A JAMAICAN who was stabbed while on remand in prison has been jailed for seven years for having £125,000 worth of crack cocaine.
Alvin Clarke has been the victim of serious racial discrimination by other prisoners and is under 24 hour a day guard, Dublin Circuit Criminal Court was told. He only has one hour's exercise outside his cell daily.
Last May, he was attacked by a fellow inmate and needed 14 stitches for a wound to his back.
Clarke (24), of Rose Heights, St James, Montego Bay, West Jamaica, pleaded guilty to possessing £125,000 worth of cocaine for sale or supply at or near Dun Laoghaire Harbour on March 8th, 1996.
Det Garda Michael Collins said gardai received confidential information that the drugs were being transported from Shannon Airport, through Limerick for transfer to England.
Clarke and a woman called Ms Denise Browne arrived by taxi at the Dun Laoghaire ferry terminal at 6.05 p.m. on March 8th. They said they were going to London.
Det Gda Collins told prosecuting counsel, Mr Paul McDermott, that plastic wrapped packages of crack cocaine were recovered from his underpants.
He also had £2,360 sterling on him.
Det Gda Collins said crack cocaine was highly addictive and had caused major problems among young people in America. It was smoked through a pipe and gave a quicker effect than heroin.
Defence counsel, Mr Patrick Marrinan, revealed that the authorities were tipped off about the haul by the girlfriend of a man living in England who organised the importation.
This woman had found out that Denise Browne was the organiser's mistress and she wanted to get at her by informing on her. Ms Denise Browne wasn't charged in relation to the drugs, said counsel.
He said Clarke was reared in poor circumstances by his grandmother in Jamaica. His father had a three acre banana farm and his mother ran a small grocery store in St James.
Mr Marrinan said Clarke went into business hiring mopeds after he married the daughter of a well to do family in 1992 but when they separated the business ended. He emigrated to England and through an uncle in Luton was introduced to the drugs organiser.
Clarke obviously was not a high powered drug dealer with millions behind him, said counsel. He was unable to take up bail granted by the High Court and the people behind the drugs operation did not come to his aid.
Mr Marrinan said his client's uncle failed to visit him or come to court to speak for him. Apart from a letter from the family of an American woman he helped when she was the subject of a vicious sexual assault he had no outside contact since going into custody.
Mr Marrinan noted a Supreme Court judgment in another case of an alien imprisoned here where a sentence was reduced due to the difficulties faced by him in prison away from his relatives.
Judge Cyril Kelly noted the public gallery was full of second level schoolgirls. It was that generation and future generations who had to be protected by the courts from the ravages of drugs.
"What message am I to impart to the families of these schoolgirls? What message also am I to impart to drug dealers?" Judge Kelly asked.
Judge Kelly imposed a seven year sentence to run from last March.