Jersey Unreported Judgments

Superior Number Sentencing - drugs - Class B.

[2013]JRC245

Royal Court

(Samedi)

6 December 2013

The Attorney General

-v-

Mohammed Giban Ahmed

Sentencing by the Superior Number of the Royal Court, to which the accused was remanded by the Inferior Number on 27^th September, 2013, following a guilty plea to the following charge:

Age:  27.

Plea: Guilty.

Details of Offence:

Ahmed and his cousin lived in England and travelled by car ferry to Jersey.  They imported 392 bars of cannabis resin, with a total weight of not less than 38.75 kilograms.  The bars were concealed in the footwell of the car that was stopped by customs at the harbour on arrival in Jersey from Poole.  The street value of drugs had mid-point value on the streets of Jersey of £487,500 and a maximum street value of £585,000.  Text messages recovered from Ahmed's mobile telephone showed he had knowledge of the drugs being imported.  He had the role of courier, no other evidence of being higher up the drugs chain. 

Details of Mitigation:

Guilty plea; remorse; family situation.  The Defence argued Ahmed should receive full one-third discount for guilty plea. 

Previous Convictions:

Miscellaneous motoring offences; subject to non-molestation orders; possession of cocaine (October 2012) received £250 fine. 

Conclusions:

Confiscation order sought in the nominal sum of £1.

Forfeiture and destruction of drugs sought.

Sentence and Observations of Court:

The Court had considered whether starting point should be 11 years but accepted the starting point of 10 years taking into account evidence before it as to quantity of drugs, value and role of the defendant.  Previous conviction of possession of cocaine was not relevant.  The defendant's plea beneficial but did not merit full one-third discount. 

Conclusions granted. 

Ms E. L. Hollywood, Crown Advocate.

Advocate J. W. R. Bell for the Defendant.

JUDGMENT

THE DEPUTY BAILIFF:

1.        You are here to be sentenced on a single charge of being knowingly concerned in the importation of cannabis resin.  The amount involved was 38.75 grams consisting of 392 individual bars of approximately 100 grams each.  The mid-point value in the streets of Jersey was £487,500, the maximum value nearly £100,000 more.  The bars were concealed in a Volkswagen Passat car which you brought over on the ferry from Poole.  It is clear that this was a substantial, carefully organised importation.  When arrested by Customs officers you denied having the drugs before and you denied instructing anyone to put the drugs in the car and you said the importation had nothing to do with you. 

2.        You are not of good character but there is nothing in your record of this seriousness.  The only drugs offence which you have in your record is that you were fined last year for the possession of cocaine and we do not think that is material to the sentence which we are to impose now. 

3.        We apply the authorities, in particular the case of Campbell Molloy and Mackenzie-v-AG [1995] JLR 136, which guide us as to how we are to fix the sentence in this case and the first thing we need to do is to fix a starting point.  The Court recognises that there is a case for taking a starting point of 11 years' imprisonment having regard to the quantity of the cannabis that was being imported, but the Crown have accepted that you had a limited role to play and on balance the Court does not think there is sufficient in the information before us to gainsay that and we therefore take a starting point of 10 years' imprisonment. 

4.        The next matter we have had to consider is the discount for the guilty plea.  It came relatively early in the proceedings and the Court accepts that it did have value but we think the Crown was right in saying that a conviction was inevitable.  Nonetheless we allow a substantial discount for the plea, albeit not the full amount of one-third.  The fact that this is not a drugs debt which led to your offending is, in our view, no mitigation.  The Court does not treat the pressure imposed on a defendant by his drugs dealer as mitigation, and does not do so as a matter of policy, even though we recognise that a defendant owing money to his drugs dealer does have that pressure.  The fact that you owed money to others means there is no such pressure from a drugs dealer and this equally does not amount to mitigation.  The fact is that you were in the business of this offence to make money and your motivation for making money does not help you.  We accept the expressions of remorse, we accept the apology, and we have noted everything which Advocate Bell has said very fully and very fluently on your behalf and in particular we have had regard to what is in the social enquiry report and we, of course, considered the personal references which have been supplied. 

5.        Having taken all these matters into account we think that the Crown's conclusions were right and you are therefore sentenced to 7½ years' imprisonment. 

6.        We order the forfeiture and destruction of the drugs. 

Authorities

Campbell Molloy and Mackenzie-v-AG [1995] JLR 136.

AG-v-Dicker & Ors 1998/216.

AG-v-Travis & Ors 2000/80.

AG-v-Brown [2008] JRC 208.