Joshua Samuel Gill (20) was sentenced to two years’ youth detention in October after admitting a string of drug offences.
He appeared before the Court of Appeal this week to appeal against the sentence. His lawyer, Advocate Rebecca Morley-Kirk, argued that he had not been given enough credit for his mitigation and that several factors, including his age and strong work ethic, had not been taken fully into account.
Probation reports at the time said that Gill was a suitable candidate for community service.
Gill was initially stopped following a routine road check on 8 December 2017. When the driver of the vehicle Gill was travelling in opened the window, the officer noted a smell of cannabis and a search of the vehicle subsequently found what the police suspected was herbal cannabis, which Gill later admitted was his.
Gill’s home was also searched and 3½ bars of cannabis resin were discovered. He later gave police officers the pin code to unlock his phone, which was then analysed. A string of message relating to supplying or offering to supply drugs was found.
The court heard that Gill had supplied friends with 33 ecstasy tablets, two grams of MDMA powder as well as cannabis, and had also tried to source cocaine.
Advocate Morley-Kirk cited several other cases involving similar circumstances where community-service orders were imposed. Just a month before Gill’s sentencing, a teenager who admitted importing more than 300 ecstasy tablets and 50 grams of MDMA, with the intent to supply, was spared jail.
It was suggested by Advocate Morley-Kirk that the initial sentencing had been ‘manifestly excessive’ and she sought to have the sentence quashed and replaced with a community-service order.
She said Gill was a young man, had entered early guilty pleas, had co-operated with the police during the investigation and said that the amounts of the drugs involved were relatively small. She suggested that the way the court handled the sentence suggested it was ‘predisposed to treating this offence more seriously than it actually was’.
However, Crown Advocate Conrad Yates said that the starting point for such offending would generally be a seven-year custodial sentence and that sufficient weight had been given to those factors in suggesting a 2½-year sentence. He said: ‘The court felt that the Crown’s conclusions were already generous and already allowed quite a substantial discount.’
He added that the Royal Court additionally took another six months off the Crown’s suggested sentence as further credit for Gill’s co-operation.
In refusing the appeal, Commissioner Julian Clyde-Smith, presiding, said that the sentence had not been too harsh and fell within appropriate sentencing guidelines.
‘It can’t be contended that the court was wrong in principle,’ he said. ‘We do find this a very sad case both for the defendant and his family, but this is an appeal court.
‘We find there are no grounds that we can find that the sentence imposed by the sentencing court was manifestly excessive. Leave to appeal is therefore refused.
‘We would like to reiterate that for any young person to get in to the supply of drugs is a very serious matter and will be treated as such by court.’
Jurats Paul Nicolle, Collette Crill, Jane Ronge, Geoffrey Fisher and Suzanne Marrett-Crosby were sitting.
