A PREVIOUSLY law-abiding woman who smuggled high-purity cocaine into Jersey after being pressured into becoming a drugs mule by her ‘abusive’ ex-boyfriend has been jailed for four years.
Janice Catherine Mawdsley – who doesn’t take drugs and ‘doesn’t know anyone who has been in trouble with the law’ – imported £70,000 of the class A drug by concealing it internally and boarding a flight from Liverpool, the Royal Court heard.
When she was arrested hours after arriving in the Island, the 42-year-old confessed to Customs officers that she had been ‘a fool’.
Outlining the case, Crown Advocate Lauren Hallam, prosecuting, said Mawdsley was searched by Customs officers after she arrived in Jersey on the morning of 16 April, but nothing was found.
Later that morning she was arrested and the drugs were discovered wrapped in cling film within paper bags in her handbag.
Advocate Hallam said: ‘She told [the officers] her ex-boyfriend had asked to her to carry the drugs. She didn’t feel like she had an option.’
Advocate Julia-Anne Dix, defending, told the Superior Number, which convenes for Jersey’s most serious cases, that her client was far from a conventional drug smuggler and did not belong in the criminal world.
She told the court: ‘Miss Mawdsley is a very different person to the usual drugs mule cases that come before this court.’
The advocate said that Mawdsley had no previous convictions and was deemed at low risk of reconviction, and told the court that her client had been pressured into executing the drugs run by her controlling ex-partner who had moved into her flat.
‘He would keep her awake at night, and blamed her for everything that went wrong in his life,’ Advocate Dix said.
‘He smashed items in her flat and punched walls.’
When he asked her to smuggle drugs into Jersey she had been too frightened to refuse, she said.
Advocate Dix added: ‘Miss Mawdsley doesn’t take drugs. She had no part in this world.
‘She is a law-abiding citizen. She doesn’t know anyone, and has no friends or family, who has ever been in trouble with the law.’
The court received numerous positive character references from Mawdsley’s friends, relatives and work colleagues.
Advocate Dix said: ‘When she heard she had been arrested, Miss Mawdsley’s sister thought it was a hoax.
‘She is not just of good character. She is of positively good character.’
Mawdsley pleaded guilty to importing drugs.
Delivering the court’s sentence, the Bailiff, Timothy Le Cocq, said: ‘Couriers play a vital role in bringing drugs into the Island.’
He said there was ‘a very substantial amount’ of drugs but added: ‘You were co-operative, you are at low risk of reconviction, and you appear to take responsibility for your offending.’
The Jurats Robert Christensen, Steven Austin-Vautier and Kim Averty were sitting.
