Teen drug dealer's appeal thrown out by Court

Wednesday 06 February 2019

A 20-year-old man, who was put behind bars for dealing class A drugs to his friends when he was a teenager, has had his attempt to quash his sentence thrown out by the Royal Court.

Joshua Samuel Gill was handed the youth detention sentence in October last year for a number of drugs-related offences committed when he was 19, including being caught with cannabis and ecstasy tablets with a street value of around £10,000.

He had been arrested after being stopped during a routine road check and found in possession of just over 25g of cannabis. Police later found three-and-a-half bars of cannabis resin in his house and Gill told officers he was a heavy cannabis user. He admitted occasionally supplying friends on a “social supply basis".

Pictured: Police officers found three and a half bars of cannabis resin in Gill's house.

Text messages on Gill’s phone also showed that he had made offers to supply cocaine, and had dealt approximately 33 ecstasy tablets, two grams of MDMA powder and 125g of cannabis. A drugs expert described Gill as “a ‘go-to person’ with drug network connections".

At the time, his sentencing was deemed to be so serious that he could not avoid jail time.

But Gill's lawyer, Advocate Rebecca Morley-Kirk, argued that this should not have been the case.

Appearing before the court last month, she said the Court had not placed enough weight on mitigating factors such as Gill's guilty plea and cooperation with the investigation, good behaviour since his arrest, his age at the time of the offending, and the fact he had no previous record.

Pictured: Joshua Gill's lawyer, Advocate Rebecca Morley-Kirk.

She also said the Court had not given enough consideration to the amount dealt, describing Gill's dealing as an “amateur operation of social supply", adding that his offending should not have led to a prison sentence.

The appeal was heard by Royal Court Commissioner Julian Clyde-Smith, who was sitting Jurats Paul Nicolle, Collette Crill, Jane Ronge, Geoffrey Fisher and Suzanne Marett-Crosby.

In his judgment, which was made public this week, the Commissioner said he did not think “it can be said that the sentencing court failed to give consideration to all of the heads of mitigation”.

He explained that the Court had even reduced the sentence put forward by the Crown Advocate, who had already taken into account all of the mitigation.

Pictured: The Royal Court Commissioner said that the custodial sentence imposed had not been excessive.

The Commissioner also noted that, while other cases involving similar offending may have avoided a custodial sentence, the court had reached its conclusion “on the particular facts of those cases."

“They are not guideline cases, and do not lay down any kind of accepted basis for sentencing or illuminate principles for sentencing to be applied,” he added. “It cannot be contended and is not contended that for these offences a sentence of imprisonment was wrong in principle.”

Concluding his judgment, the Commissioner said Gill’s case was a “very sad” one both for him and his family, who attended the appeal. He refused permission to appeal to overturn the sentence, saying there were nothing to suggest that the sentence imposed had been "manifestly excessive".

“It was well within the range open to the sentencing court,” he concluded.