A 26-YEAR-OLD man who drove a van described by a police officer as a ‘one-stop shop for drugs’ has been jailed for four and a half years.
Hayden James Dunning offered the cocaine and ecstasy on nine different occasions during the spring and summer of 2021.
He was given a custodial sentence in the Royal Court yesterday, despite his defence advocate asking for him to be spared prison so that he could spend time with his terminally ill mother.
Advocate Lauren Hallam, prosecuting, said that the police had stopped Dunning’s van in Rue des Près, in St Saviour, at 1.15am on 4 November.
There were two passengers in the back and the officers said that the van smelt strongly of cannabis. They found drugs with an estimated street value of up to £6,020.
A police officer described the vehicle as ‘a mobile, one-stop shop for drugs’.
Dunning was arrested and interviewed by the police and answered ‘no comment’ to all questions.
When he appeared in the Magistrate’s Court in June, he pleaded guilty to possessing drugs.
He was sentenced yesterday for nine counts of offering to supply drugs, three of possession with intent to supply and one of possession of cannabis.
Taking the guilty plea into consideration, Advocate Hallam suggested a sentence of six years in prison.
However, Advocate Julian Gollop, defending, told the court that Dunning’s mother was terminally ill with cancer, and asked the court to spare him prison and instead impose a probation order ‘as an act of mercy and compassion’ so that he could spend time with her.
If Dunning was imprisoned, Advocate Gollop said, ‘the expectation is that his mother is not going to be here to see her son released from prison’.
He added that if a jail sentence was to be imposed, it should be for less than five years.
Advocate Gollop explained that Dunning had begun taking drugs to ‘self-medicate his well-diagnosed ADHD ’ and had then been manipulated into supplying them.
He said: ‘This was not for financial gain. His motivation was to have the social interaction that drug-dealing gave him. As soon as he was arrested, all those new friends simply disappeared.’
The court also heard that Dunning had no previous convictions for drug offences, and Advocate Gollop said of his previous convictions: ‘These were minor offences. He has never served time in prison.’
Deputy Bailiff Robert MacRae said: ‘These offences are so serious that, in our judgment, only a custodial sentence is warranted.’
The other Jurats sitting were Jerry Ramsden, Robert Christiansen, Steven Austin-Vautier, Andrew Cornish and Karen Le Cornu.
