I accept that you are a drug addict. Indeed, you first went to DATC back in 1999. You have been to DATC subsequently and, at the moment, following sentencing on 31 March of 2014, you are serving 6 years’ imprisonment for trafficking in a dangerous drug. In that case, I am told, it was 20.45 grammes of "Ice".
Obviously, when you possess an amount as large as 26 grammes, there is what we call a latent risk of the drugs finding their way into further hands beyond yours.
I shall take a starting point in your case, including the latent risk, of 2 years’ imprisonment. You earn a one-third discount for your plea of guilty and the sentence therefore is one of 16 months’ imprisonment.
I have to work out how that should relate to the present sentence you are serving of 6 years. I have to bear in mind the totality of it all. I think the right order, bearing in mind your addiction but bearing in mind this is an offence whilst on bail for the trafficking, is this, that 8 months of the 16-month sentence will be concurrent and 8 months of it will be consecutive to that 6-year sentence.
In arriving at the length of your present sentence and how it should relate to the 6 years, I have borne in mind, without giving it any direct numerical discount, the fact that you have all along, as I understand it, been willing to plead guilty to possession but you faced prosecution in the High Court on the basis that you were a trafficker, which would have attracted a sentence of probably 8 years’ imprisonment or so.
The prosecution case was based upon an expert’s report concerning the rate of consumption of someone who abuses "Ice". That report only mentioned a daily consumption rate that was to be measured in milligrams. We know from other evidence that is available generally to these courts that that is not so.
It cannot have been a comfortable feeling for you facing prosecution on a basis that you knew to be false and, as I say, I have borne that in mind, because no one could describe the sentence I have passed upon you today, especially how I have related it to your present sentence, as being harsh.
There is only one thing I would just like to say, is that that statement from that expert should never find its way into a case of this nature ever again. I need not say any more because I know Mr Richmond went to the Department of Justice and pointed out the error of their ways in this regard.