TWO male cocaine couriers and a woman who were caught trying to export ganja through the Norman Manley International Airport were on Monday given varying prison sentences and fined a combined total of more than J$500,000 in the Corporate Area Resident Magistrate’s Court.

The three — 38 year-old Dorothy Brown, 23 year-old Patrick Small and 48 year-old Valroy Dawkins — all had flights booked on British Airways to Gatwick airport, London.

Brown was held on August 2 after a urine sample she was asked to give, showed up cocaine. When she was taken to hospital, she expelled 30 packets of cocaine weighing one pound.

The accused woman told the court she was a resident of Montego Bay and a mother of five children. She begged the court for leniency for her children’s sake and told the court that she was a dressmaker who had not been in trouble with the law on any previous occasion.

“I am begging a little mercy, if even for the sake of my children,” she pleaded.

Resident Magistrate Jennifer Straw was not moved. “Where you left them when you were swallowing the cocaine?” she asked.

“With my sister,” Brown replied.

“Suppose you had died? What would have happened to them?” the judge asked.

Brown also asked the magistrate if there was a way for her to get her phone from the police, to which RM Straw replied: “You might have to make your family members claim it from the police, because I don’t think you can carry the phone where you are going.”

Brown pleaded guilty to the charges and was fined $80,000 or six months for the charge of cocaine possession and $160,000 for taking steps to export the drug. In addition, she was slapped with a mandatory custodial sentence of two years. If the fines are not paid, they will run concurrently.

Small was given an identical sentence by the court. He, too, was held with one pound of the drug and eventually passed out 57 pellets.

Small also pleaded guilty to the charges. He told the court he was from Lodge district in St Ann and that he had taken the chance because hunger was rife in his home and the bills were piling up.

“Someone came to me and tempted me and the temptation of making money made me do it,” Small explained.

“While you are trying to help your family, you are destroying others,” RM Straw told the man.

Dawkins was held with four pounds of ganja packaged in 19 parcels in his luggage.

He was fined $6,400 or 14 days for possession and $32,000 or six months for the charge of taking steps to export. In accordance with the law stating that anyone found trying to export an illegal substance must serve time, Dawkins was sentenced to six months in prison.

In all three cases, the guilty parties were admonished and discharged on the charge of dealing.