Western Bureau — Despite the ardent pleas of her attorney and the relatively small quantity of cocaine she tried to export, Gwendolyn Brown, a 47 year-old St Ann mother of nine, was on Wednesday slapped with a six-month prison term and fined $140,000 for the offence.

She was taken from the Sangster International Airport to the Cornwall Regional Hospital on March 6 where she excreted 18 packages of cocaine, weighing 3.14 ounces.

Her attorney George Thomas told the Montego Bay Resident Magistrate’s Court Wednesday that Brown, after years of selling “bun and cheese”, had become frustrated and had opted to smuggle drugs in a bid to earn some money.

“Some of us are stronger than some… She’s not proud of what she did…,” Thomas told the court.

“I ask that you extend a hand of leniency. She has to face her nine children and that, she says, is not a pleasant task.”

At the same time, Thomas asked the court to take into account the relatively small amount of cocaine with which his client was found and stressed that the potency of the drug was only between 62 and 92 per cent.

But judge Valerie Stephens, who presided over the matter, said the offence warranted a custodial sentence. And she said that a woman of Brown’s age should have known better.

“You have a duty to set an example for your children. What you did was so wrong. You are going to feel it… You are going to lose a lot of respect…,” the judge chided the accused woman.

For possession of the drug, Brown was fined $40,000 or six months. And for attempting to export it she was fined an additional $100,000 or six months and sentenced to a mandatory six months behind bars. The charge of dealing in the drug was dismissed.