Jail for Maidenhead man found with half a kilo of cocaine at his home

A Maidenhead man who was found with a cache of cocaine worth over £44,000 has been imprisoned for over 13 months.

In March last year, Robert Appleton, 49, from Wessex Way, was found with a total of nearly half a kilo of cocaine at his home.

At Reading Crown Court on Friday (January 30), he was sentenced for possession with intent to supply.

The court heard Appleton was struggling with his own addictions and had agreed to allow dealers to stash a large quantity of cocaine in his shed in exchange for payment.

That payment was a quantity of cocaine – 69 grams, which had a street value of £6,840. Police found this stashed in a food storage container in Appleton’s kitchen.

The rest – 373g of cocaine, worth £37,280 – was being held for dealers to sell elsewhere, the court heard.

His Honour Judge Neil Millard, presiding, said this made Appleton a ‘custodian’ of the drugs rather than a ‘supplier’.

He said he was ‘quite satisfied’ this was the extent of Appleton’s involvement – noting that Appleton’s seized phone showed ‘no evidence’ of any direct involvement in drug supply.

“It’s clear to me you do not have the aptitude to run a drug operation on this scale,” the judge said. “You clearly had no influence over those above you.”

The court heard that Appleton had faced some significant life stressors, having lost his son to a drink-driving incident a few years ago.

Appleton used drugs as a ‘coping mechanism’ as he ‘didn’t have time to confront his grief issues,’ said his defence team.

Though Judge Millard recognised these ‘awful’ events provided some mitigation for Appleton’s behaviour, he said he had ‘difficulty’ with the sheer quantity of drugs stored.

Appleton also did not give up the name of the dealer storing drugs at his home and entered a rather late guilty plea. These matters all counted against him.

In his favour, Appleton surrendered his phone to police willingly.

Though Appleton did have 10 previous convictions for drug offences, these were all long ago in the early 2000s, and he had not been convicted of anything since then.

Judge Millard attributed these offences to Appleton’s addiction problems.

In the end, Appleton’s sentence came down to the quantity of cocaine that was in his shed and how much he was paid to keep it there.

“It’s quite clear that you had an expectation of a significant advantage from the deal,” said Judge Millard. “To you, that cocaine was worth £6,840.”

The judge surmised that, given the size of this payment, Appleton must have had some notion that a ‘significant amount’ of cocaine was being stored in his shed.

He said that Appleton knew firsthand ‘the misery’ that class A drugs cause – and reasoned that he must therefore have known that any involvement in their supply would carry severe consequences.

“In my judgement, you played a significant role,” Judge Millard said, adding that this was ‘premeditated, not opportunistic.’

Appleton was sentenced to 27 months in prison but he will serve no more than half that time, 13.5 months.

Throughout the sentencing, Judge Millard repeatedly stressed how unfortunate it was that Appleton did not admit his guilt earlier in the process, while the case was in magistrate’s court.

Instead, he allowed it to get as far as the pre-trial preparation stage before admitting his guilt – costing the courts unnecessary time and money.

Had he admitted his guilt earlier, his sentence would have been notably less severe.