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Pete Bevington
2 July, 2008
AN UNEMPLOYED Shetland man was sentenced to just over nine months in
prison for growing a forest of cannabis in his Lerwick flat.
Ian Leask, aged 42, was arrested on 11 March after police were
called to his Park Lane residence for a noise complaint, and
detected the smell of cannabis coming through the upstairs window,
and has been held in Aberdeen prison ever since.
At Lerwick Sheriff Court last month procurator fiscal Duncan
Mackenzie claimed the value of the class C drug officers retrieved
could have fetched up to £28,896 on the street, though accepted a
more likely figure was between £11,760 and £17,640.
Defence agent Neil McRobert countered that his expert had estimated
the value at just £4,320.
Yesterday both sides came to a compromise value of £8,000, though Mr
McRobert maintained that Leask only intended the drug for personal
use to help him deal with his depression. |
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The lawyer asked for a
community based sentence, but Sheriff Graeme Napier said that he had
no choice but to send him to prison bearing in mind his criminal
record, which included 17 convictions for 31 different offences
since 1982, including five periods in jail.
“You have had probation, you have had community service and you have
had a restriction of liberty. In the circumstances I consider there
is no other option but to deal with you by a custodial sentence,”
the sheriff said.
He sentenced Leask to 280 days in jail, backdated to 12 March when
he originally appeared from custody, which means that he should be
released at the end of this month after remission.
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