Royal Court gives man with ‘appalling’ record a chance

David Philip Carrel, who spent his 47th birthday in the Royal Court yesterday, was found guilty by an Assize jury recently of criminally receiving 148 CDs and DVDs which had been stolen in a break-in from Offshore Solutions in Rue des Prés.Yesterday, he was sentenced to 210 hours’ community service for that offence.Crown Advocate Nuno Santos Costa said that videos and CDs worth £10,144 had been stolen from the company and the man charged with their theft was sentenced in July.Police had searched a flat at Le Marais occupied by a friend of Carrel’s and when Carrel was searched there they had found a list in his jacket of CDs and DVDs.Advocate Santos Costa said that Carrel’s ‘criminal career’ had started in 1971, after which there had been 118 convictions.Sitting with Jurats Tibbo and King, the Deputy Bailiff, Michael Birt, described Carrel’s record as ‘appalling’.However, he said that because of the efforts Carrel had made to improve his life the court had decided to sentence him to community service to encourage him to continue that progress rather than go back to his old ways.