Jordan Brian Ahier had just finished a three-year jail term when he targeted the properties in St Helier in December last year.
The Royal Court heard that the 32-year-old was arrested after an off-duty police officer spotted him in a garden in New St John’s Road and dialled 999.
Ahier was found with several bags containing a number of items, including jewellery, alcohol, cigarettes and spark plugs.
It was later found that Ahier had also stolen property from a shed outside another house on the road and had damaged a door leading into another garden.
In a separate incident two days earlier the defendant illegally entered an unlocked hotel room and stole the guest’s medication.
Ahier initially denied the charges but later pleaded guilty to two counts of breaking and entering and larceny, malicious damage and illegal entry and larceny. Ahier also admitted two counts of possessing a controlled drug.
Calling for a four-year sentence, Crown Advocate Emma Hollywood said that Ahier was ‘at high risk of re-offending’ and that a custodial sentence was ‘inevitable’.
She said: ‘When it was put to the defendant that much of the property found in his possession had been identified as stolen, he went on to say that he had been given it to look after for someone he wouldn’t name but had no idea it had been stolen.
‘His account was inconsistent and regarded by the interviewing officers as implausible.’
Advocate James Bell, defending, said: ‘My submission is that four years would be excessive. In light of the circumstances and mitigation a lower sentence would be appropriate.
‘Regrettably, some months before these incidents, his mother passed away. I would suggest that he was at a particularly low ebb at this time.’
Advocate Bell asked the court to impose a three-year jail term and not to ‘simply ratchet up’ the previous sentence. He argued that the previous offence, for which Ahier was sentenced in March 2013, was more serious.
Delivering the sentence, Deputy Bailiff Tim Le Cocq said that the court could see ‘no basis to depart from the Crown’s submission’.
Mentioning Ahier’s previous sentencing, Advocate Le Cocq said: ‘On that occasion that the court warned you “things are only going to get worse for you. If you continue on this path the sentence imposed by this court is likely to get higher”.
‘You offended only five weeks after leaving prison – a substantial prison sentence is inevitable.’
Jurats Jeremy Ramsden and Robert Kerley were sitting on the case.
