This Is Guernsey

By Nigel Baudains

THE £200-worth of heroin Jamie Marquis bought in Bournemouth was worth 10 times as much in Guernsey.

It was also worth three-and-a-half years in prison, the Royal Court decided yesterday.

Marquis, 22, was suspected of carrying illegal drugs and was arrested when he got off a Weymouth ferry.

An X-ray revealed a package concealed internally. The plastic bag and two layers of clingfilm contained 3.381 grams of heroin in brown powder form.

In court, Marquis admitted importing the Class A drug.

Crown Advocate Graeme McKerrell said the quantity had a street value in Guernsey of between £1,014 and £2,028.

In interview, Marquis said he had bought a single ticket to Weymouth where he got a cab to Bournemouth, which had cost him £50.

He walked around the town looking for bed and breakfast accommodation but could not remember the name of the place where he stayed.

He had travelled to London by train but said he had bought the drug in Bournemouth.

Asked where he had got the drug from, he said: ‘I just got it off a person.’

He said he had paid £200 for it but said he had not known how much he had got for his money.

‘I just trusted them.’

He said he smoked a small amount of the drug in the UK and what he brought back would have lasted him about two days. He was not dependent on heroin but used cannabis every now and again.

Advocate David Domaille said his client had been depressed after being told he was being made redundant. He had quit and gone to the UK.

He said that his client was young, it had been only a small amount of heroin, there had been no pre-planning and no suggestion that the drug was for other than personal use.

‘He has a history of alcohol abuse which he has not been able to overcome,’ he said.

But Marquis was now more forward thinking since his incarceration and he was looking much healthier. He had a job lined up in roofing on his release.

Judge Russell Finch said Marquis’s explanation had been vague and unsatisfactory. The evidence he had given to officers was at odds with what he had told the probation service.

Internal concealment was an aggravating factor which had made a guilty plea inevitable.

‘We do not regard 3.3 grams of heroin as an insignificant amount and this was plainly not the importation of a small quantity,’ said Judge Finch.

Marquis was sentenced to three years and six months in prison for the drug offence. The court also activated a two-month suspended prison sentence that had been imposed on the defendant in June for stealing alcohol and sandwiches.

The sentences will be served consecutively, making a total of three years and eight months’ imprisonment from the time of Marquis’s arrest in November.