A CONVICTED drug dealer’s fingerprints were found on a hidden stash of cannabis and heroin less than five months after he was released early from a three year prison sentence for dealing crack cocaine.
Now Martin Jones is back behind bars after being jailed for another three years by a judge at Warwick Crown Court.
The 22-year-old, of Ferndown Road in Rugby, had pleaded guilty to charges of being concerned in the supply of the drugs between September and December.
He entered his plea on the basis he had helped a drug dealer by doing some bagging-up before hiding the drugs for the dealer in return for which he got his own supply of heroin cheaper.
But that was rejected by prosecutor Peter Grieves-Smith who maintained Jones was involved in supplying drugs himself. And on the day the case was listed at the court for a trial of issue, Jones accepted he had been dealing.
The court had previously heard concern was raised in September by local residents about drug-dealing in an alleyway near to Caldecott Park and one sent police a photograph taken of a suspected dealer who was identified as Jones.
A community support officer later found ten re-sealable bags of cannabis worth around £120, 10.6 grams of heroin with a street value of £1,060 and a set of digital scales.
The bags had Jones’ fingerprints on them and when he was arrested text messages on his phone showed he was involved in the supply of drugs.
Andrew Tucker, defending, said Jones was not an unintelligent person and had GCSEs, but had found it difficult to get a job after being released from prison in May last year.
Judge Sylvia de Bertodano told him: “You are still very young. You are not someone with no qualifications and no hope for leading a normal life. There is ample time for you to put this behind you and start again.
“I hope the sentence I pass is something you can use to draw a line under all of this.”
