CRIMINAL CASE NO. 387 OF 2009
COURT: The jury have convicted you on the 1st charge of the possession of the dangerous drugs and on the 2nd count of trafficking.
The standard sentence for possession for the ICE in question here is a sentence after trial of 18 months’ imprisonment. You were willing to plead guilty to simple possession all along and you tendered that plea in my presence at the commencement of the trial before the jury came. In those circumstances I shall give you the one-third discount that we give to pleas here and accordingly the sentence on Count 1 is 12 months’ imprisonment.
Having been caught with that ICE you were then bailed. You were trusted with your liberty pending your trial. You met that trust by further offending and further offending in relation to drugs but in a graver way. It was your choice to traffic whilst on bail.
You will know full well that in respect of trafficking we base sentences upon the nature of the drug and upon the quantity of it following guidelines. Count 2 involved the trafficking of 6.75 grammes of ICE. It falls in the up to 10 grammes category attracting imprisonment after trial of between 3 and 7 years. I shall take a starting point of 6 years.
If you had been trafficking in all of the drugs mentioned in that count that would have been the sentence. The evidence that convicted you came from your own mouth and it is only fair that I look to all that you then said. And whilst you admitted trafficking, you asserted at the same time, that the majority of the drug would be for your own consumption.
The prosecution put the case on the basis that you were a man addicted to ICE who was supporting his addiction by selling some of what he purchased. In those circumstances I shall give you a generous discount of 50 per cent.
Accordingly the sentence on Count 2 is one of 3 years' imprisonment. In my view that is a generous discount, in the circumstances, because the evidence in the trial suggested not only that you supported your addiction by selling what you were buying but it also supported you generally, because, as you told the police, you had no job.
Despite the latter point I made there, I will be generous, as I say, give you the discount but I shall not be generous when it comes to how these two sentences on Count 1 and 2 relate to each other.
If you choose to go trafficking whilst you are on bail you must expect the second sentence to be consecutive if you are caught and that is what will happen, 3 years on Count 2 will run consecutively to the 12 months on Count 1. The total sentence is 4 years’ imprisonment.