The answer was no.

So nine days before the murder Stanley Forward, 23, and Donald Cameron, 64, drove to Bulahdelah State Forest, north of Newcastle.

They brought a mattock, two spades and three pairs of gloves and set about digging a shallow grave for their victim.

Forward even lay down in the grave to test it was the right size.

The reason Forward and Cameron wanted Jacob Munro, 24, dead was because they did not want him involved in their cannabis growing operation anymore, but feared he would either rob the place or go to the police if he was fired.

On the morning of July 22, 2014 Mr Munro was sitting in the trimming shed where cannabis plants were laid across the table at Schofields in Sydney's north-west.

Forward ran up to him in the shed and stabbed him the neck – he then stabbed him a further 14 times during a violent struggle.

Mr Munro attempted to run away but he collapsed on a lounge where he was Tasered by Cameron.

His body was later wrapped in a black plastic sheet and driven to the forest where his body was buried.

On Thursday Forward was sentenced to a minimum of 15 years' jail before the NSW Supreme Court.

His former drug boss Cameron was sentenced to a minimum of 18 years imprisonment.

Neither man showed any emotion.

A third man, David Wilkinson, was also jailed for 23 months for his involvement in the cultivation of cannabis plants and for being an accessory after the fact to murder.

During his sentencing remarks Justice Desmond Fagan found that Cameron and Forward had been part of a joint criminal enterprise to kill Mr Munro to avoid detection of the cannabis growing operation.

"It was thoroughly premeditated," Justice Fagan said.

"The purpose of the murder was to silence a potentially loose-talking participant in the criminal cultivation activity," he said.

Police estimated the 664 plants on the Schofields property had an estimated street value of $3 million.

"The murder was extremely brutal in the manner in which it was carried out.

"A stabbing death such as this one is a savage, painful, drawn out affair."

During the trio's sentencing hearing, the court heard a victim impact statement penned by Mr Munro's mother Deborah Hall.

"It had become unbearable to think about how my boy had been surrounded by hate as his life was being taken from him, in such a malicious, calculated way.

"My heart is broken, at times it physically aches."