Kerrie-Ann Potts (39) transported five packages containing 135.5 grams of cocaine to the Island to pay off a drugs debt, Crown Advocate Richard Pedley, prosecuting, told the Superior Number of the Royal Court, which is convened for the most serious cases.
Potts was stopped by Customs officers at the Airport on 7 May after getting off a Southampton flight.
She was arrested when her belongings tested positive for ‘indications’ of cocaine and heroin. Potts initially claimed she had borrowed her suitcase from an unnamed friend, said Advocate Pedley, and became ‘visibly agitated’, starting to remove her clothes in front of officers. She said: ‘If you want to search me then just search me.’
No drugs were initially found on Potts, but three packages – two of which were in her sock – were later found in her detention room, while an X-ray revealed two more concealed internally.
Advocate Pedley said the confiscated drugs had a street value of between £13,500 and £18,900. He stated that Potts said she was ‘stupid for allowing her drug use to place her in such a situation’.
‘As a result of her incarceration she is drug free for the first time,’ he said, adding that she had a ‘traumatic upbringing’ and suffered from PTSD.
Potts, who is originally from Dorchester, was living in Cardiff when she made the journey to Jersey to pay off an £800 drugs debt. She admitted one count of importation.
‘She was a typical mule at the very bottom of the supply chain,’ said Advocate Allana Binnie, defending, arguing that Potts had been ‘used and exploited by others’, who she had not named for ‘genuine fear of reprisals’.
Potts’ life had been a ‘catalogue of tragedy’ since she was at least eight, said Advocate Binnie, and her time in custody at La Moye Prison on remand was the first time since she was 12 that she had managed to break her drugs habit, which included heroin and crack cocaine abuse. Her client had experienced a ‘chaotic, abusive and destabilising childhood’, periods of homelessness through her life and had 52 previous convictions for 92 offences in the UK.
‘At the time of this offence, my client was an extremely vulnerable woman,’ said Advocate Binnie, adding later: ‘This experience has given her her life back.’
She said: ‘The tragic reality is this point in my client’s life is the calmest, safest and potentially most constructive time that she can ever remember.’
Potts had rebuilt family relationships since being remanded in custody and was now speaking to her family every day, Advocate Binnie said.
Advocate Pedley argued for a 6½-year custodial sentence, compared to the five-year sentence proposed by Advocate Binnie.
Delivering the court’s sentence, Commissioner Julian Clyde-Smith said Advocate Binnie had made an ‘effective’ plea in mitigation.
Jurats Collette Crill, Jane Ronge and Robert Christensen were sitting.
