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A Royal Court trial revolving around whether over £80,000 discovered in an islander's attic was drug trafficking money or simply the proceeds of a successful beach deckchair hiring business, and "good fortune", has begun.
Joanne Marie Jones (49) is charged with concealing criminal cash by paying it into UK bank accounts on trips to her native Wales, buying property there and purchasing investment bonds for just under £300,000.
She denies the charges brought against her.
Opening the court case against her yesterday, Crown Advocate David Hopwood, prosecuting, based the allegation of drugs trafficking on Miss Jones having admitted to possessing five bars of cannabis resin seized from her last September.
Pictured: Joanne Jones's trial began in the Royal Court and will continue throughout the week.
She says she entered guilty pleas to the cannabis-related charges on the basis that she was looking after the drugs for a friend – a claim which is not accepted by the prosecution in this case and will be the subject of a separate hearing.
The Royal Court heard that after a search of Miss Jones’s home in 2017, £81,050 in cash was recovered from her attic and £3,000 was found in the hood of a coat hanging in a wardrobe.
“She had more cash than she knew what to do with," Advocate Hopwood told Court.
He went on to argue that Miss Jones’s explanation of how she accumulated this amount of money – that she earned it from owning and running deckchair concessions on St. Brelade’s beach, doing other “odd jobs” and selling various items – was not convincing.
Advocate Hopwood said that Miss Jones has “a lot of stories about hard work, renting deckchairs, doing car boot sales and repeated tales of being in the right place at the right time. Her fortune, she will say, has been down to good fortune.”
Pictured: Joanne Jones claims she earned the money working on deckchair concessions in St. Brelade's Bay among other "odd jobs". (Google Maps)
However, he continued: “None of her stories matter. There is little or no evidence for them and, taken together, the history of ‘lucky breaks’… may be dismissed as incredible.”
Advocate Hopwood argued that “the only explanation” for the large amounts of cash Miss Jones had gained was “her drugs dealing”. “She’s a drugs dealer and she has been for some time,” he claimed.
The Royal Court heard testimony from several witnesses for the prosecution, including Police officers involved in the operation leading to Miss Jones’s arrest, a convicted drugs dealer, a drugs market expert and a Digital Forensics Investigator, who analysed the contents of Miss Jones’s phone.
Defence Advocate Michael Haines, representing Miss Jones, grilled each of the witnesses in the dock. His line of questioning attempted to point out the prosecution’s lack of evidence for their allegations of drugs trafficking.
He highlighted that there was a lack of telephone evidence at the level one might expect from a drugs dealer of the reputation that the prosecution alleged Miss Jones to be.
Pictured: Defence Advocate Michael Haines represented Joanne Jones and cross-examined the Prosecution's witnesses (Mourant Law Firm).
Advocate Haines also challenged the prosecution’s expert witness, Detective Constable Castle, on his testimony that the cash found in Miss Jones’s attic points to the fact that she “is an established dealer of drugs who has built up over time contacts, experience and respect.”
The Defence Advocate asked DC Castle to consider that “sometimes we should look for a simple explanation rather than a complicated one”, arguing that the money was instead made from Miss Jones’s deckchair business.
DC Castle, who is a member of the Police Priority Crime Team or ‘drug squad’, insisted that it was his professional assessment that the cash found in Miss Jones’s attic, paired with the cannabis she admits to having in her possession, “indicate that the defendant is a dealer of cannabis.”
Advocate Haines drilled the Prosecution witnesses for more detail on their testimony, reminding them not be speculative but to base their answers on solid evidence.
The case is being heard in the Royal Court by Commissioner Julian Clyde-Smith and Jurats Pitman and Ramsden.
The Court will hear from the Prosecution’s final witnesses today and then the defence will open their case.
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