Holly Deane-Johns
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Holly Deane-Johns (b. 1972) is an Australian woman convicted of trafficking heroin in Thailand. Originally facing the death penalty, she pleaded guilty in 2003 to heroin trafficking in order to receive a reduced sentence of 31 years. She has to date spent six years in incarceration in the Klong Prem Prison in Chatuchak.
Deane-Johns was arrested by Thai police in August 2000 when she attempted to mail a parcel, later found to contain about 11 grams of heroin at Bangkok Central Post Office in the company of Robert Halliwell. Thai narcotics agents had been monitoring their movements for two months previously. A further 10 grams of heroin was found in Deane-Johns' rented apartment.
She had flown to Thailand in early 2000 to reunite with her boyfriend, but after he returned early to Australia spent time with Halliwell, a mutual friend and fellow junkie who had fled to Thailand 20 years earlier to escape drugs charges in Australia.
Conditions in Klong Prem are extremely poor as health care is not subsidised and several individuals share small living spaces. There are virtually no walls in a communal shared with 30 other female prisoners, where she spends much time sewing. Some hope of her freedom arises out of an Australian-Thai prisoner exchange treaty formed in 2002 between the Australian and Thai governments.
Born in Western Australia, she attended Mount Lawley Senior High School in Perth and become a heroin addict at the age of 15. Her mother died from a heroin overdose. Deane-Johns spent six years in Western Australia's Bandyup Women's Prison for a range of drug related offences.
In 2006 Deane-Johns applied to be transferred to a Western Australian jail. Despite Federal government approval her application was refused by WA Corrective Services Minister Margaret Quirk.
