A Milford woman with a history of drugs convictions to her name has been fined in court after admitting a Class A drug possession charge.
Thirty-eight-year-old Marion Picton, of Willow End, Mount Estate, appeared at Haverfordwest Magistrates Court on Tuesday, to plead guilty to possessing traces of the drug heroin.
Defence solicitor Mark Layton asked the court for the initial charge of possessing cocaine to be amended as his client fully admitted that it was heroin that she had used, when her property was searched by police on January 3.
“Police executed a search warrant and recovered a bag and pipe that had traces of white powder which was heroin. Mrs. Picton has a long history of heroin use, but when the drugs traces were sent for analysis they came back stating it was cocaine, so she thinks there’s been a mix up. She accepts a charge of heroin but won’t plead guilty to cocaine,” continued Mr. Layton.
Prosecutor Vaughan Pritchard -Jones told the court that he had ‘quite broad shoulders’ and would accept responsibility for amending the charge.
“The various bags found contained white powder and the pipes had traces of white powder, which is indicative of someone smoking heroin,” he said.
“The defendant fully cooperated with police and made clear admissions that she had bough heroin, so I don’t know what’s happened with the forensics,” added Mr. Pritchard-Jones.
Mr. Layton went onto explain: “This charge goes back to January when Mrs. Picton was going through a difficult time, since then she has made a number of court appearances, with a 16 week custodial sentence served in May, but this offence predates that, so she is not in breach of her post sentence supervision.”
Magistrates fined Mrs. Picton £120 for the offence and ordered her to pay prosecution costs of £85 and a £30 victim surcharge.
A destruction order was also made for the destruction of the drugs paraphernalia.