A drug dealer was hiding his stash of cocaine in plain sight in a McDonald's bag on the front seat of his car, a court has heard.
Jonathon Bartley was found with more than £13,500 of high-purity coke when his car was pulled over by police. When the 38-year-old didn't return home that evening Bartley's partner, Kayleigh Owen-Jones, guessed he had been arrested and decided to get rid of his stock of cocaine in their house - but was caught red-handed by police.
Tom Scapens, prosecuting, told Swansea Crown Court that at just before 3pm on December 7, 2020, police stopped a BMW car on the A48 at Cross Hands in Carmarthenshire. The driver of the car was Bartley, and beside him on the front passenger seat of the vehicle was a McDonald's takeaway bag inside which was sealed flask. The court heard that in the flask were two bags containing white powder which turned out to be a total of 123g of 80 per cent purity cocaine. The street value of the coke if sold in 1g deals was put more than £13,500. When Bartley was searched officers found a piece of paper containing a "tick list" of deals done showing he was owed some £2,520 by 12 customers. The prosecutor said subsequent tests of the sticky tape used to seal the flask in the bag yielded a palm print which matched the defendant's.
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The court heard that when police went to Bartley's house in Carmarthen they found his partner, 30-year-old Owen-Jones, leaving the property in her car - she was found to be carrying a sock containing 19 wraps of cocaine worth around £1,000. The mum-of-two would later say that when her boyfriend did not return home she guessed he had been arrested and she had found his stash of cocaine which she took with the intention of dumping it in the river. A subsequent examination of Bartley's phone showed he had been offering cocaine in 1g deals, while checks on his bank account showed "third parties" had paid in thousands of pounds over an extended period.
Jonathon Lee Bartley, now of Maes Awelon, Dryslwyn, Carmarthen, had previously pleaded guilty to possession of cocaine with intent to supply when he appeared in the dock for sentencing. Kayleigh Jessica Owen-Jones, of the same address, had previously pleaded guilty to the simple possession of cocaine on the basis that she was disposing of the drug when she appeared alongside her partner. Bartley has 12 previous convictions for 16 offences but none for drugs matters. Owen-Jones has no previous convictions but has a warning for arson and a caution for assault.
The court heard the pair hadn't been charged with the drug offences until December 2022, some two years after they had first been arrested. The prosecutor said a report into the delay had been prepared following a request from a judge at an earlier hearing and it detailed how the downloading of messages from Bartley's phone had been outsourced by police and had not been completed until April 2022. The Crown Prosecution Service had then been asked for a charging decision in the September with charges sent out to the defendants in the post - known as postal requisition - in the December.
Georgia Donohue, for Bartley, said the defendant had been a heavy user of cocaine at the time of the offending as a form of "self-medication" for his mental health issues but his arrest in Cross Hands had been a "wake up call" for him and was now drug and alcohol free. She said Bartley had spent the last two years productively and had "thoroughly changed his lifestyle", including moving his family out of Carmarthen and away from previous associates.
Hywel Davies, for Owen-Jones, said the conviction for possession of cocaine was his client's first. The barrister said character references submitted to the court and the contents of the pre-sentence report painted a very different picture to that which may have been created from the facts of the case, and he said the defendant had recently been offered work in a local equestrian centre which would allow her to use her skills and experience with horses.
Both barristers highlighted the delay in the case coming to court.
Judge Paul Thomas KC told Bartley that he would have known what awaited him if he were caught dealing Class A drugs but had taken the risk in return for the profits that could be made - he said that gamble had not paid off, and the defendant now had to pay the price. The judge said that in coming to his sentence he had in mind the long delay in the case, and the steps Bartley had taken to turn his life around. With a one-third discount for his guilty plea Bartley was sentenced to two years and four months in prison - he will serve up to half that period in custody before being released on licence to serve the remainder in the community.
Judge Thomas told Owen-Jones that what she had done in trying to dispose of the cocaine from her house had come very close to an offence of attempting to pervert the course of justice, and that she led a "charmed life". He said a fine was often the appropriate sentence for possession of cocaine but on the facts before the court a community order would be more appropriate in Owen-Jones' case. The defendant was made the subject of a 12 month community order and must complete a rehabilitation course and 100 hours of unpaid work.
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