Oldbury man, 22, jailed over drug dealing offence

And after being caught in a raid, Devonn Weston pleaded guilty at Warwick Crown Court to possessing almost 35 grams of crack with intent to supply it.

Weston, 21, of Jackson Street, was jailed for two years – consecutive to a three-year sentence he is already serving for a similar offence.

Prosecutor Michael Williams said that in September 2019, Weston was at a flat in the Hartshill area of Nuneaton when it was raided by the police. As he was being spoken to, he asked an officer to put something in a man-bag that was on the settee for him.

But when the officer opened the bag he found it contained £1,420 in cash and a quantity of crack cocaine weighing 34.7 grams. It had a street value of anything between £750 and £3,400 – but Weston, who had at first claimed he did not know the drug was there, claimed it was all for personal use.

Mr Williams said that at the time Weston was on licence from a two-year prison sentence imposed at Maidstone Crown Court in July 2018, for possessing heroin with intent to supply it and possessing crack cocaine.

That sentence had followed him and another Oldbury man being stopped by the police in Gillingham, Kent, in February that year and being found with heroin and crack worth over £7,000.

And in December last year Weston was jailed for three years at Worcester Crown Court for conspiring to supply heroin and crack cocaine after he had taken over a Hereford addict’s home to use it as a base for dealing.

Entrapped

Judge Anthony Potter observed that a third conviction for supplying class A drugs would normally lead to a minimum sentence of seven years – but the offence pre-dated the Worcester matter.

Mark Moore, defending, said: “He comes from the Dudley area of the West Midlands, and the area where they lived gives rise to young men becoming entrapped in criminality.”

So Weston’s family had sent him to live with his grandmother in Cheshire, and he was doing well there – but his grandmother passed away and he had no alternative but to return.

Back in Dudley he ‘drifted’ and became involved with drugs. He was approached by dealers who told him he owed them for drugs. So he had to continue to be involved to pay them back, Mr Moore explained.

Jailing Weston, Judge Anthony Potter told him: “You are 22 years of age, and your antecedents are clear – you have travelled the country committing offences, and three of them have involved supplying class A drugs.

“I deal with you for an offence committed in September 2019 when you had a significant quantity of crack cocaine with intent to supply, this in an area where you had not previously been convicted.

“Your basis of plea is that you had it as a result, of being given it as a custodian, and that the money was not the proceeds of selling drugs yourself.

“You should, in my judgement, have been dealt with at Worcester Crown Court for all matters when you received a three-year sentence for other offences.”

And he explained that he was imposing the consecutive sentence on the basis of the total sentence Weston would have received if the matters had been dealt with together.