A woman who concealed five packages of cocaine in order to bring them to the island has had an appeal against her sentence dismissed.

Kathryn Kelly, 47, was jailed in January for five years custody concurrent for two drugs offences committed in October 2019.

She had pleaded guilty to importing 125.2g of cocaine and possessing a class A drug (the same cocaine) with intent to supply.

Kelly was stopped at Ronaldsway Airport having disembarked from a flight from Liverpool on October 25. She was found to have concealed five packages of cocaine within her body and pleaded guilty to both offences on October 30. According to a social enquiry report, she had agreed to carry the cocaine in order to clear a debt of £475.

She appealed her sentence claiming that her counsel, Andrew Baker, had failed to use character references or the personal letter written by Kelly to the sentencing Deemster (Bernard Richmond QC).

Kelly claimed that Mr Baker failed to obtain or use a psychiatric report and that in her view, Mr Baker’s inadequate representation meant her sentence was too harsh.

According to the appeal judgment, she ’also complains that the court did not have the benefit of a psychiatric report from Dr Kirsten Wafer, consultant psychiatrist in substance misuse for the mental health services drug and alcohol team at Noble’s Hospital’.

However, the judgment continues to say ’the appellant does not have a diagnosed psychiatric disorder’ and that Mr Baker had decided that given a positive report from doctors that it was not necessary to refer to Dr Wafer’s report in his written or oral submissions.

sentence

The issue of the length of Kelly’s sentence was addressed by the judgment saying that prosecutors submitted a starting point of nine-and-a-half years ’given the quantity of the cocaine involved and the undoubted aggravating feature of internal concealment to evade detection’.

It added: ’The Deemster’s discount of 44% (from nine years to five years) was, if anything, generous when there was no sensible alternative to a guilty plea and the Deemster not activating the suspended sentence.’

Judge of Appeal Jeremy Storey and Deemster Graeme Cook, who heard the appeal, said in their judgment, Kelly was ’fortunate to receive a full one-third discount when there was no sensible alternative to a guilt plea’.

They added: ’Taking into account everything we have heard and read, we are quite satisfied that the appellant’s sentence was not manifestly excessive.

’We do not accept that five years’ custody was too long or outside the norm of sentencing generally applied by the Isle of Man courts in cases of production/supply of class A drugs. Indeed, a Deemster could, quite reasonably, have passed a sentence of up to seven years’ custody upon the appellant.

’Deemster Richmond, on the other hand, was clearly sympathetic to a vulnerable defendant and the risks she took on October 15, 2019, for minimal gain and passed a sentence which, in our judgment, is at the very bottom of the range of permissible sentences for these offences.’