AN 18-YEAR-OLD dealer who had up to £1,845 worth of drugs at his family home has been spared prison.
Rodrigo Miguel Mendes Gomes was instead given 180 hours of community service.
In the Royal Court yesterday, the Bailiff, Sir Timothy Le Cocq, told him that, were it not for his youth and other mitigating factors, he would have been ‘walking from here into a van and going to prison’.
The court heard that Gomes was 17 when he was arrested on 20 January and found to have MDMA, cocaine and cannabis resin at his home in St Helier.
Together, the drugs would have had a street value of between £1,155 and £1,845.
In the Magistrate’s Court last month, Gomes pleaded guilty to two counts of possession of drugs with intent to supply and two of possession.
Crown Advocate Carla Carvalho, prosecuting, said the police searched Gomes’s home and found 26 tablets of MDMA and a small quantity of MDMA powder in his room, along with 3.3 grams of cocaine and 3.7 grams of cannabis resin.
He also had digital weighing scales, a metal grinder and a box of small, snap-seal bags which were considered to be evidence of drug-dealing.
Another ten MDMA tablets were found in the kitchen.
The MDMA and cocaine are class A drugs while cannabis is class B.
Gomes was arrested in Don Road at 7pm that day and, at first, answered ‘no comment’ to all police questions.
In his second interview, he claimed that the cocaine was for personal use.
Advocate Carvalho said Gomes was considered at ‘medium to high risk of reconviction within 12 months’ but added that he had no previous convictions.
She said prison sentences were only imposed on offenders of his age if there was no other way of dealing with them or they presented a danger to the public.
She recommended 180 hours of community service instead, saying: ‘A non-custodial sentence can be justified in this case.’
Advocate Chris Baglin, defending, pointed out that Gomes had pleaded guilty as soon as he had received legal advice.
He said: ‘When they searched his room, they found no pile of cash, in fact no cash at all.
‘This is a young man at the very low end of the [offending] scale. It’s not that he is a seasoned drug dealer known to the police.’
Advocate Baglin added that Gomes’s parents had separated when he was three years old and that he had little contact with his father in his early years.
‘There was the lack of a positive male role model in those early formative years,’ he said.
When he was 12, his mother sent him from Madeira to Jersey to live with his father and stepmother. He said: ‘He was away from his mother, he was in a new country and he didn’t speak the language. He was the subject of continual bullying by a small group of older boys.’
He added: ‘He will now put the offending and the drug use behind him.’
Sir Timothy said that normally the court would ‘have no hesitation in meeting this offence with a period of custody’ but that they were prepared to make an exception in this case.
He told Gomes: ‘You have committed a very serious offence and, were it not for your youth and other mitigating factors, you would be walking from here into a van and going to prison.
‘We have given you a chance. You will not get it again.’
In addition to the community service, Gomes was given a 12-month probation order.
Jurats Jerry Ramsden and David Le Heuzé were sitting.
