DRUGS COURIER GETS EIGHT YEARS

A Dublin man who was found in Cork city centre with 2,000 ecstasy tablets
and a large quantity of cocaine was acting as a courier in payment of a
drugs debt, a court was told yesterday.

Christopher Doherty (31) from Ballincurris Road, Dundrum, Co Dublin,
pleaded guilty to possession of the drugs with intent to supply to others
before Judge A. G. Murphy in Cork Circuit Criminal Court.

He asked the judge for a chance, stating that he had an awful drugs problem
but that since being imprisoned in Mountjoy he had been drugs free for 11
months and was doing a number of courses.

Defence counsel Mr Kieran Hughes said that Doherty was "sucked into this
web of vice" by dealers who wanted him to deliver the drugs to Dublin, and
he was a very small cog paying off a debt.

Judge Murphy said that without couriers the dealers would have to put
themselves at risk and for that reason couriers had to be treated very
harshly with long prison sentences.

The case was pathetic as Doherty was weak and was used by evil men. He
sentenced him to eight years in prison and said he would review the case in
a year's time when he would be sympathetic if the defendant continued to
behave himself.