A drug dealer caught in Warrington, who “flippantly” said he would rather go to prison than carry out unpaid work, has got his wish.
Joseph Booth was caught with cannabis to sell for the second time – along with enticingly packaged sweets laced with the drug – and had a craft knife secreted in his car.
He had also been using a diary containing daily Biblical quotes as a dealer’s tick list with names of customers and sums owed.
Liverpool Crown Court heard that at an earlier hearing the judge was told that he would rather go to jail than do unpaid work in the community, though his barrister Sarah Griffin claimed that that had been a flippant remark.
“He is adamant he would do any requirement,” she said.
On the last occasion he received an eight-month suspended prison sentence but Judge Katherine Pierpoint has now put him behind bars for 14 months, saying it was the only appropriate punishment.
“You did not learn your lesson because you are back in court again,” she told the 33-year-old dad-of-three.
Derek Jones, prosecuting, said that police saw his BMW , which had a marker on it on the force system, on the afternoon of December 3, 2022 in Hale Street, Warrington.
They followed him and when he got out officers approached him and searched him and his vehicle.
They found 20 bags of female flowering cannabis heads, worth about £700 and also several packages of sweets laced with the cannabis derivative THC.
The judge pointed out they were “colourful packages appealing to a younger audience. They are made to look like sweet wrappers.”
He also had a craft knife in the driver’s side pocket of his car, £347 cash and three bottles of THC oil. When his home was searched a small hatchet and two miniature phones looking like BMW key fobs were discovered.
Mr Jones said that the tick list in the Biblical diary had about a dozen names with sums of between £100 – £200 against them. He refused to give police the Pin numbers for his three phones, he added.
Booth, of Berkshire Drive, Cadishead, Irlam, pleaded guilty to possessing cannabis with intent to supply and possessing a bladed article in public.
He has six previous convictions for 11 offences including drugs and assaults and ten days after he was caught in Warrington with the cannabis he was arrested for failing to provide a sample for analysis after being stopped driving.
Miss Griffin said that Booth, who previously claimed his cannabis use was not a problem, has now substantially reduced his consumption. He was hoping to get on a railway track course which would be the push he needed to give it up altogether.
He has not been in trouble for 22 months and had completed the requirements of the community order imposed for failing to provide a sample, she said.
