Drug farm man makes appeal over sentence
A terminally ill businessman who went on the run in India rather than spend his final years in an English jail has made a bid to get his jail term cut by top judges as an act of mercy.
Steven Rodenhurst was awaiting sentence for operating a cannabis-growing business worth £150,000 a year from a South Staffordshire mansion house when he skipped the country and fled to Goa, where he remains a fugitive. Rodenhurst, formerly of Beeches Road, Kidderminster, was given a four-and-a-half-year jail term in his absence in May.
It was handed down at Wolverhampton Crown Court, after he pleaded guilty to producing cannabis and was convicted of possession of cannabis with intent to supply.
His lawyers asked Lord Justice Davis, Mr Justice Keith and Judge Brian Barker QC, sitting at London's Criminal Appeal Court, to cut that sentence on appeal, as an act of mercy, but they rejected the appeal.
The court heard that Rodenhurst was found hiding in the cellar of a seven-bedroom house, in Codsall, two weeks after officers uncovered more than 900 cannabis plants there.
Rodenhurst, a retired demolition and salvage company boss who has inoperable prostate cancer and heart problems, was granted bail while sentencing reports were drawn up.
He had claimed to be using the cannabis he produced for strictly personal use, but his tale was rejected by a jury. He had been given 18 months to live by doctors and skipped bail, writing to the court to say that he was flying out to India to be at his teenage daughter's bedside, having learned that she was also very ill.
Lawyers for Rodenhurst asked for his sentence to be cut as an act of mercy, saying he had a reasonable excuse for leaving the country.
It was also submitted that Indian doctors told Rodenhurst he was too unwell to take the flight back home to face justice. Lord Justice Davis, however, was not impressed, saying the tale about his sick daughter was "unsupported by any medical evidence from India".
The judge said: "This was a commercial, almost industrial-scale cannabis-growing operation." He refused to grant an extension of time in which to appeal and said that, even if that had been granted, Rodenhurst's challenge would have failed on its merits.