'Sophisticated' drug dealer loses sentence appeal bid
A man who was jailed for his role at the head of a major Wolverhampton drug dealing plot has lost an appeal against his sentence
Dwayne Marlon Jackson ran a 'sophisticated conspiracy' across the city, taking orders, supplying addicts and directing his foot soldiers.
The 30-year-old was snared during the police's Operation No Deal, a long running undercover operation to crackdown on the supply of drugs in the city.
He admitted conspiracy to supply heroin, crack cocaine and cannabis and was jailed for eight years and eight months at Birmingham Crown Court last year.
On Wednesday senior judges at the Court of Appeal ruled that the sentence was fully justified.
Mr Justice Flaux told the court: "It was plainly a substantial and sophisticated conspiracy which continued for 11 months."
The court heard Jackson, of Audlem Walk, Park Village, Wolverhampton, was caught out by an undercover police operation that ran from 2012 to 2013.
West Midlands Police targeted a drug dealing enterprise that centred around a mobile phone number, where orders were placed by calling the number and dealers supplied drugs after arriving in hired cars.
Jackson, who was the orchestrator of the gang and lived in leafy Claverley at the time of his arrest, was frequently part of the group which arrived with the ordered drugs.
Officers made a number of 'test purchases' which the judge described as the 'tip of the iceberg'.
During the course of the conspiracy the phone number, which became known as the 'D-Line', received 10,831 calls from 519 different numbers, the court heard.
Appealing his sentence, Jackson's lawyers argued that the conspiracy was no more than a street dealing operation as Jackson himself had appeared on the streets to deal, rather than hiding away behind the scenes.
But the argument failed to sway the judge. He said: "Merely because the defendant chose to do some street dealing himself doesn't alter his role.
"He was effectively the architect, the directing mind of a substantial conspiracy involving a large quantity of drugs.
"The suggestion that this was only a conspiracy at street level seriously downplays the scale of the supply and the central organisational role played by Jackson."
The judge, sitting with Mr Justice Walker and Lord Justice Fulford, dismissed the appeal.
