploited in her occupation as a farm worker and, consequently, vulnerable to manipulation.

She also submitted that the Court of Appeal did not properly engage with exploitation as a factor mitigating offender culpability.

In this case, that exploitative context included the applicant’s relative isolation in this country, leading to significant vulnerability, the Supreme Court noted in its decision.

A heat exchanger had around 1kg of cocaine hidden inside. Photo / Police

Justices Joe Williams, Stephen Kós and Forrest Miller said while exploitation and vulnerability in the context of migrant labour was potentially a matter of general and public importance, defining what that meant was, generally speaking, “intensely factual”.

“We are not satisfied that, on these facts, the issue is squarely raised,” they said.

Accordingly, they saw no risk of a miscarriage of justice and did not consider it necessary in the interests of justice to hear and determine the proposed appeal.

Tracy Neal is a Nelson-based Open Justice reporter at NZME. She was previously RNZ’s regional reporter in Nelson-Marlborough and has covered general news, including court and local government for the Nelson Mail.