A Supreme Court jury yesterday cleared a disabled man of trying to smuggle over four pounds of freebase cocaine into Bermuda hidden inside the frame of his wheelchair.

Patrick Joseph Scarlett, a Jamaican, had denied importing and possession with intent to supply after arriving on an American Airlines flight last October.

After the unanimous verdict Mr. Scarlett told The Royal Gazette that he was joyful and he said the nephew who had put the drugs in the wheelchair was now on the run. Customs officers discovered the drugs after they drilled a hole in the wheelchair and found freebase cocaine worth up to $600,000.

The defendant, who has no use of his legs, was being wheeled into the Customs hall when Customs officers became suspicious. An ion scan of his hands, bags and wheelchair tested positive for traces of cocaine. Mr. Scarlett, from Kingston, denied any knowledge of drugs being in the chair and said his nephew had planted them while fixing a dodgy wheel.

The court also heard that when the accused was told a hole was going to be drilled in his chair as part of a search, his response was: “I cannot allow you to drill a hole in the chair.”

But defence lawyer Victoria Pearman said it was natural for a disabled person to be protective of his only mode of transport. She said the prosecution had not one iota of evidence that Mr. Scarlett knew the drugs were in his wheelchair.

Prosecutor Anthony Blackman said for a poor man Mr. Scarlett travelled a lot taking four trips to England and two to the US inside three years. The accused said his nephew had paid for the $2,000 Bermuda trip.

Ms Pearman said there was nothing suspicious in the fact that Mr. Scarlett kept taking trips because he had said his family spoiled him because he was disabled. Scarlett said he was on the Island to visit Anthony Dyer, a man whom he had known for three months, and to drum up trade for his shoemaking and handicraft business.