Court: Grant Leave To Appeal Against Sentence
“I would regard 25 years as the appropriate sentence in this case, and would therefore grant leave to appeal against sentence and allow a variation of sentence from 30 years’ imprisonment to one of 25 years,” the ruling said.
The ruling said, “Josef Vlcek arrived in Bermuda on 23 September 2017 on board a commercial flight from London. He is a Czech national whose first language is Czech.
“In the event, the customs officers who opened the lining of both suitcases discovered packages with silver and blue wrappings containing brown powder, which when tested was found to be diamorphine, with a total weight of 2964.8 grams. I will hereafter refer to the drug by its more commonly used name of heroin, except where referring to the indictment, which uses the word diamorphine.
“This figure represents the total weight of the two packages, and the police expert, DS Bhagwan, who gave evidence at trial as an expert in drug related matters, said that the purity of the drug following analysis was just under 50%. He also testified that heroin is sold locally in “decks” comprising 3 milligrams of heroin, at a cost of $20 per deck. If sold this way, the total street value of the heroin contained in the two suitcases would have been approximately $9,550,200.
“At the conclusion of his trial the jury deliberated for approximately three hours before returning unanimous guilty verdicts on 11 March 2019, on the charges in the indictment, of importing diamorphine into Bermuda, and being in possession of the same with intent to supply. On 13 March 2019 he was sentenced to thirty years’ imprisonment on each count, to run concurrently.
“I would regard 25 years as the appropriate sentence in this case, and would therefore grant leave to appeal against sentence and allow a variation of sentence from 30 years’ imprisonment to one of 25 years.”
The full judgment follows below [PDF here]:
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