Court / Fine for woman caught with drugs in car twice in nine days
A FORTY seven year old woman found to have drugs in her car twice in just nine days has been fined at Lerwick Sheriff Court.
Laureen Johnston, from Upper Sound, was stopped by police acting on intelligence on 11 November 2023 and found to have five wraps of cocaine concealed in a hidden compartment of a flask in her car.
Just nine days later, on 20 November, police again were tipped off about Johnston and her vehicle, and when searched discovered two bromazolam tablets.
On both occasions she told police: “It’s not mine”.
Johnston had denied being in possession of the class A and class C drugs, but was found guilty following a trial at Lerwick Sheriff Court.
She claimed the flask with the cocaine could have fallen out of the bag of a “friend of a friend” she was driving to hospital.
And she said she did not know where the tablets had come from, but suggested someone could have planted them there.
Johnston said a police officer had asked her after the second arrest: “Who did you upset recently?”
She herself gave evidence, and said she had been pulled over by police on 11 November on Holmsgarth Road in Lerwick.
Police searched her and found nothing, but a search of her car found a flask with a hidden bottom containing 4.52g of cocaine across five wraps.
The court heard the value of each wrap was around £80-£100, so could have been worth as much as £500.
Johnston said a passenger in the backseat of the car had had found the flask rolling around the floor some time in the ten days before she was stopped, and had passed it to her.
She had then stashed it in the side of the driver’s side door. Johnston, a former taxi driver, said she had given lifts to a number of people in the ten days before, all of whom she knew.
She said she did not know the flask contained the drugs, and only knew that it had a bottom compartment when shown photos this morning (Thursday) by her solicitor.
Nine days after the first arrest she was stopped by police on Lerwick’s North Loch Drive – between the new Lochside roundabout and Anderson High School – and a search of her car found two bromazolam tablets in the centre console.
Police said these tablets were “in open view”, but Johnston disputed this – saying she had not seen them, and if she had, she would have disposed of them.
Asked by defence agent Liam Mcallister as to why they were there, Johnston replied: “Someone must have put them there”.
Johnston admitted they must have been placed in the car sometime after the first search, and said she would have had “between 10 and 20” people in the car in that time.
Mcallister asked if there would have been anyone in her car that she would not have known, but she responded: “No, I wouldn’t have strangers in my car”.
Procurator fiscal Duncan Mackenzie disputed her evidence, and said that police officers had found £235 on her during one of the searches.
Johnston said that was money a friend had owed and paid her before police stopped her.
Mackenzie said it was “unusual” for anyone to carry such large sums of cash these days. He put it to her that the money was being used to pay for drugs, which Johnston denied.
Johnston claimed the flask could have been left behind by a man who she ran to the hospital, who has since died, because a bank card of his was also found in the car.
But Mackenzie was sceptical that that any drug user would leave behind such a large, and valuable, quantity of drugs.
He said the chances of someone leaving around £500 worth of cocaine in a car for roughly ten days were “extremely remote”.
Johnston said the man who could have left behind the flask was “not in a good way” when he was driven to the hospital, and unlikely to have been looking for the drugs.
The fiscal told the court police were given specific intelligence about Johnston, and her vehicle, about drugs on two separate occasions.
And he pointed out that, on both occasions, they had discovered drugs in the car.
Johnston said it seemed like “someone has got it in for me”.
She said, after being asked by a police officer if she had upset anyone, it appeared the officer “had information that someone had it in for me”.
Summing up, Mcallister said clearly both drugs had been found in her possession – but it was up to the court to decide whether it had been proved “beyond reasonable doubt” if they were hers.
He said Johnston was “entitled to the benefit of the doubt”.
However Mackenzie retiterated it was unlikely a drug user would have left “such a quantity of cocaine lying around”.
“This isn’t the case of a simple plastic packet falling out of a pocket,” he added.
He said of her claim that someone had it in for her, it would be “very difficult for anyone to get her in trouble unless there was some truth in the information”.
Sheriff Ian Cruickshank said he had “a difficulty” with Johnston’s narrative that the drugs could have been planted or left behind.
He found her guilty on both charges and fined her £500 for the possession of cocaine.
She was admonished and dismissed on the charge of possessing two tablets of bromazolam.
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