Four-year prison term for 1998 drug offences
CRIMES committed more than 19 years ago saw a man being jailed for four years by the Royal Court.
Matthew Upson, 42, first appeared before the Guernsey court in October 1998 charged with drugs offences.
After being released on bail he left the island and was only picked up again by local police last year.
Crown Advocate Fiona Russell, prosecuting, said that Upson was arrested in October 1998 at a local nightclub after doormen became suspicious and called the police.
When Upson was searched a number of tablets wrapped in clear polythene were found on him.
Upson later told officers that these pills were ‘Meteorite’, a street name for the class A drug MDMA or ecstasy.
He said he was holding the drugs for someone else. He had been given the pills in the nightclub and was not dealing them.
When his home was later searched officers found a total of 0.167 grammes of the class B drug cannabis, another 100 tablets of MDMA and 0.37 grammes of the class A drug cocaine. There were also four Temazepam tablets.
During interview, Upson told police that he had been given the tablets a week or two previously as part of a batch of between 130 and 140 tablets and was holding them for a third party who was due to collect and sell them.
Advocate Russell said that at 1998 prices the MDMA tablets were worth between £3,225 and £3,870 while the cocaine was valued at between £56.98 and £85.47. The cannabis would have fetched a total of between £1.17 and £1.50 at 1998 prices.
Upson said that profits from the sale of the MDMA by the third party would have gone back to the original supplier of the tablets. This individual was no longer in the island.
The other drugs found at his home were for his personal use. A list of names had also been found at his home and he said these were people who owed him money and he had written them down so he did not forget.
A neutral powder found in his flat was glucose and he said he used this to mix with other substances and put into capsules to sell.
Upson appeared in court on 9 October 1998 and was granted open remand on condition that he surrender his passport and not to leave nor attempt to leave the island.
He later breached these conditions by leaving Guernsey, after which a warrant was issued for his arrest.
Despite his name being put into the Police National Computer, he came to the attention of police only once in almost 19 years, when he was stopped while driving on the M3 in 2004.
He gave an address in Berkshire that was never verified.
It was in May 2017 that the defendant was found in Guernsey, when he was the passenger in a car being driven by his sister that was stopped by police.
He gave his real name, but at that time it was not appreciated that he was wanted on the 1998 warrant.
He was arrested in early August 2017. He appeared before the Magistrate’s Court and was released on conditional bail, including a surety of £10,000.
He admitted all four counts – possession with intent to supply of a class A drug, and three charges of possessing class B drugs – in February this year.
For Upson, Advocate Andrew Ayres said that his client had absconded in 1998 after being subjected to threats while he was on bail. However, this led to many more problems for him in that it meant he was unable to see his family and could contact them only with infrequent phone calls.
During his time in the UK he set up a plastering business. He always used his real name and obtained a new passport. But after a while he began to suffer depression.
Ultimately he resolved to return to the island to be with his family and seek help with his problems. After his eventual return and his being released on bail again, the probation service took steps to safeguard him while he awaited sentence.
In passing the sentence of the court, Judge Russell Finch said that Upson’s guilty pleas were taken into account when considering the length of the prison term.
The first count – possession with intent to supply a class A drug – was by far the most serious. He said that after the drugs were found Upson had given an ‘unlikely explanation’.
‘It was obvious what you were doing,’ said Judge Finch.
The four-year prison sentence was handed down for the supply charge, with three months, to run concurrently, for each of the three other counts. The drugs involved in the case were destroyed in 2014, but the prosecution was granted, the forfeiture of £280 seized from the defendant at the time of his arrest. The money was to be paid immediately into the seized assets fund.
