Drug-dealing skunk addict gets one last chance (From Swindon Advertiser)

Swindon drug-dealing skunk addict gets one last chance

12:20pm Tuesday 12th February 2013 in News

A DRUG dealer who was told by a judge ‘you’ll be answerable to me’ if he failed to comply with the terms of a suspended sentence has been given a ‘last chance’.

Samuel Fenton received the warning when Judge Douglas Field ruled the public interest was best served by him getting treatment to could beat his skunk habit.

But even after the 29-year-old to failed turn up for appointments with probation and continued to smoke cannabis, he decided not to activate the sentence.

And he also told him he wouldn’t have to do the 130 hours of community service he was required to do as part of the sentence because he was not medically up to it.

Instead Fenton, whose girlfriend is heavily pregnant, will have to observe a 9pm to 6am curfew for three months at his new home on Bright Street, Gorse Hill.

He will also have his six month drug rehabilitation requirement extended by four weeks to help him with the problem he has suffered for 12 years.

Passing sentence in September the judge told him: “I am satisfied that your offending is directly related to your problem with cannabis and that should be addressed by you with the assistance of the drug rehabilitation people. If you breach that you will be answerable to me.”

However Fenton failed to turn up a few weeks later, and again just after Christmas, leading the probation service to find him in breach of the order.

But Judge Field ruled it would be unjust to activate the sentence telling him: “I have decided to give you one last chance.”

Fenton, formerly of Larchmore Close, Pinehurst, was put on a 12 month jail term suspended for a year after admitting supplying cannabis.