| Woman pleads guilty to trying to mail cocaine Tuesday, September 8th 2009 |
Patricia Matthews finally decided yesterday that she was guilty of trying to mail cocaine in religious books from a TTPost outlet in San Fernando. She had considered changing her plea to not guilty last week. After yesterday's confession, she was denied bail and will be sentenced on Thursday. Matthews was supposed to be sentenced last week but her attorney Ainsley Lucky asked that he be given time to convince Magistrate Melvin Daniel that his client was "duped" into having the envelope with the 29 grammes of the drug. Lucky came yesterday planning to tell the court why his client was innocent. He said, "I came here prepared but Miss Matthews would rather make a jail." At her first appearance, Matthews, of King's Wharf, San Fernando, pleaded guilty to being in possession of the cocaine. The San Fernando Second Court heard that around 11.30 a.m on August 27 she went to the TTPost outlet at Carlton Centre, San Fernando and attempted to mail a sealed brown envelope to an address in Canada. The 39-year-old was asked by workers there to unseal the envelope and the cocaine was discovered in a sealed plastic bag inside a stack of Watchtower magazines, a publication of the Jehovah's Witnesses. Lucky said he did not want to waste the court's time but he thought he would have been able to persuade the magistrate to see things their way. "After speaking to Miss Matthews I came to the conclusion that her cognitive abilities are not sound," Lucky said. Lucky told the court that the domestic worker had four previous drug-related convictions. In May 2007 Matthews was convicted and sentenced to a year in jail, he said. Daniel ordered that Matthews be remanded into custody until Thursday while her criminal record is verified. |