HE was jailed last month for six years for importing 700 kilograms of cocaine into Lake Macquarie after a judge found his role in the plot was "minimal" and limited to the final 24 hours before his arrest.
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But the case of R v Craig William Lembke - the well-known Newcastle sailor and musician who became embroiled in an international drug syndicate who imported nearly $200 million of cocaine into Australia - is far from over.
The Commonwealth DPP has launched an appeal against Lembke's maximum nine-year jail term, labelling it "manifestly inadequate" and claiming that Judge Jonathan Priestley, SC, failed in the fact-finding task that ultimately determined the length of Lembke's sentence.
The CDPP lodged the inadequacy appeal on Friday and the matter is listed in the Court of Criminal Appeal on May 28.
"His Honour erred in his fact-finding task in that he failed to have regard to the circumstantial evidence as a whole, but instead focused on each individual piece of circumstantial evidence in isolation," the first ground of the appeal states.
Immediately after he was jailed in Coffs Harbour District Court last month, Lembke's solicitor Mark Ramsland provided a statement to the Newcastle Herald saying the sailor and musician maintained his innocence and intended to appeal the jury's guilty verdict.
Lembke's defence lodged a notice of intention to appeal against the conviction last month and have six months to file the actual appeal.
And Mr Ramsland has also said Lembke is considering a counter appeal against the severity of the maximum nine-year jail term.
Judge Priestley's "fact-finding mission", the determination of when exactly Lembke knew about the cocaine on board the 13-metre catamaran that he sailed from Tahiti to Toronto, was the crucial factor in determining Lembke's sentence.
And when he found that Lembke hadn't known of the plot until after he had arrived in Lake Macquarie and that his role was limited to ferrying another drug syndicate member out to the moored yacht on the day of his arrest, Judge Priestley jailed Lembke, now 50, for a maximum of nine years with a non-parole period of six years.
The jail term was much shorter than that handed to two other syndicate members despite both receiving massive discounts for pleading guilty and giving evidence against Lembke at his trial.
His Honour erred in his fact-finding task in that he failed to have regard to the circumstantial evidence as a whole.
- The first ground of the CDPP's inadequacy appeal states.
