Jordan Arun Jones (24), who moved to Jersey in 2017, appeared before the Royal Court this week after pleading guilty to one count of importing drugs, three counts of possessing drugs and two counts of being concerned in the supply of controlled drugs.
During the sentencing, the Deputy Bailiff, Robert MacRae, said that such was the ‘routine nature’ of Jones’s drug use that, when he went to the Customs custody suite to be charged in January, a wrap of 3.73g of cannabis resin was found in his pocket.
Jones’s offending was initially uncovered on 29 January last year when a package addressed to him from Brighton – and marked with his name as the sender – was intercepted by Customs officers when it arrived in the Island.
When it was opened, four Cadbury’s caramel bar wrappers were found with a combined total of 186.01g of cannabis resin within them.
Four days later, the agency raided Jones’s St Brelade home, where he lived with his girlfriend and her family. A total of £4,378.59 in cash was found, along with 501mg of MDMA and 9.98g more cannabis resin.
As part of Operation Shark, a drug-dealing crackdown launched following the death of a teenager who took MDMA, another man’s phone was seized which contained messages from the defendant showing that he had supplied herbal cannabis, cannabis resin and MDMA. They also showed that he collected ‘significant’ amounts of money and arranged regular importations of unspecified items in the post.
Advocate Heidi Heath, defending, called for her client to be spared jail and instead handed a ‘top end’ 480-hour community service order.
She told the court that her client had only six months left of a 3½-year electrician’s course at Highlands College left to complete and, alongside others, had set up an electricians’ business. She added that prison would ‘scupper’ his studies and impede a fledgling business.
‘It would be far more beneficial [to impose community service] than keeping the defendant locked up and having the public pay for that.’
Responding to a question from the Deputy Bailiff, presiding, about why Jones had been buying such large quantities of drugs, Advocate Heath said that he had been ‘bulk-buying’ with friends. She added: ‘It was a very misguided effort to save money.’
She added that, over the course of two weeks, he had given up 180 hours of his time to help build the Island’s former Nightingale Hospital at the beginning of the pandemic and had no previous convictions.
Mr MacRae, delivering the sentence of the court, said: ‘The social-inquiry report says that you are a social supplier but you still supplied the drugs for cash and, in the view of this court, any sale for cash is a commercial supply.’
He added: ‘These offences are so serious that only an immediate custodial sentence can be justified.’
Jurats Jane Ronge, Steven Austin-Vautier and David Gareth Hughes were sitting.
